Eli 12.2: I didn't even get to all of it yesterday
DQ Reader My Mom e-mailed yesterday and said I'd forgotten to mention the most important part of last weekend, and she's right.Eli's coach has a hardhat that is given to the hardest working player on the team after a game. After the game on Sunday, Eli came out of the locker room wearing the hardhat. He was beaming, too--his teammates recognizing him meant as much as winning the game.
He wore it Monday morning before he left for school. And I'd show you a picture of him wearing it, but I've started so late today that he's already in bed.
So today, I picked him up to take him to hockey practice. I asked him if anything interesting happened to him today, and he said "This group called The Chemistry Circus came to school today, and they showed us all kinds of cool things about physics."
"Like what?" I asked.
"My favorite one was a demonstration about figure skaters," he said. "They put one kid at a time on this big disc, then had them hold 10-pound weights in their hands. They spun the disc with the person holding their hands out, then had them close their arms and their eyes."
"And they spun much faster when their arms were in close, right?"
"Right!" he said. "They spun crazy fast."
"So how long did people spin?"
"Most kids didn't even make one full revolution," he said, "because as soon as you lean a tiny bit off center, it's almost impossible to correct with your eyes closed. Emma made it two and a half turns because she's a dancer."
"Did you get to do it?" I asked.
"That's a funny story," he said, laughing. "Everyone was yelling for me because I played hockey--which is on ice, at least--so the person doing the demonstration called me. After he spun the disc, I closed my eyes and just tried to feel my balance. Then the disc started slowing down, and I thought I did something wrong."
"What happened?" I asked.
"It spun so long that it ran down," he said. "I was on it for at least twenty seconds, and the other kids said it was almost thirty revolutions."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah," he said, laughing. "The guy doing it said they'd been doing it for four years, and no one had ever done that before."
"What did it feel like?" I asked.
"Dizzy," he said. "When it stopped, I almost fell into a chair because I was so wobbly."
"Just another day in the life of a superfreak," I said, and he laughed.
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