Mulled Vine

“Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a girl who always wore a red riding…”
“Wait a minute!”
“What?”
“You wrote this story?”
“Yes.”
“About a girl called Little Red Riding Hood?”
“Yes, how didyou know that??”
“It’s not a new story.”
“It’s not?”
“No. Try again.”
“Ok…. Uhm … Once upon…”
“Not that bit.”
“Oh, ok. … there was a duck called Jemima Puddl…”
“Nope.”
“No?”
“No. That’s that not new either.”
“I don’t understand. I just made up these stories.”
“You must have heard them before.”
“I guess. Maybe I should do something else?”
“Like what?”
“Invent things. I had this really great idea for a round thing that goes round and round…”
“Wheel.”
“What?”
“Its called a wheel. Its not a new invention either. Look, why don’t you just chill and take it easy.”
“You mean like to do nothing?”
“Yeah.”
“But that’s pointless.”
“Yeah, so, what’s new?”

Infinity is a fancy word for something that never ends or finishes. For example, time goes on and on, forever (if you wait long enough), never stopping. It never FINishes – it is infinite. Got it?

Numbers are the same. There is no biggest number. Don’t believe me? Humph! Ok, smart donkey, think of the biggest number you can. Got it? Ok, now add one to it, and that’s a bigger number. There is no biggest number. You can always add one to that number and get a bigger number.

Still with me?

Good, because now it gets a bit weird.

Imagine you have a piece of rubber – I mean, really streeeeetchy rubber – say a piece as long as your ruler. That’s 30cm for you clever people out there. Now get a pen. How many dots in a row do you reckon you can draw on your piece of rubber? 100? 200? Maybe even 300?

Ok, so do it. Draw the dots on the rubber in a nice row. See you muuuuch later.

Done it? Cool.

Now stretch your piece of rubber. You might need some help with this. Go ask your Dad – I’m sure he’s got nothing better to do. Trust me.

Are you stretching yet? See how the dots are separating? Now stretch the rubber until the space between the dots is about 30cm. Yes, I know you need a big room to do this. Go ask your Mum if you can go to the park and do some ‘science’. She won’t believe you, even if Dad is going with you, so be sure to take this article with you when you ask here.

Right, now get anyone you can at the park to help by drawing more dots on the rubber so that there are no more spaces and you have a really long line drawn on the rubber.

Waddayamean you don’t want to? It is NOT pointless!! (Get it? POINT-less? )

Oh, so you know what’s going to happen do you?

Yes, you are right. You can go on stretching the rubber for ever (I told you to get REALLY stretchy rubber), and keep on drawing dots.

So how many dots can you draw on your piece of stretchy rubber?

Infinitely many.

Well, first you need air, lots of it, and if you don’t have air, see my article “How to make air”.

Ok, so you have the air. Now what?

You swish it very fast, round and round and round, making like a whirlpool, then, when its swirling around nicely on its own, you step away quickly, being careful not to upset the new tornado (tornadoes can be quite sensitive, you know, because of their funny shapes, and are liable to suck up anyone who they think is looking at them funny.)

You’re probably wondering about the swishing air bit. Well there are two ways to swish a whole lot of air. Either you are really powerful, like God, who can do just about anything, including swishing, or you are a “law of physics”.

What do you mean you don’t know what a law of physics is? (This could be a longer explanation than I thought!)

See, its like when air pressure is high in one place, and low nearby, so the air moves from the high pressure place to the low pressure place and you get wind. That’s a law – it always does that. It doesn’t say one day, “Ooh, I think I’ll go left today.” It can’t – the law is the law.

So how do we get laws? I mean, who says air has to move like that?

I don’t know and it gets a bit tricky now so I hope you are sitting down.

Have you heard of the Big Bang? No, not Humpty Dumpty, idiot. The Big Bang is what the call the big explosion that happened at the beginning of time, quite a long time ago, like a gazillion years. There was this “point” and it went “Boom!” and hey presto there was a universe full of laws.

Or you could believe that God, who has no beginning (weird, eh?) decided one fine moment that a universe would be mighty nice thing.

So there you go. You know how to make a tornado. Kind of.