

Experiments to do with your baby - jawns
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/experiments-to-do-with-your-baby/280592/
I&#x27;m the author of the book (&quot;Experimenting With Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid&quot; http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.experimentingwithbabies.com).<p>I&#x27;m a big HN fan and would be happy to answer any questions!
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jawns
I'm the author of the book ("Experimenting With Babies: 50 Amazing Science
Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid"
[http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com](http://www.experimentingwithbabies.com)).

I'm a big HN fan and would be happy to answer any questions!

~~~
DEinspanjer
This sounds like an awesome book, and I would probably have loved to have it
when my kids were infants. I pointed a few friends at it.

My big experiment with my first born was trying to teach her to count starting
with 0 instead of 1. I attempted it for a few months, but ultimately stopped
because everyone else around her was counting the typical way and it seemed
like it might be confusing to her.. I admit it was a bit embarrassing for me
when doing so in the presence of non-geeks.

I'll also go ahead and share a funny anecdote and hope it doesn't come back to
haunt her in a decade.. :) We noticed a common side effect of her getting the
hiccups whenever we changed her diaper. One day I jokingly said that the first
time she ever came home from a date with the hiccups, her boyfriend had better
start running.

~~~
wxs
My parents taught me to count on my fingers with binary, which lets you get to
31 on one hand, and 1023 on two. I've found that to be a small thing of huge
value when doing simple counting tasks, such as counting syllables or words in
a short text, where you can't just keep a count in your head.

~~~
lutorm
I just tried it and I have the problem that it's very difficult for me to
extend only my ring finger. I vaguely remember someone saying that this is
because some fraction of the population don't have fully independent 4th and
5th fingers...

~~~
DEinspanjer
I hadn't heard about anyone having naturally occurring fourth and fifth
fingers without the linkage. I do remember reading a story about a piano
player who devised a set of stretches intended to develop the independence of
his ring fingers but it ended up damaging the (tendons|ligaments|<insert
medical term here>) and he could no longer effectively play the piano.

~~~
ironcoal
[http://musicthing.blogspot.de/2006/09/finger-stretching-
for-...](http://musicthing.blogspot.de/2006/09/finger-stretching-for-pianists-
and.html) That was Robert Schumann.

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drakaal
They don't let me have babies of my own because I would do all sorts of
psychological experiments on them.

When I was a Camp Director I used to construct "lies" over the course of a
week that would lead kids to the wrong conclusion.

Just with in the earshot of campers I'd say things to the counselors like "I
think Kahn is back on the camp again"

And in the Animal Lodge we had a huge empty tank that said "Kahn: Rare Aquatic
Gargantuan Boa Constrictor" with some facts about the fact that they could
grow to over 150 feet in length, and they eat mostly bear for food.

I'd drop other "hints" like "You don't have to worry about Bears in the woods,
not since Kahn got out..." and if anyone asked I'd just blow off the questions
about Kahn, "Oh, nevermind just a camp pet that got out one day"

When the wind would blow through the tall grass the counselors would hurry the
kids to an area where the grass was shorter. And we'd say "Camper count" and
count that we had everybody, then sigh, "Kahn never ceases to scare the
daylights out of me"

Towards the end of the week campers were convinced there was a conspiracy to
keep the giant snake a secret. It kept them from wandering out at night, or
sneaking off on their own.

Worked far better than any amount of threats of discipline could.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Fun camp tradition! But wandering at night, sneaking out with a buddy, is one
of the great delights of camp. So no I'm not sure that is a good goal.

How exciting to sneak out with a buddy at night, looking for Kahn! They'd
remember that for a lifetime.

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thoughtpalette
The writing had me laughing and my interest piqued.

"What is Henry thinking? Why is he looking at me like that? Drink your milk,
Henry."

"His intellect is like that of a sentient grapefruit."

Edit: A word

~~~
fpgaminer
Friendly note: It's piqued, not peaked. Used to make the same mistake myself.
Pique means: "stimulate (interest or curiosity)."

To say that your interest peaked, means the article went down hill from that
point on :P

And yeah, I read that joke in one of Ze Frank's voices:
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFzz6EZmkq8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFzz6EZmkq8))

~~~
sliverstorm
There needs to be some kind of corrective list. "Commonly misspelled words
online". I've noticed increasing prevalence of certain misspellings on the
internet, and I fear they will reach critical mass and start building
momentum.

\- wreak/wreck

\- weary/wary

\- piqued/peaked

~~~
beans
You may enjoy Paul Brians Common Errors in English Usage
[http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/](http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/)

~~~
sliverstorm
Oh my god, I imagined it and it exists! Today is a good day.

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pbhjpbhj
Most apposite for me - two days ago I read the "How Old is the Shepherd"
article,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6848166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6848166),
and thought "I must try that on my kids".

Looks like I'm going to need to have another child to get the most out of this
thread, bit costly.

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SriVee
Very interesting book. Will check it out for sure.

I have a 4.5 yrs old who can understand 4 languages and converse in three of
them. Credit goes to my wife for conversing with him like an adult in all
these languages. I don't know why, but we never did any baby talk with him,
and based on his teachers' comments he is way ahead of his peers in
language/communication skills. My wife started teaching him reading English
about 3 months ago. Now he can practically read at 2nd grade level. We don't
push him to read, but he loves reading his story books. I hope your book
offers couple of more things that we can try to increase my kid's happiness.

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galapago
I was surprised with the innate memory of spiders experiment so I look for
some alternative explanations [1] as well as a link the original paper [2]. It
seems that the study is not conclusive.

[1]: [http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2007/10/03/do-
infants-h...](http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2007/10/03/do-infants-have-
an-innate-spid/)

[2]:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.130...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.130.5767&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

~~~
jawns
If you're interested in the subject, here's another related study, which was
published in 2010:

"And along came a spider: An attentional bias for the detection of spiders in
young children and adults"

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096510...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096510000652)

"Preschoolers and adults were asked to find the single spider picture among an
array of eight mushrooms or cockroaches or the reverse. Both children and
adults detected the presence of spiders more rapidly than both categories of
distracter stimuli."

~~~
js2
There's also evidence that primates have an innate visual response to snakes -
[http://www.pnas.org/content/110/47/19000](http://www.pnas.org/content/110/47/19000)

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astalwick
Fantastic idea. Looks like a lot of fun.

I remember taking a psych course on early childhood development in university,
and thinking how much fun it would be to have a baby and actually try some of
these experiments.

As a new parent, though, I find I have a lot less time than I would have hoped
to go trolling through old textbooks for experiments that won't actually just
wreck my kid. (Old-school science is kind of awesome in how it disregards that
kind of thing)

Anyway, thanks for putting this together. Definitely going to pick up a copy.

~~~
jawns
I'm glad the book has piqued your interest and hope you enjoy it.

By the way, in addition to the 50 science projects, the book also contains a
bunch of sidebars, including several I've labeled "Don't Try This At Home,"
which describe some of the bizarre (and sometimes cruel) old-school science
experiments that have been conducted on children.

They range from the weird but generally harmless (simulating entrapment in a
refrigerator) to the scar-you-for-life (the infamous Monster Study).

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flippyhead
I just bought this and I'm excited to experiment!

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Splendor
Testing babies for "theory of mind" is my favorite.
[http://www.livescience.com/10924-7-month-babies-show-
awarene...](http://www.livescience.com/10924-7-month-babies-show-awareness-
viewpoints.html)

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bttf
The humor in this article is so subtle.

"Why is Henry eating lint off the floor? Science would tell us that there is
one correct answer."

