This is so cool, so pretty, and even accurate!
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Tiffany Ard, the artist, has a great eye for children’s art, and there’s lots more like this on her site. And how cool would it be to have your kid growing up familiar with "The effect of gravity is inversely proportional to the distance squared", rather than something about faeries or elves? I love fantasy as much as the next person, but there is still romance and wonder and coolness in the world, even when you know the rules it runs by.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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April 8th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Err… Phil, you’ve misspelled fairies.
April 8th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
‘Faerie’ is a valid spelling.
And my cynicism was held at bay by the pretty colours.
Also, ‘colours’ is a valid spelling.
; )
April 8th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
@ Azdak,
So it is! “Faeries” is archaic, according to the OED. My apologies, Phil.
April 8th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
You don’t think that they fundies would get their skivvies in a bundle over “Pat Schrodinger’s Kitty”, do you? (It’s under the “Books for tiny nerds” section at the link in the post.)
April 8th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
@IVAN3MAN
Astronomers are always looking into the past!
April 8th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Gee, Phil, why didn’t you put in the one with the squid?
April 8th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Those are some beautiful watercolors. Not only scientific, but also very well done.
(Also, as a preschooler, I would have loved the books and cards, even if I would had to have my-dad-the-chemist explain a lot of them. We had a pop-up book about astronomy that had things like stellar life cycles and cosmology and was written for a much more advanced audience than preschool-me, and it was one of my favorite books to puzzle through.)
April 8th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I love these!
However, while we’re all in a nitpicking mood, the “rainbows” chart says “continual” where it should say “continuous”
April 8th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I need to send this to my daughter! She’ll love it!
April 8th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
And under Well, Technically…, “Cretaceous” is spelled “Cretacious” although it is correct on the actual artwork.
April 8th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
At least, they didn’t go with C’eci n’est pas une brontosaurus
April 8th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Holy smoke! These are adorable!
April 8th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
WANT
April 8th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Your new tattoo design found?
April 8th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
@ hheb09′1 :
At least, they didn’t go with C’eci n’est pas une brontosaurus.
As a non-french speaker who only recognises the word brontosaurus inall that can I just say : What?
Pardon? Je ne non-comprehendez! (Scratches head.)
(That’s meant to mean “I don’t understand …” but I don’t understand whether it does or not or even whether its french or spanish so .. )
April 8th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Holy Smoke! Ceci n’est pas une pipe either.
Keeping the obscure references going…
April 8th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Adorable!
But again, I have to ask. Why does it have to be one or this other–this rather than fairies? Why not both?
April 8th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Oh also, Mr. Sardines, I think that says ,”This is not a turtle.” Which i guess means either:
This is not a turtle, it is a picture of a turtle.
or
This is not a turtle, it’s a tortoise.
April 8th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
The real question is why is it C’eci and not Ceci in C’eci n’est pas une brontosaurus?
April 8th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I am SO in love with these – the art reminds me of Charles Vess and his work on Neil Gaiman’s Blueberry Girl. I can’t wait to put these on my future child’s walls.
April 9th, 2009 at 4:02 am
I think I found a mistake. In Nerdy Baby 1 2 3s the picture says “one electron in a hydrogen molecule,” but a hydrogen molecule has two electrons. The picture is of a single hydrogen atom with its one electron.
April 9th, 2009 at 5:49 am
It’s a nice idea, but the artwork leaves something to be desired. (For example, that kid’s legs appear to be something on the order of four or five feet long.
April 9th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Magnus, you are correct a hydrogen MOLECULE has two electrons a hydrogen ATOM has one!
April 9th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Actually the mistake would be calling Hydrogen a “molecule.” It is an atom and yes it can have 1, 2, etc. or no electrons, depending on a whole host of factors relating to the nature of the hydrogen.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:42 am
hmmm…nitpick! isn’t the moon in the picture above rather large? shouldn’t it only be 1/2 a degree wide?
April 9th, 2009 at 9:19 am
There was an amusing 1951 science fiction story called “Nice Girl With Five Husbands” by Fritz Leiber. A man is transported into the future. The punch line is that he doesn’t realize that the seemingly nonsensical rhyme the little girl is skipping rope to is actually a mnemonic for Einstein’s relativity theory.
The idea is that you can’t start too early teaching science to young children.
April 9th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
@rob: How do you know it isn’t half a degree wide? It could be a very long telephoto lens.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
That’s a pretty cool way of teaching children science! I just worte a blog post on mine about making science fun through interesting experiments
.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Just added a link to my post about this post of yours
. Check out, http://watchful-eyes-thoughtful-mind.blogspot.com/2009/04/making-science-fun.html
April 10th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Good art is the art that makes you feel an emotion. Whether it be love or hate, if it’s good art you should feel something. If you’re indifferent to the piece then ,to you, it is not good art. Of course any piece of art work will cause different reactions to different people. This is the subjectivity of art.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
These are wonderful
August 11th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Re: Hydrogen! You are right, it is a typo! Fixed on the next reprint. I also made the covalent bonds image clearer.
And Re the other stuff: It’s true that my drawing style is rather hit-and-run these days. My work was much more detailed and realistic before I had kids but now I’m lucky if I get 10 minutes to paint a day. But! In this case, the little girl is standing in the shallow water on the beach — it’s easier to see in the print, but that’s her foot sticking out of the water on the left. If you can’t tell that, yeah… the legs look freakishly long.
And the moon only *appears* to be huge because it’s close to the horizon.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
[...] it is bound to make science fun for you! And just as I finished writing this post, I came across this blog post by BadAstronomer Phil Plait about an artist who incorporates science in her paintings for [...]