My Son, the Scientist

A few weeks back, my family was playing our standard dinner table game, which my mother purchased us. It's a small metal tin that contains several cards, and on each card is a game that can be played at the dinner table. For example, in some of them, you make noises and the other people have to guess what you were trying to sound like. In others you close your eyes and are given fruits and vegetables that you must identify by touch. Some cards have short stories which are read aloud and then discussed. It's a fun dinner-time activity.

Well, to get back to the narrative, a few weeks ago we were playing this game and the card told us to perform an experiment. We got some dirty pennies (3 dirty pennies, to be precise), placed them on a rag, then poured ketchup (or catsup - your call) onto them. We then waited for five minutes.

After five minutes, we wiped the ketchup off the pennies and ... voila, clean, shiny pennies. It was a really amazing trick, and one that I'd never personally witnessed. (If interested, you can have more Chemistry Fun with Pennies.)

Well, a few days ago,  my four-and-a-half year-old son found some dirty pennies and told me that we should clean them. I smiled and asked if he remembered how we did that, and he said we did. I asked him "What did we use to clean the pennies?'

His reply: "Three dirty pennies, ketchup, and five minutes."

The reason this story is so fascinating to me is that he remembered the "five minutes," and cited it as a necessary component of the process. He didn't realize it, of course, but he was being incredibly scientifically thorough. When you conduct an experiment, time must of course be taken into account.

In experiments, often the time is embedded in the steps, making it easy to overlook. It's part of the process, not part of the materials you need to gather together. Yet, in a way, you do need to plan for the necessary time for the experiment, just as you have to plan for the materials. In contrast, many recipes explicitly list the prep and cook time clearly along with the ingredients. Experiments would do well to follow a similar format.

In this era of instant gratification, I do sometimes wonder if we'll raise a generation that's okay with taking time to get results. My son, at least, knows that you've got to wait five minutes to clean pennies with ketchup ... which is, I suppose, a good start.