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Turning a Nail Polish Disaster Into a Teachable Math Moment
theodp writes: In The Spiral of Splatter, SAS's Rick Wicklin writes that his daughter's nail polish spill may have created quite a mess, but at least it presented a teachable math moment: "'Daddy, help! Help me! Come quick!' I heard my daughter's screams from the upstairs bathroom and bounded up the stairs two at a time. Was she hurt? Bleeding? Was the toilet overflowing? When I arrived in the doorway, she pointed at the wall and at the floor. The wall was splattered with black nail polish. On the floor laid a broken bottle in an expanding pool of black ooze. 'It slipped,' she sobbed. As a parent, I know that there are times when I should not raise my voice. I knew intellectually that this was one of those times. But staring at that wall, seeing what I was seeing, I could not prevent myself from yelling. 'Oh my goodness!' I exclaimed. 'Is that a logarithmic spiral?'" So, got any memorable teachable math moments you've experienced either as a kid or adult? Yes, Cheerios Math counts!
As much of life does, this reminds me of a Far Side cartoon where a boy is sitting in front of a chalk board as his father writes equations on it, and to the right there is a broken window. To paraphrase the caption, 'Of all punishments Jimmy most hated his father's physics lectures.'
Not necessarily. Any child who has a parent who would immediately think 'is that a logarithmic spiral' rather than 'how in the hell am I going to clean this mess up and how much is it going to cost me' is pretty much assured to wind up really fucked up.
Really? That's how you define bad parenting? A parent that's excited about a learning opportunity after a messy accident rather than being upset about something that a few dollars of touchup paint can cover over?
Some parents have literally killed children over far less, this parent gets an A++ in my book.