Being a knowledgeable parent

An Article by our developer Nalini. An amazing mom, fantastic educator and great friend.  

In this blog article, I recount a few experiences with my son.

When my son was around 7 to 8 months, he used to crawl his way around.

One day, I had taken him with me to my friend’s place and we were sitting on the floor chatting. Suddenly I noticed my son crawling to a toy vehicle which had 3 wheels and the 4^th wheel was missing. He looked around and then took a Vicks bottle lid which is also circle in shape with diameter similar to that of the wheel and tried to fit it in place of the missing wheel.

As he grew, I watched him get fidgety to sit in one place and glowing when he meddles with things around. He used to watch with absolute calmness when a mason or a carpenter or a plumber works.

As a family, we provided him as much space as possible. Of course we had to stretch ourselves to the core for it.

Just a few days back, he is all of 12 years old now and he was telling me about some motors (not the big ones, but those we got him for his projects) that he was working with and he was telling me the similarities and difference of two and then the topic moved to a particular motor which was encased in a plastic case. He told me that it gave high power o/p and also low rpm (rotations per minute). And then he explained to me how the low rpm was achieved with the help of gears.

Well, it got me thinking “why should we spend all the energy to bolster the motor and then spend effort to lower the rpm?”

I put this question this question to the rest of the family which includes engineers. They enriched my knowledge on how if rpm is not reduced, centrifugal force will play havoc and also the wear and tear.

I also understood that high rpm was needed to generate the magnetic field and hence power.

And also how modern technology is working on achieving better efficiency.

Later, when I discussed with my son, he was telling me if the rpm of the motor in the grinder is not reduced, the dosa batter would be thrown out and was demonstrating by waving his hands.

On further discussion, he used the word “centrifugal force”.

Viola ! That’s from my side as a knowledgeable parent. Do post your experiences and comments.