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Clocks, Kids, and General Relativity on Mt Rainier
- grinich 17y agoWhy is he still running Windows?
- DavidSJ 17y agoIt's good he didn't get pulled over.
- jorgem 17y agoYeah. Cops would have loved that. He'd be doing time. (sorry). Which would more than make up for the 20ns
- noonespecial 17y agoI know it was said in jest, and I know this ain't exactly Boston, but geeks do need to be mindful of this sort of thing. A bearded man in a minivan full of unrecognizable boxes and wires, the three largest of which have ominous red counting displays is going to trip the hero circuit on any passing nominally educated "authority". Worse still, using the word "atomic" anywhere in your explanation is practically a ticket to a very long and unpleasant trip through the system where you will get a new and terrible understanding of the concepts of ignorance and fear. I'm glad this worked out for him. The hotel employees (especially the one who actually went into his running car full of this stuff to get the keys and bring them to the front desk) must have been some kind of mellow. I would not be brave enough to try this stunt in todays climate.
- Allocator2008 17y agoThat is just really cool. We need more parents like that who can spend the time to teach their kids about general relativity. Seriously. Too often parents either ignore their kids or brainwash them with their own narrow minded cultural take on the world. Very rarely do the actual facts about the actual world get passed along. Maybe parents just rely on schools to do it, but any kind of passing along of enthusiasm about the natural world is highly commendable. Bravo.
- dxjones 17y agoYes, I agree it is cool for the Dad, and fun for the kids, but, umm, do you think these kids really learned general relativity? They'd have to be real brainiacs, considering their young age. Perhaps later in their education, they may be able to look back on their practical experience tagging along with Dad on his experiment and it may make more sense. I do agree that the kids may learn. ... not about general relativity in particular, but about doing experiments and the notion that ideas can be "tested" to see if they are really true or false.
- blhack 17y agoI think it is more about instilling in them the idea that science can be fun.
- vorador 17y agoWell, it doesn't look that fun. To show that science is fun, he should give them more "hands-on" experiences to do.
- blhack 17y agoUmm? Give kids a little bit more credit than that... The boys look like they're in 5th grade or so...the girl looks like she is probably in 3rd? They aren't infants, and their dad obviously works in this field. This was a great opportunity for them to see what dad does beyond sitting in a lab all day. When I was that age I would have been ecstatic to see what my dad did, doubly so if it had had something to do with science.
- cool-RR 17y agoAmazing. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to make an experiment on a similarly low budget to measure the time dilation due to velocity, instead of altitude?
- quizbiz 17y agoCan someone explain the significance? Sounds cool but I am at loss about the purpose and meaning.
- pavel_lishin 17y agoI, for one, am tremendously excited to see kids laying around on a couch and reading.