In the interest of spreading good science, helping the world and keeping myself entertained, I have been conducting extensive research on my children concerning their reactions to various stimuli, i.e. discipline, chores and pointing out the incontrovertible scientific fact that they do not know everything.

This week, we shall examine three experiments I conducted regarding the use (or lack thereof) of logic by a 14-year-old human male, i.e. Matt, the son.

Experiment No. 1

I use “vamanos,” a Spanish word meaning, roughly, “mach schnell, dumbkopf.” The son maintains “vamos” is correct. I offer that both are acceptable. He retorts that, no, only he is correct.

After several weeks of this argument, the son asks his Spanish teacher how he would correctly say “let’s go now,” in Spanish.

“Vamanos,” she responds.

“What about ‘vamos’?” he asks.

They are both acceptable, the teacher responds. The boy then comes home, relates the above story and adamantly maintains he was correct and I was wrong. He is then “disciplined” for being a “dumbkopf.”

Experiment No. 2

The son is tasked by a teacher with building a flashlight from, apparently, stuff he can pull from the garbage can. Said flashlight works at first, then doesn’t work after some modifications. The son concludes the instructions he was given are “stupid.” This occurs at 9 p.m. on the evening before the project is due.

“Ask your dad for help,” offers Becca, the wife/mother.

“Dad can’t help,” replies the son.

In most cases, the son would be correct. Dad is not particularly handy and Dad does not care that he is not particularly handy. Dad has a dad who believes he can save the world with a roll of duct tape and a tube of epoxy and growing up in that environment gave the son’s dad a bad attitude toward home improvement.

But, in this case, the son was wrong. Instead of concluding the instructions were “stupid,” I suggested we retrace the connections. This not only eventually led to a working flashlight and, in one case, sparks and smoke (this step proved entertaining for quite some time), but also the conclusion that Crazy Glue inhibits the conductivity of electricity.

(Side note: the newspaper has opened an investigation into why our public schools are forcing students to manufacture flashlights in sweatshop-like conditions.)