Good morning, Henry,  it's Friday April 9th 2010.
At this moment, for me, you are a tiny, tiny baby.
However, I am assuming that you will watch this video when you are a little bit older.
Let's just be honest here, your dad, my brother, not so good at the science stuff
and he is concerned that you're going to be a very curious little boy
and you're gonna ask all kinds of questions that John just won't be able to answer.
Luckily for you,
I am smart in the ways that your dad is stupid.
So we wanted to preemptively answer some of the questions
that you might have about the world.
In this video, you are going to be portrayed by me
wearing this hat.
What are rainbows?
Well, Henry, white light is actually not just white;
it's a bunch of different colors all mashed together.
And when light goes through water droplets,
those different colors break apart
and the different parts of white light are in fact,
the colors that you see
as a rainbow.
Why is the sky blue?
Just like I said before,
the sun's light is made up of lots of different parts
and those parts have different properties and react differently to different stuff,
so when blue light hits oxygen and nitrogen, it bounces all around in the atmosphere.
And that
is why when you look up,
the sky looks blue.
How does the internet work?
Well Henry,
your brother and I make videos and we upload them onto a site called YouTube
and then people watch them and sometimes we get emailed.
Beyond that I really have no idea.
Where does the sun go at night?
We live on a big ball called the Earth.
It's a humongous ball and because I am good at science and not sports,
we're going to represent this ball
with Obi-Wan Kenobi's head.
It spins.
The sun is also a ball.
But let's just throw down and say that Obi-Wan's lightsaber is the sun.
The sun is here, always staying in the same position.
Whereas Obi-Wan Kenobi's head is spinning.
So if we're on Obi-Wan Kenobi's face here,
then right now
we are in the sun's light.
But as he spins around
now,
we are not in the sun's light,
but the sun is still always there.
How do clouds stay up in the sky?
Clouds are actually made up of really, really tiny droplets of water.
Sometimes when a drop of water gets big enough,
it falls out of the sky
and that is what rain is,
but most of the time, the droplets of water are so small
that they just get blown around by air currents,
staying up in the sky like a feather,
like a really, really light feather.
Where do hamburgers come from?
Well Henry,
baby cows are kidnapped from their mommies at a very young age
and then shipped off to confined animal feeding operations.
And then, after they get big and fat,
we kill them and grind up their body parts
and then eat them.
'Cause it's delicious.
Where do babies come from?
Um well....
when a male member of a species
loves a female member of the same species
he...
deposits his uniflageller haploid gamete on top of her much larger stationary haploid gamete.
Why don't trees move?
Um I-
because I guess they don't have anywhere to go.
Why is my hair dark?
Because your mommy's genes were stronger than your daddy's genes.
Why is my daddy screaming to video cameras?
Because he's talking to me!
Ow! Why does fire hurt?
Fire hurts because it's made up mostly of energy
and when energy enters you, it can be pleasant like standing in the sunshiny day,
but if it's too much, energy will actually start to break down the bonds
that make up the chemicals that make up your hands.
That's right, your hands are made of chemicals.
And when that happens, your body is like, "No! Make that stop!"
and so it tells you that there's something wrong,
which is why we feel pain.
Why is my daddy's hair puffy?
Ah because he's a little bit stressed out right now, but I'm sure that it has nothing to do with you.
What is a horcrux?
Young man, where did you hear that word?
How do planes stay up?
Airplanes' wings are flat on the bottom and curved on the top
and when that shape moves very fast through the air,
what happens is the air across the top has to travel faster than the air on the bottom.
There is thus less air on the top
and more air in the bottom
so there's a high pressure on the bottom
and a low pressure on the top and that actually pushes the plane
up into the air.
Why do people do bad things?
That's not really a science question.
You should probably ask your dad about that one.
Because their parents weren't as kind and loving as yours. Sorry.
What does "getting knocked up" mean?
Uhhhh
It's the- it's the opposite of getting knocked down.
Question time over.
But that doesn't make-
Question time over!
Henry, I hope you learned a lot
and I hope you become a little scientist like me.
Those genes have got to be in there somewhere.
John, I will see you on Monday.
