I just bought a radiometer. I’ve wanted one for years but couldn’t remember the name, so I’ve looked in vain in toy stores. Today, we went to a 60th birthday party at Explora!, an interactive museum intended to stimulate scientific curiosity in kids. In doing so, Explora! provides no information at all, so those kids had better be mightily stimulated and capable of seeking reliable sources of information outside the exhibits.

I mentioned my search for a whatchamacallit (wow, spell check indicates I got that right) to the gift store cashier and she said, “oh, that’s a radiometer; we have them over here.” I’d walked right past the boxes looking for one out in the sunlight. I bought it and it is spinning away in the bright kitchen.

So, when I read the back of the box at home, I was flummoxed that it claimed the radiometer worked because of “heated air molecules” (not 100% complete). But I’ll be damned: I thought the radiometer proved photons have mass because they move the vanes. D’oh! On closer inspection (see How does a light-mill work?; I love the name ‘light-mill’), I was in the good company of Maxwell himself, but how did my head hold a “fact” that had been discredited over 100 years ago? I had a similar … “rude awakening” (everything you know is wrong) not long ago when a friend question my confident assertion that rabbits are rodents. Not since the early 1900s (it took her one second with a search engine to confound a 47 year old certainty). When did I go to school? I’m open to learning new stuff but not too keen on learning I’m wrong.

Sometimes, I feel I’ve slipped between universes. I learned this stuff over there. But the food is better here.