Stressed. All the children required help with their homework and it went from bad to worse. My 7 year old needed me to help him draw a Father Christmas picture, which was just about manageable. My daughter needed help translating Mandarin which I was completely unable to do and my son was stuck on a physics question:

A supermarket trolley of total mass 22kg is pushed up a ramp with a force of 14 N. The ramp is 5.5m long and raised 0.35 m. Take g = 10 N Kg -1.
a) Calculate (i) the work done by the shopper (ii) the gain in g.p.e. of the trolley.
b) If the speed of the trolley was 1.0 m s -1 at the bottom of the ramp, what is its speed at the top?

Obviously he knew that I couldn’t remotely help – what the f*ck are they talking about? I don’t understand though, how do they know that it was a shopper pushing the trolley?

As I put my 7 year old to bed I said “you’ll need to get up again, you haven’t done a wee”. “Yes I have”, he said, “I did it in the bath”.

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4 Comments
  • zoe
    December 6, 2007

    i’ve just found out that my next-door neighbour loves, simply loves maths and physics, two subjects that one of my daughters is having great difficulty with, and two of the six subjects that my son is having difficulty with (he’s a lazy sod). so yippee! i’ll send the two next door.

    have you thought of doing that?

  • A Mother's Place is in the Wrong
    December 6, 2007

    Weeing in the bath makes me smile, bless him! And on a grotty day – thanks. M xx

  • family affairs
    December 6, 2007

    what a very good idea – will send children up and down the road asking neighbours to help with physics homework x

  • zoe
    December 8, 2007

    lulu, if you live near any geeks, it’s highly possible that they are good at physics.