23 August 2012

All About Emperor

After seeing several physicians over the course of the years, I finally found one that agreed with me that something was wrong with Emperor's legs.  See that lump near the couch seam?  That is evidence of his "fibular abnormality."  I googled it and um, I guess Emperor doesn't have as much of a "fibular abnormality" as other people do, but it's bad enough that he doesn't quiiiiiite walk correctly, or run well.  There is nothing you can do about it, the doctor said, and he will have it forever.  He has sort of a strange walk and I feel badly for him because he will never be a college athlete, win running races and so on.

So when we got home I tried to sit down and talk to Emperor and process his feelings about this news.  He told me that he was very busy with his science, but he can make me feel better some other time. Here he is goofing off for the camera with "lehhhh" sound effect.  He is not too traumatized, I guess.

In other news, Emperor was supposed to make some sort of spaghetti and marshmallow structure and test it against an "earthquake" that you make yourself in science class.  Here is his diagram of what his building ought to look like.

 Even with multiple noodles, they'd either break or sag as you see here.

Why can't our experiments turn out just like in the textbooks?  They just never do.  We also did the experiment of hanging a paper cup from a spaghetti noodle and seeing how many pennies could go into the cup.  It really depends upon how close together you place the chairs that the noodle is balancing upon.  Really.  Put the chairs closer together, and the noodle holds more weight.  Further apart, and the noodle snaps under fewer pennies.  I feel like instructing Emperor to write "it depends on a lot of things" as an answer to every science experiment question.

13 comments:

  1. I dunno.... I have bumps below my knees and I was a super jock in college (admittedly in a strange sport). Interesting spaghetti model .. There is an iPad game like this .. quite a challenge!

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  2. Isn't that the way kids are though--we get all worried and they are fine. I'm glad I'm not the only one. :-)

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    1. Yep. Maybe they don't fully understand, or maybe they do and it's just not as important to them/God protects them somehow.

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  3. I'm glad Emperor is not 'traumatised' by the new information!
    The noodle/marshmallow experiment is cool!

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  4. That looks like a fun experiment, but you are so right, they never come out the way they do in the books! We made rock candy three times and each time our string was covered in slime rather than the cool crystals that the book showed. We even tried different seasons to see if humidity was a factor. Nope, we just are never going to be Willy Wonka. :/

    I have never seen lumps near the knee like that....did they say what causes them?

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    1. No, he didn't say what caused it, but Emperor has always had problems with his legs and I felt no one listened! It's bad enough to be quite noticeable but not enough that I have fielded questions from other parents.

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  5. For the experiment to work, you need to buy thicker spaghetti. Out here in Aus. there is spaghetti available that is almost pencil thickness, look for that in your supermarket, it should support marshmallows quite well.
    I'm astonished that prior physicians didn't see Emperor's knee has a problem! In that photo it's very obvious. Are they sure there is nothing that can be done about it?

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    1. Yeah, can you believe he doesn't even walk properly and the other doctors did not notice?? Kid is 11 now. You'd think.

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  6. That is why science is so hard for me. I can barely pop in a pizza without burning it. So, science experiments are tough. One thing that has helped me is to live the science we read about (we have done things like crack Morse code and build a telegraph). I have more success with those sorts of things.

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    1. See but the dots and dashes, I'd get mixed up if I missed hearing one or then the dots and dashes are all befuddled and there is no straightening it out. Good thing the world does not depend on me for these things.

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  7. I googled fibular abnormality and the first picture that came up was Emperor's Knee...

    I don't know what to tell you about your experiment. Right now our science is all about observation and measuring.

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Non-troll comments always welcome! :)

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