Go Ask Your Father: Days and Nights, TIE Fighters, Vaccines, and Flight Fees

Why is there night and day? 

There are nights so we parents can get a break from being parents and just be adults. We can drink alcohol and watch shows with bad words. We can use the bathroom alone. We can eat junk food without having to share it. There days so you kids can drive us bonkers again.

In truth, there is night and day because the Earth is rotating. It takes the Earth 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds to make one complete rotation. It rotates counterclockwise at about 1,040 miles per hour at the equator. But why does it rotate? The Earth spins because it formed in the accretion disk of a cloud of hydrogen that collapsed down from mutual gravity and needed to conserve its angular momentum. It continues to spin because of inertia. WTF? Seriously?

Don’t worry. I didn’t understand that either. What it means is that when our solar system was first forming, atoms were colliding. When they would collide they would stick together and average their movements. Imagine rolling two magnetic balls toward each other. When they collide they stick and spin. This collection continued building and continued spinning until this thing we now inhabit and call Earth was formed.  No one knows why it’s called Earth.

What does T.I.E. stand for?

Ah, yes! A Star Wars question! T.I.E., as in T.I.E. fighter, stands for Twin Ion Engine. It’s two engines that created positively charged particles (called ions) using a gas (like xenon) then accelerating the ion through an electrically charged field. When the ion is accelerated from the back of the fighter, due to Newton’s 3rd law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Hence, the ion is shoved backward and the fighter is pushed forward. This is real science, not science fiction. NASA has it’s own ion engines currently in use! They’ve just upped one on Mr. Lucas though. The probe used in the Dawn mission to study two protoplanets in the asteroid belt , Vesta and Ceres, do one better than TIE fighters. The Dawn probe uses three ion engines.

What’s a vaccine?

The vaccine debate! I’ll keep it short. Some believe that vaccines cause autism and therefore do not vaccinate their children. PLEASE! Check out this fantastic study on how vaccines cause autism. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Bang had to get two shots (by needle, not by gun. That’s a different debate) before he could go to “big kid school”. DW and I also realized our tetanus shots were out of date so we got our vaccination as well. Vaccines prepare your body for an illness without exposing it to the disease’s symptoms. Immune cells, called lymphocytes, respond by producing antibodies to combat the disease and thereby making you immune to it should you come in contact with said disease. Your immune system recognizes the foreign body and is able to kill it before it can make you sick. Much like you recognize broccoli on your pizza before you eat it and thereby saving yourself from horrible pizza toppings.

How much does it cost to fly on an airplane?

An arm, a leg and a blood oath.

Depends on where you’re going. Are you flying domestic or international? Are you flying near or far? When I bought DW’s (back in 2003 she was DG – Dear Girlfriend) first plane ticket to come visit me in Virginia I paid $297. Today I could get it for $393 on a seat sale. Otherwise it would cost $479.

However we are not just one person any more. We are four. If we were to fly to BWI (Baltimore/Washington International) from YHX (Halifax) it would cost $2,734 for the four us according to one travel website. We can drive the 1,100 miles in our truck, as we did last summer, for $500.

Fuel prices, airport landing fees, supply and demand all play a role in driving the cost of flights.

Unfortunately, to fly to Hawaii for a week would cost us over $6,000. If only we had twin ion engines…

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