Expectations

Although we've had our fair share of "dud" experiments, some experiments, albeit technically successful, don't land with the jr. scientists. It seems that there is what I can only refer to as an expectation gap. The experiments that have the biggest wow factor tend to be those that defy expectations. I suspect this is why bubbles are so fascinating to young children, and for adults it takes the bubble-suspended-in-space experiment to make bubbles cool. Likewise, the realm of possible is considerably smaller for adults, and some things that are expectation-defying for adults are just normal occurrences for kids. The other night Jr. Scientist A, myself, friend-of-the-lab David, and visiting Jr. Scientist S went to a mars rover landing party. As the rover landed on mars and sent back the first photos, the adults made a valiant effort to convince the kids that this was a big deal and really cool. The excitement of the moment was somewhat lost on the jr. scientists, and I suspect that the muted reaction was related to Jr. Scientist A's question to me earlier that day asking if we could go to mars the next day. I guess when making a day trip to mars is part of your normal expectations, seeing a grainy snapshot from the red planet just isn't that exciting.