A not-so-sick day

My dear Henry,

You engineered your way out of school today. You played "sick" and I let you because a kid at school who does not want to be in school is probably trouble. And of course, every kid has got to try playing sick a time or two. So instead of the many things I planned to do, I went with the goal of making the day as b-o-r-i-n-g as possible. A day of naps and quiet time will surely cure any temptation to do this again, right?

We succeeded until about 2 pm when I found a 6 volt battery. Oh dear. Insta-happiness. You promptly used it to make your very first light bulb.

It worked but the filament burnt out pretty quickly. (Thank you Thomas Edison for the 1,000 attempts it took to work through that problem!)

Burnt out filament sadness.

Fortunately for you (and unfortunately for my boredom plan), you found plenty of other things to engineer. You have moved past following circuit diagrams to making up your own inventions.

My very small engineer with his circuit tackle box

Is a 6V battery more powerful than a AA? What is the world's biggest battery? How can you tell if a battery will burn a motor out? How can you make a battery? How do rechargeable batteries work?

Your head is spinning with questions.

I look forward to helping you puzzle them out. But how about AFTER school next time, eh?

Love,
Mama