Baloon keep-up

If you've read any of my posts, you'll know that I harp a lot on patterns in the environment. Patterns allow us to make predictions and devise expectations about the world around us. But we need sufficient exposure to these patterns to develop our own understandings of them (sometimes called folk theories). Tonight I played a little game with my three-year-old and my one-year-old. The differences in their performance were telling about the differences in their experience.

We have an old air-filled balloon laying around the house. Both boys love baloons. So, we tossed it into the air, and tried to keep it aloft. The three-year-old very much enjoyed the game, and was quite adept at it. He likes to make up his own rules in games (like Calvin from the comic strip). He explained how each one of us had to hit it twice, or three times, and that the winner was the one who got it to land on the piano.

But, the little one, well, he was having trouble. He saw the balloon, and chased it. Every time it went up, he'd look around the wrong way. Where did it go? He was our valiant ball boy, though, retrieving it off the floor, whenever it landed.

The problem is that he hasn't had enough experience with flying things and gravity. The balloon behaves a bit differently from other objects he's spent a lot of time with. Most things when you throw them up, they fall down quickly. But the balloon seems to hover a bit, like Michael Jordan by the net. Balloons are only slightly heavier than air, and produce a great deal of drag, meaning ... let's just say Newton's prediction would not have been confirmed if he dropped a balloon and an apple from the tower.

So, my little 13-month old hasn't yet come up with appropriate predictions for the behavior of balloons, while the 45-month old has. For now, balloon motion is a wonderful stochastic event that he'll just have to study up on for a while.