a piece of the action

A few weeks back Younger Daughter's class was studying space. I stopped in to give the 3rd and 4th graders a talk about what I do. That turned out to be good practice, for last week Elder Daughter reported that her geometry class was studying parallelograms. My software has milled something like a million parallelograms in the past decade. I contacted that teacher, she pointed out that she avoids homework over long weekends, so thanks to the presidents I spoke to the math classes during the past two days.

Showing a class pictures of myself inside the world's largest telescopes is fun. Handing the class objects to pass around, pieces which have been in the Keck telescopes, is fun. Presenting a piece of the Keck telescope to the teacher at the end of class is more fun. Showing a class the results of a life based on working with math -- the effects of that won't be known for years.

Younger Daughter and Elder Daughter were both in their classes while I spoke.

The immediate result from speaking to Younger Daughter's class manifested at the school skate night. In the adult race I came in second place, and I had to endure a challenge from one of the 4th graders insisting that I "should have cut her off". My thoughts were that my brother is the hockey player, and he's a goalie not a linesman.

The later result was the girls ruminating that I might show up at their schools to dance the morris. I heard the response to that -- "I would be absent that day."

Oh well, at least I'm good for some things in their sight.