I Second That!

Evan (walking in the door with two water bottles, a peanut butter sandwich, and a wipes container): I wonder why I'm doing a two-man job when I'm only one man.

Bridge Building

We attempted an engineering question today: Can you build a bridge out of six pieces of spaghetti, two plastic cups, two pieces of paper, and 15 inches of tape which can hold a maximum amount of weight in quarters?
Evan's was able to hold 6 quarters. He had no braces under his bridge made of paper folded and taped into a "T" shape. He learned that distributing the bulk of the weight in the center of the bridge with no braces is probably not a good idea.








Nicholas' bridge held 15 quarters. He had success by creating braces under the center of his bridge with spaghetti noodles. He then turned his into a working city bridge, with police boats (quarters) underneath, pedestrians (pennies on the sides of the bridge), and cars (more quarters) driving through the center of the bridge. The investigators (dimes) stood off to the side.

Mount Everest

Evan wanted to know how many people had climbed Mount Everest.
1924 ascents by 1300 climbers (successfully).
179 have died in their attempt.

Who Wrote Genesis?

The answer is: Bible scholars aren't 100% certain, but believe it was probably Moses.

Days of the Week

We worked on building a calendar today. Evan wanted to know how the days of the week got their names.

Here's what we found out:
In English, the days of the week come from either Norse or Germanic gods and goddesses.

Sunday: "Day of the Sun" going back to pagan sun worship rituals
Monday: "Day of the Moon"
Tuesday: "Tyr's Day," refers to Tyr, a god of combat and heroic glory in Norse mythology and Germanic paganism
Wednesday: The day of the Germanic god, Wodan, more commonly known as "Odin," who was the highest god in Norse mythology.
Thursday: Named for Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
Friday: Named for Frige, the Germanic goddess of beauty, who is a later incarnation of the Norse goddess Frigg.
Saturday: The only day of the week to retain its Roman origin in English, it is named after the Roman god Saturn.

If you look back at the Old English way of spelling most of these days of the week, you'll see the god or goddess' name in the word. Also, in many other languages, the days of the week mean different things, but are most often connected with Roman gods and goddesses.

The Food Chain

We were reading a book about the food chain at the Claude Moore nature center today. The kids wanted to know if Tigers had any predators. The answer is that tigers are apex predators. Say what? We learned a new term. Here it is:

Apex predators (also alpha predators, superpredators, or top-level predators) are predators that, as adults, are not normally preyed upon in the wild in significant parts of their range. Apex predator species are often at the end of long food chains, where they have a crucial role in maintaining the health of ecosystems.

Of course, this takes into account "the wild." Their only predator, we determined, is a human hunter.

Some questions from the car

Nicholas: Do rich people burp?

After reading a book about Barack Obama (Yes, they are reading one about John McCain, too!),
Nicholas leans over to Evan and says:

"Evan, I think he's really "Black Obama," but they call him Barack Obama."

tee hee