iggyschool

The last two weeks really got away from me. Recovering from our wonderful 10 day/1500 miles driven holiday vacation and then another 8 days out of the house, refugees from the gas leak, has taken me longer than I thought it would! I am so behind. We still have our Christmas (fake) tree up!

The week after we got back into the house was spent unpacking and getting back into our routines. Last week was spent fighting off some sort of cold/flu/crud that has been going around. None of us was terribly sick, but we all felt tired and crummy and took naps (when the 7 year old boy takes a nap, you know he's fighting something off!).

We joined the fun youngschoolers for a tour of The Oklahoman, the newspaper that has been printing the news in Oklahoma City for more than one hundred years. We saw the pressroom and the printing room, the giant rolls of paper, the plates used to print the paper (now laser etched). We smelled the oily smell of the ink - giant green metal barrels of ink. The Oklahoman has a very nice online version, but this isn't a city full of Nooks and Kindles and I don't imagine it will be very soon. The Oklahoman might end up being one of the last true, print version newspapers at some point.

After reading the Basher periodic table book, Iggy asked me some questions about why certain elements that our bodies don't naturally need (like helium) don't harm our bodies, while others (like mercury) do. I don't know very much about chemistry and I can say that, even though I took it in High School, I have NEVER really understood it. I went looking for a book like A Brief History of Everything - something entertaining, sciencey enough, but plebe enough for a brain like mine. And I found it. The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean! A wonderful book! Totally engaging and funny. And full of enough science that I now (sorta) understand more chemistry and physics than I knew before, but gossipy enough that I stayed engaged and not frightened of the subject matter.

I can't answer his question - sounds like something he'll need to ask a real chemist, but it pleased me that I can support him in his interests by being interested myself.