I know it was said in jest, and I know this ain't exactly Boston, but geeks do need to be mindful of this sort of thing. A bearded man in a minivan full of unrecognizable boxes and wires, the three largest of which have ominous red counting displays is going to trip the hero circuit on any passing nominally educated "authority".
Worse still, using the word "atomic" anywhere in your explanation is practically a ticket to a very long and unpleasant trip through the system where you will get a new and terrible understanding of the concepts of ignorance and fear.
I'm glad this worked out for him. The hotel employees (especially the one who actually went into his running car full of this stuff to get the keys and bring them to the front desk) must have been some kind of mellow.
I would not be brave enough to try this stunt in todays climate.
Does anyone have a suggestion on how to make an experiment on a similarly low budget to measure the time dilation due to velocity, instead of altitude?
That is just really cool. We need more parents like that who can spend the time to teach their kids about general relativity. Seriously. Too often parents either ignore their kids or brainwash them with their own narrow minded cultural take on the world. Very rarely do the actual facts about the actual world get passed along. Maybe parents just rely on schools to do it, but any kind of passing along of enthusiasm about the natural world is highly commendable. Bravo.
Yes, I agree it is cool for the Dad, and fun for the kids, but, umm, do you think these kids really learned general relativity? They'd have to be real brainiacs, considering their young age. Perhaps later in their education, they may be able to look back on their practical experience tagging along with Dad on his experiment and it may make more sense.
I do agree that the kids may learn. ... not about general relativity in particular, but about doing experiments and the notion that ideas can be "tested" to see if they are really true or false.
"they may be able to look back on their practical experience tagging along with Dad on his experiment and it may make more sense."
I can say that has been the case for me personally. I was shown lots of cool stuff when I was a kid, I didn't completely understand it then, but I have been able to look back on past experiences to help me make sense of concepts I ran across again later.
At that age I think it's more about teaching them to identify themselves as scientists. I'm sure they didn't understand a lot of what was going on but they were aware they were participating in something cool with wires and digital readouts. They'll tell their friends at school about it and at that age other kids will start to identify them as science geeks. That will give them something to live up to and as they get older they will always have the story of that adventure to think about and talk about. It's very nice for the whole family.
The boys look like they're in 5th grade or so...the girl looks like she is probably in 3rd? They aren't infants, and their dad obviously works in this field. This was a great opportunity for them to see what dad does beyond sitting in a lab all day.
When I was that age I would have been ecstatic to see what my dad did, doubly so if it had had something to do with science.
I think this shows (and I'm probably wording this poorly) that all scientific facts can be verified. We (mankind) have built up this body of knowledge, and if you are determined enough you can validate each link of knowledge in that chain to determine the truth.
Knowing that a plane flies vs. knowing how it flies is a valuable thing indeed.
Kudos to this dad for encouraging curiosity in his children. All too often this trait is squelched.
I think they could comprehend at that young age that something weird is happening to the clocks. What would make a clock tick slower at one place than the other?
