A couple of years ago, while my brother and I were spending time with our sick mother, my kids were bored, though understood the importance of what we were doing. My son and step-daughter both saw it as the most boring trip to California we ever made. I agree, but we had to fight to break our mother out of a corrupt healthcare scam cycle where she was shuttled from one facility to another based ONLY on how much they could get from her insurance and Medicare and not on what her care required. But that is another story. Bottom line from that is if you have an elderly family member, get help finding the right care from them and DON'T TRUST the care facilities AT ALL. And if you need help out in California, I have the name of the person you need because he helped us starting on that trip.

But I diverge. My kids were bored. So my son, Jacob, started singing what was then his favorite song: Tom Lehrer's Elements Song (later on his favorite music was Woodie Guthrie songs...now it's all Pokemon). And my step-daughter filmed it with her phone (HA...that beats the Star Trek communicators...they didn't have a camera in those) and posted it on YouTube:

The video got a handful of views thanks to my step-daughter's friends, who mostly knew Jacob and knew about his fascination with chemistry. But somewhere along the line, more than 15,000 viewers have watched him.

Interestingly, many comments are negative. The assumption is we simply made him memorize the thing and he has no clue what it means. Actually not true. He got his obsession for chemistry all by himself and it never occurred to us to have him memorize the Periodic table! It is true I tried exposing him to Japanese and Spanish as an infant and toddler because of the ability to absorb languages (didn't really work on him from what I can tell) but his obsession with chemistry is all his own.

And he also gets chemistry. Now that he is 7 he actually has his life's goal worked out, and I gotta say it shows he gets the Periodic table. He knows that the stability of an element has to do with the energy levels within the nucleus and he knows that there is a predicted "island of stability" where new elements will be more stable. His career goal is to discover the first element in the island of stability.

Now granted he doesn't really grasp what that entails...but he's 7. And it does show he has a pretty good grasp of what the Periodic Table means.

Personally I was hoping he'd choose a career that actually makes some money. My wife and I are in a downward economic spiral thanks to the low pay and long hours of being scientists. And did I mention that we have no real job security? But don't want to spoil his dream of discovering the first element in the island of stability.

And it all started with the Elements Song.