Little Physicist’s Jump Rope Song

Dewdrop,
Lollypop,
Egg drop soup.
Cold like winter,
Flowers droop.

Raindrop,
Doggy plop,
Hula hoop.
Bowl of ice cream,
Seven scoops.

Quarks and
Bosons,
Leptons too.
Gravity in a
Quantum loop.

Pulsars,
Quasars,
Neutron stars.
Exoplanets,
Life on Mars.

Jump rope,
Jump rope,
'Till you're blue.
Count the atoms in your shoe.

One
Two
Three
…
..
.
One million
…
..
.
One billion
…
..
.
One trillion
.
I'm tired.


-B.C. Byron
It’s time you learned the proper way to draw hopscotch. You weren’t just putting 1 through 10 on it, were you?
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You may have noticed from some of my other poems that I like physics and math. I’m an electrical engineer, so these things come up at work frequently, but I also study it for fun in my free time. I like ice cream, hula hoops, and that other stuff too, but reading a good science book or watching a documentary about black holes are my favorite kinds of weekend activities. This poem puts together several of my favorite topics in one. Verse three covers particles and quantum physics. Verse four covers outer space and astrophysics. Verse 5 just represents a really loooong recess activity. You might be late getting back to class.

So how many atoms are actually in a shoe? Well, you don’t want to count them, that’s for sure. I would estimate there are about 200×10^24 atoms in one shoe (that’s 200 with 24 more zeroes after it!). That’s an awful lot more than the one trillion atoms counted in my poem. Even counting to 1 trillion is not really possible in one human lifetime. To put things in perspective, you will only be 1 billion seconds old just before you turn 32. So counting to 1 trillion would take around 30,000 years if you were able to count a little faster than 1 second per number. It would get pretty difficult to keep up this counting pace when you get into the really big numbers, so that’s an optimistic estimate (try saying 1,236,333,287,197 in less than 1 second). I strongly recommend that you don’t try counting all the atoms in anything. I do, however, recommend that you look up all the fascinating science terms in my poem. Each one represents an amazing concept that will expand the mind, overheat your brain, and fill you with more questions about the universe.

You don’t have to be a physicist or an engineer, or even want to be one, to find joy in the sciences. If you’re not keen on studying text books, start by learning how your favorite things work. Electronics may come to mind right away, but have you ever really thought about how a light bulb works? What about the science at work when you make a chocolate muffin? These deceptively simple everyday things are built upon deep physics and chemistry that took years to understand. If you go deep enough into anything, you’ll find that there is some point at which human understanding is still lacking – and that’s where your fun starts. When you reach the point where you can’t google the answer or find another person that can explain it, you start coming up with your own ideas and experiments to prove them. You may very well be the first person that’s ever asked such questions and that’s a pretty cool thought. There’s always one more level of understanding to be had, friends.

The Mountains of Blob

We're going away to the Mountains of Blob
where the stones are all made of jelly,
where marshmallow trees
grow as tall as you please
and they jiggle like Uncle Steve's belly. 

We'll squish to the top of wobliest blob,
we're careful to not lose our footing
as we slosh through a flood
of chocolate chip mud
and wade in the pools of pudding. 

At night we make camp
in the Mountains of Blob
with a specialized candy-proof tent,
'cause the pinata clouds
carry treats by the pound
and storms are a frequent event. 

So come with a spoon
to the Mountains of Blob
and wearing your stretchiest pants.
The bears are all gummy,
their droppings are yummy,
dig in if you're given the chance. 

The loveliest place
for stuffing your face,
the gelatinous Mountains of Blob.


-B.C. Byron
Welcome to the Mountains of Blob. Is it safe to eat candy off the ground if it grows there naturally?
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I used to go camping all year round as a teenager, both with my scouting troop and my family. It was fun to explore the deep woods and occasionally try out edible plants we found. One of my favorites was mallow. I didn’t know it was mallow at the time. We called them bellybutton plants because of the edible seed pods that looked like a bellybutton when the plants were fully matured. I still snack on these when I find them at the park near my house. I recently learned the name of this weed and also that a variant of it was used to make the original marshmallows (mallow weed that grows in marshes. Makes sense now). Modern marshmallows probably arem’t actually made from this plant amymore, so it still don’t count as vegetables, but all this got me thinking about my ideal camping spot. The Mountains of Blob would be messy, but totally worth the trip. Pudding rivers, gumdrop rocks, whip cream hills, marshmallow trees, and candy raining from the sky. Beats eating bellybutton weeds and getting tree sap in my hair. Even the animals poop candy in the Mountains of Blob. Go ahead, dig in.

There could be a few hazards in such a place (I mean, besides eating so much my belly bursts or staying awake with the sugar shakes for three days). I’m hoping those pinata clouds have soft sweets in them. Cotton candy balls would be alright. I imagine the terminal velocity (maximum falling speed) of gummy worms and suckers isn’t high enough to permanently injure me as they come raining down from the sky, but it would sting at the very least. Probably best to bring a sturdy umbrella when visiting the Mountains of Blob. Also, swimming in pudding might be dangerous. I don’t know if humans would float in liquid that dense, but I’d be willing to try it. If I sink, oh well. What’s a better way to go than drowning in chocolate pudding?