Light bulbs
Today i caught myself talking about flourescent light bulbs to one of the kids at work. I find it fascinating how they work -- they're a glass tube filled with some kind of gas that gives off ultraviolet light (the kind that blacklights emit) when electricity is zapped through it. There's electrodes on each end, and there's a coating on the inside of the glass tube that gets all excited and shines white (whitish, really, with greenish and ultravioletish overtones) light when hit by ultraviolet light.So this kid who's between the ages of 14 and 17 (i'm actually not sure, but if i did remember, i wouldn't be allowed to say) was looking at me with this kind of blank expression. It was sweet. That's the same look i get from Houston sometimes. But Houston does know how incandescent light bulbs work, with the tungsten filament and electricity getting it so hot that it makes light... And Houston can tell you what the wire inside a light bulb is called, why it lights up, but probably not that it's made of tungsten.
But is that knowledge important? That's one of the questions Karen is asking when thinking about homeschooling. Is just any old knowledge -- like the fact that insects and spiders have exoskeletons and mammals have endoskeletons and worms don't have any kind of skeleton -- good enough? Or should we be teaching the same stuff they teach in kindergarden and early gradeschool? Like... um... letters and colors and basic number concepts? But wait, Houston already knows all that. I caught myself thinking about teaching Houston about parabolas. I am reading Gravity's Rainbow, after all... nearly done!!!