I happened to stumble on a page after my own heart: the science of fairy tales. It’s a cute diversion for a few minutes, but unfortunately, it’s a bit lacking. It only tackles three fairy tales, for one thing. The Little Mermaid one is a stretch (talking about how sound can be captured), though the flying carpet story is fun.
This could be a good starting point for a site teaching science to kids, in fact. Can you spin straw into gold? No, but stars that explode make gold out of other elements. Can beans grow overnight into a stalk that can reach the clouds? No, but kudzu grows a foot a day (I grew up near houses engulfed in that evil ivy), and giants can only get so big before their bones can’t support their weight. And as far as the Emperor’s New Clothes goes… that one can be taught as is. It’s a perfect example of critical thinking in action.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Does it tackle the Book of Genesis?
February 20th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
When I watch a movie or TV show that requires me to suspend belief, I find myself wondering what principles could be used to make a fantastic thing in the movie happen. Some things require that I just let it go (such as Doctor Who) but usually in those cases I don’t mind. But other things, such as the awful trash that Armageddon is, I just shake my head in disgust.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
[...] Cat Aboudara wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
February 20th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
True, the article on fairy creatures is fun for 5 minutes, but I have spent at least the last 40 minutes on the site as a whole and plan to go back to it. Thank you for pointing it out! I am going to recommend it to my kids.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
“udzu grows a foot a day” so does genetically improved eucalyp trees in brasil. plantations ready to harvest in 3-4 years
February 20th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Now we just need to turn kudzu (and perhaps Russian sage) into biodiesel and we’re in business. Why bother with turning food crops like corn or sugar into ethanol when we can use garbage plants?
As far as the Emperor’s New Clothes, there has already been a blog dedicated to that fairy tale. It uses character names like Emperor Griffin, Viceroy Hanley, Queen Marsha, and so on, and while it isn’t called thusly, the blog could have been entitled “the Emperor’s New Rocket”.
February 20th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Along these lines I just finished reading “Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics”, sort of a “Bad Astronomy” for the physics and engineering crowd. Not quite as lucid as Phil’s prose, but a great read. Simple kinematic equations included, but as sidebars, so you can skip them if you want. Be forewarned (or is that “forwarned”
), this book could have used another pass by an editor to catch numerous minor and one major mistake.
- Jack
February 20th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Stories about spinning straw into gold are based on the rise of flax cultivation for making linen in 12th & 13th century Europe. Young women, especially, earned money for marriage by spinning straw, retted flax, into linen thread which they sold for money. Women who never married, but continued to earn a living by spinning, were called spinsters, a word still in use. The association of the distaff sex and spinning is much older than this in Europe, but before then, it was not straw that was spun.
Europe was undergoing rapid change back then. Chimneys were in general use, universities were being founded, and society was urbanizing and monetizing. The great assarts were opening the Baltic and the reopened silk route was bring in new tales and luxuries. Despite this, it was still possible to find pockets of subsistence agriculture, people for whom time seemed to have stopped. Some of them were old; some of them were dotty; but all of them were at least a bit odd, much like people without internet access today. Needless to say, odd stories were told of encounters in the woods.
You can see where this is going, and you have heard the story before. It involved a young woman who had a reputation for being able to spin straw into gold. A local prince took this claim literally, and demanded proof. The young lady, recognizing an opportunity, placed her first born child on the line. Needless to say, the story involved fertility, gold, straw, and a particular member of the forgotten tribe. I won’t give you his name, but, as I said, you have heard this story before.
Who says there is no science in fairy tales. This one was a high tech, for its day, cautionary tale.
(The Argosy, the story of the introduction of sheep suitable for wool production into Europe from Anatolian highlands, is more of a guy story than this one. There is often some science in these old tales if you are willing to look for it).
February 21st, 2008 at 11:39 am
Phil,
You’re right on it being a great way to teach kids. Gives them a fun story to wrap their heads around. And you have to admit, they did a reasonably job with the Rapunzel section.
Cheers,
Bagheera
February 21st, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I gotta resist the flying carpet one. While they addressed how a thin, lightweight carpet might be made to fly, they neglected the effect of adding a passenger, the whole point of the flying carpet.
I’ll give them a good assessment of Rapunzel and the use of hair as a rope. I think it’s at least creative to use the spell of silence to discuss how to create a zone of silence, though the connection to the tale is very slim. (I mean, if the witch encased Ariel in a material to keep her silent, wouldn’t that also keep her trapped from walking around, touching people, etc? Why not just lock her in a box?)
So a carpet could fly, with enough wind, and could be directed by fluttering in just the right way. But “enough wind” translates into hurricane speeds. Hope that carpet has seat belts. And a windscreen.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:39 am
Also, the air in The Land of Oz has much less water vapor in it than any place on Earth, because otherwise the wicked witch would melt just by breathing.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:29 am
KaiYeves posts:
[[Also, the air in The Land of Oz has much less water vapor in it than any place on Earth, because otherwise the wicked witch would melt just by breathing.]]
Remember that water vapor is gaseous. Perhaps witches can only be dissolved by large amounts of liquid water in direct contact with the skin. A witch’s skin probably has some evolved mechanism for dealing with a certain amount of water vapor in the air.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 am
Dorothy: We threw water on her, and she melted.
Oz: Oh, you liquidated her, eh? Very resourceful.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Yep, more examples would have been better.
Fantasy also isn’t _science_ fiction where something a bit more plausible than just magic or wishes (even if just techno-babble) is (usually) used to base stories on.
That said, still an interesting site & thanks for the link to it.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:36 am
The Little Mermaid and wave bending were a bit too much. It should have been more about how marine mammals communicated with high pitched sonar i.e. the beautiful singing voice. So perhaps the witch was a ENT doctor (as well as a feet transplant surgeon) and she might have paralysed the mermaid’s vocal chords. An expression of true love could have caused an increase of adrenaline which could have cleared her throat.
In fact, in one of the many versions of Snow White, a piece of the apple was stuck in her throat, and was dislodged when the prince tried to move her, a veiled reference to the Heimlich maneuver, in the same way, a kiss is refering to CPR….