Perhaps thinking about STEM education is warping my mind, since I found myself a few days ago discussing with my 7-year-old how the Empire in the Star Wars movies was generally inept at engineering, building fragile Death Stars and large walking vehicles that are easily tripped.
K. has apparently decided to use engineering for good, and worked a bit on making a paper R2D2. Having made a 8 inch diameter disk for the head, he asked me how long the rectangle should be to make the cylindrical body out of. Pi to the rescue! I told him it was the number “pi” times the diameter of the circle, and that pi was about 3.1. He pointed out that pi is 3.14159. Anyway, he measured the diameter, made his rectangle, and here’s R2D2:
Meanwhile, S. explored gravity:
This is, of course, a fairly fluffy post. I’ll be out for a week; we’ll see what insights emerge…
The Eighteenth Elephant 
