Brain Ache

It's official.  You loose brain cells when you give birth.  I used to be able to follow a scientific argument.  I know that because I have 3 science A levels but when my son talks science at me I just want to stick my fingers in my ears, sing, "la, la, la di da." and think of easier things.  A few weeks ago we went to Leicester to visit my daughter.  It was just me and him in the car and he discovered his voice.  At first I thought he was making things up but then a few facts floated back into my Swiss-cheese brain and I realised that he just knew much more than me.  He knew that space is a vacuum and that just baffled me.  I don't get how there can be stuff in a vacuum and I know there are stars - I can see them.  Then I was treated to an explanation about different wave lengths and how tiny gamma rays are (I hope I've remembered that right) and I was a bit confused because I thought gamma rays were only to be found in Science Fiction guns.  He bamboozled me with a whole load of numbers too.  He said that the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s2 (I can't work out how to do the little up number thing on this blogger app) and when I said I though it was 6.62 x 10 to the power of something he told me that I was talking about Planck's constant, which is the other bit of the equation I need to know for working out wavelengths.  By the time we got home my head was throbbing and I needed to go and lie down in a darkened room.

I had also promised him that we would visit the National Space Centre next time we went to Leicester, so you can imagine my trepidation when we decided to go again this weekend.  The Long Suffering Husband took our daughter to see Skyfall, while I prepared to put my mush of a brain through another scientific workout.  

I shouldn't have worried, though.  Museums are designed for the brainless.  They are set out so that even small children can understand things. The National Space Centre is very good for this.  There are loads of buttons to push, loads of games to play and loads of videos to watch.  There was even a display that explained the wavelength thing in a way that even I could understand.  

I was quite excited to go and see the space suit that Laika, the first dog in space (probably the only dog in space) wore until we watched a video that explained how she had been a stray who had been strapped into the capsule for 3 whole days before lift off and how she had died of dehydration quite soon into the flight.  Our dog can't cope without going out for a wee and a sniff for 3 hours and so we felt so sorry for her that we couldn't go and look at the suit.  I also learnt things I didn't really want to know about the Americans protection of Nazi V2 Scientists and I realised that I had mis-remembered something.  I thought there had only been one moon landing; the famous one, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," but there were loads (well, six).  I had thought I had watched the first moon landing on TV at my Nan's house one Saturday (with milk blancmange for tea) but that didn't make much sense because I was only 3 at the time and the first moon landing was at 2am UK time.  But now I know it was in 1971 because I remember a spaceman hitting a golf ball.  

My favourite part was the Clanger.  I loved the Clangers and their wonderful flutey language.

I learned that I can't read in my head without moving my lips, when we tried to read the weather report for 2085.  I learned that you would die if you only took chocolate rations on a spaceship.  I learned that I'm not the most stupid person around, when I heard a teenage girl ask her dad if this was, "the real moon?"

To be fair, when I looked at the other side of it, I realised that it was a casing display for a piece of moon rock, so maybe she wasn't  being quite as silly as she sounded.

I also learnt that museums make the best soup.  I will be trying to make a spicy parsnip and coconut soup myself very soon.