Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day! (You recognize the traditional Labor Day characters, right? Yeah, well, neither did I. But the kids really wanted them on the cake, so there they are.)


I realized today that I may have to outsource science education sooner than I expected. Travis's chemistry book, The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe, which we've been working at very sporadically, threw "electron clouds" at me today. The book is intended for grades 4-8, and the description states "no previous knowledge of chemistry is required." I was fine with the little pictures of protons & neutrons with little rings of electrons orbiting them, but the electron clouds baffle me entirely. When I look at electrons orbiting the nucleus in the drawing, I can see that the clever chemists have determined how many electrons each kind of atom has, and how many are in each ring. But if we start talking about electron clouds, the numbers start to seem a lot more vague. And I thought chemistry was going to be nice and precise. Travis's eyes glazed when I read today's lesson, and I couldn't explain a thing. I just hope that this is just an unimportant part of chemistry -- an extra -- sort of like the spare pieces that are always included in plumbing kits.