Gift Suggestions for the Budding Physicist

I have all kinds of thoughts brewing around in my head: how the “God with us” message of the Christmas story is more meaningful to me right now than the “God saves us” part of it; how I love Christmas cards but haven’t sent any yet; how music restores the soul; how I wish my printer were working properly (so that I could send the Christmas cards); and more.

But I can’t formulate those thoughts coherently right now, and of course, there’s no guarantee that they should appear here.  So instead I will give you this wordly discussion I had the other day, in the hopes that you, like my son, will see how to aim high in your requests.

My son and I were talking about toys.  He said, “The slinky, for instance, is very interesting.” 

I said, “I find the slinky to be not so interesting.  It never works the way it is supposed to.” 

He said, “The slinky is very interesting.  It demonstrates lots of physics principles.  You could get me one for Christmas.  Or... maybe you could get me an elevator!  That would be great for physics experiments.”

Me: “An elevator with a scale in it?”

Son:  “Yeah!”