Never too young
Today was the start of term at RCNUWC. Can't complain after 10 weeks of holidays. We always start with a week of staff meetings so a nice easy run in. The students arrive this weekend then I'm off to Singapore for 3 days to run a workshop on ICT. I tend to travel more in the term time than holidays.
During coffee break I was watching this little girl, the daughter of a member of staff, playing with her milk bottle in the staff room. We put it on the table cloth then she got it by pulling the cloth towards her. After a while playing this game we realised that maybe its not a good idea to teach small children to pull table cloths. But hey, she's not my daughter. I once taught my neighbours little boy to put stones in shoes. His parents always wondered why they always had stones in their shoes, until I resolved the conundrum some years later recounting the story at a dinner party.
The bottle on the table cloth could be an interesting EE or IA design topic. If you pull the cloth fast enough the bottle will stay where it is. If the bottle is heavy it will have more inertia so the cloth should slip out more easily. Lots of variables to invetigate. Frictional properties of the cloth, mass of the bottle, surface area of the bottles bottom etc. Interesting as this is I decided not to try explaining this to the little girl.