I love watching Mythbusters with my kids because it is so educational. Frequently we have to pause the show to have long conversations about electricity or weather or firearms or water currents. The show exposes gaps in the kids’ knowledge of basic physics and culture. I have to think fast and search my brain to help fill those gaps. It is not relaxing, but it is fun.
Watching Mythbusters is also concerning because it is educational. I sometimes listen with alarm after the show is over, when my kids start imagining how they would perform tests on various myths around the house. They long for a giant whirlpool of their very own so that they float boats in it and watch the boats sink. Then the light of inspiration hits as they realize that we possess three ready-made whirlpools in our toilets. Then we have an extensive discussion about why flushing boats down the toilet is a Very Bad Idea. This leads to a discussion of how plumbing works and why toilets clog. Which then leads to the story of when toddler Link managed to wedge a chunk of concrete into the ubend of a toilet so securely that the only way to remove it was to smash the toilet open and buy a new toilet. I think I’ve got them convinced not to experiment with the toilets, but I’ll be watching for the next few weeks just in case.
Ducky go down the hoooollllee…
We LOVE Mythbusters at our house too. Thank goodness for Tivo. We have about 10 episodes in our queue, that and Dirty Jobs. Both are great for educational stuff and my kids are constantly coming up with “new myths” to test, thankfully none of them have involved the toilet yet. 🙂
paper boats?
And now, for something completely different…
On a subtly different-but-similar vein – have you seen http://people.morehead-st.edu/fs/w.willis/eighthgrade.html ?? Delightfully difficult and thought-provoking!
-John
…never to return. 🙂
We may have to take a look at Dirty Jobs once we’ve run out of Mythbusters.
That would probably work. But I don’t know that I’ll mention it to the kids because once I open the door on empirical testing of toilets, I doubt they’ll stop with paper.