Remember Alan Alda’s quest to explain what a flame is so an 11-year-old would understand? He’s polled hundreds of elementary-school kids and is asking another question now. What is time?:
This year we asked kids to suggest questions. Many around the country asked: “What is time?” Some used exactly those words and others asked things like: How do you make a time machine? Why can’t you go back in time? Is time an arrow? Is it a wave? How can you tell what time it is without looking at a clock? Can we transcend space and time? How many dimensions are there? How do we age? How did time begin?
Sydney Allison (top left), 11, a sixth-grader in Reno, Nev., and Simon O’Rourke (bottom left), 10, a fourth-grader in Mamaroneck, N.Y., were selected to represent these questioners. Simon explained his idea of time this way: “The people who thought of time did it just to explain movements, like a year is just the movement of the earth around the sun, and a day is just the movement of the earth. And that’s what I think time might be. That’s the best I can explain it.”
You have to be some flavor of scientist (or science-worker) to enter, and you’ve got until March 1, 2013.
And your answer will be judged first for scientific accuracy… and then by hundreds of 11-year-olds, who really want to understand.
Here’s the challenge to scientists:
The Challenge to Scientists from Stony Brook School of Journalism on Vimeo.