Ben and Fluid "Damics"

One afternoon at lunch, Ben was taking a big drink from his cup.  It was the kind of cup with the lid and straw.  (We are slowly graduating from sippy cups to regular cups.  I don't trust him with open cups right now.)  He took a big drink, then slowly let the juice back down into the cup, then took a big drink and finally swallowed it all.

I was watching him, wondering what he was thinking about, when suddenly he looks up and says:

"Mom, how come when I suck the drink up my straw, it goes really fast up the straw, but it goes down really slow in the cup?"

Dark brown eyes with their long curly lashes, staring at me expectantly.  He's adorable.

Huh?

This was not what I was expecting from my adorable four-year-old.

And I knew it was a science-y type question, and I am not a scientist.  I studied French, and English Literature.  I could tell him what cup, straw, and drink were in French, but I was not up on my fluid dynamics and volume displacement theories.

So I told him that I didn't know, and that we should ask Daddy about it that night at dinner.  Well, we forgot about it.  Some time later (several days, I am not sure), he asked the same question again at lunch time, and again I told him that I didn't know, and that we needed to ask Daddy about it.

Finally, a few nights ago at dinner, Ben remembered to ask his question.  Bryan was surprised, and asked him if he'd been watching a show that talked about that (Ben likes Sid the Science Kid and sometimes they talk about stuff like that in the show), and Ben said no, he just saw it happening in his cup.

So Bryan began to pontificate about the workings of fluid dynamics, and actually did a good job (I thought, anyway) of breaking it down in four-year-old terms.  Ben seems to understand, gets excited about it, and true to form, suddenly interrupts his father.

"DAD!" (he's very emphatic when he interrupts) "Dad! Can you talk about the damics part now?"  (as if to say, "I'm done with all this fluid stuff, get to the good part about damics!")

With no time to think, I burst out laughing.  Ben realizes he's said something funny, so he repeats himself.

We try to get him to say "dy-nam-ics"...the best he can do is "dy-man-ics".  Good enough.

So if Ben ever tries to tell you how Dad taught him all about damics, or dymanics, you'll know where he got it from.