Resonant Minds

Why do people say that you make an impression, good or bad, the first 5 minutes into an encounter. For children, I think it may take longer. The mind is incredibly complex. But out of complexity comes simple things that you can observe daily.

Phoebe and Ernest are very close to each other. Whenever they play together, they usually wreck havoc and lay a trail of destruction. It seems that their minds operate on the same frequency. And do you know what happens when you place two objects of the same frequency very close to one another. Resonance.

It's the thing that happen when you push a swing. If you attempt to push a swing and you want to make it go higher, you have to push at the right moment. You will know if you are doing it right. Otherwise, you'll miss the outgoing swing, or worse get hit when its incoming. In either case, the swing will not go any higher. The timing (or the inverse of it which is the frequency) is crucial. In other words, if you push at the correct frequency, in this case the resonant frequency of the swing, all your energy goes into the swing and you make it go higher. In many case, the resonant frequency of a system is its natural frequency. If we push the swing at its resonant frequency it will absorb most of our energy and go higher. If we are not careful, the swing may go out of control if the applied force is too great and the resistance of the system is very small. Such is what will happen when an unbalanced wheel is rotated at its resonant frequency and it shakes uncontrollably, or when a small band marches along a bridge at close to its resonant frequency and it starts to oscillate violently.

Applying the same concept to children and you will understand the forces created by resonant minds. When Phoebe and Ernest gets together, their mind reinforces one another. If they are working on something constructive, you'll get beautiful results. Lean the other way, and what you have in your hands are two very uncontrollable kids. Worse, if we don't recognize the situation early enough, we'll have a hard time trying to calm the situation. Luckily, nature has a way of dealing with resonant minded children. Eventually, they are limited by their energy reserves and they will (relatively speaking) tire themselves out.

So, you can blame it on your brain if you don't make a first good impression when you meet a stranger. Or, you could make it work out, if you detect the situation early enough and try to rectify it by pushing the right buttons in your brain. Mind you, it will be tough. Just ask any parent of two children.

Finally, enjoy this music courtesy of Julian @ http://resonantmind.com/. I particularly like The Resonance Project - AHU.

The Science of Raising Kids (The hyperactive-type)

Have you ever wondered how an ant can carry more than 50 times its own weight. Or how it seem to run so fast, it looks like a bouncing bullet in perpetual brownian motion. The simple answer is because it is so small. The scientific answer has to do with its body surface area-to-body mass ratio. But I will spare you the mathematics. The thing is, the smaller you get the stronger or faster you will seem to be.

Knowing this fact does not make it any easier for you to chase after a nitro-charged 3-feet tall monster. But after thinking hard about why I am bummed-out even before I start my work in the morning because I have to rush the kids to school, I came up with this trick that may just work.

Let's pretend you are a car running on 50 liters of gas. And your kid is actually a bunny running on energizer batteries (the long lasting type). For the sake of argument, let's make him run on gas too and that his full tank is a mere 3 liters. Although a direct relationship is difficult, it's easier to work things out if you imagine that your tank capacity equals your age. Ofcourse, this does not work for a 77-year old grandpa. I am assuming that you have not yet reach midlife crisis and that you still eat a healthy meal. OK, back to our story. Altough you have the bigger gas tank, you have to unfortunately lug around a lot of weight too. In comparison, a little child has a smaller tank but his weight is much smaller. One good number that comes to mind is mileage. A sub-compact gets so much more bang-for-buck compared to a 3.0L grand tourismo class vehicle. So that little car can just zip around town without burning too much fuel. The same applies to people too. Although kids are no good for 20km marathons, they are deadly when confined to a small room for anything longer than 30 minutes. So how do you handle the 3-year old kid. Just confine your movement to sporadic quick bursts.

Look at this graph. Here hyperactive kids are always on the move and they spend a lot of power during their running-stopping motions (orange). Meanwhile, adults who don't move so fast, can conserve energy. We know that energy reserve expend fast for kids as energy, E is a product of power, P with time. So if we were to limit our movements to brief spurious motions, like that of a crocodile lurching at its prey, we can then beat those nasty kids.
Try it and let me know how well you fare.