Go Ask Your Father: Helicopters, Peppercorns, CCs, and Cancer

Welcome to the weekend! While that might mean 2 days without work, there is still plenty of homework to be done. Have you seen the mess of my kitchen? Painting is a nightmare! Are your kids as needy as mine? Dad. Dad. Dad! Mum. Mum. Mum! Look at this. Watch me. Did you see me? Sometimes I’d like to tell them to go swim in shark infested water wearing a meat suit. Unfortunately, we don’t have either sharks or a meat suit.

How fast do helicopter blades go?

Really fast. Or about the same speed at which kids will touch wet paint after you have told them not to touch the wet paint. There is a ton of math in engineering and piloting a helicopter. And not that easy math either. This is fancy, harder than high school math. Sin and Cos and velocities and fuel consumption equations. It looks like art, but it’s math. Different helicopters have a different rotor rpm. Also, a helicopter will adjust it’s rpm to fit its needs. Weight, speed, wind speed, and temperature will effect its rpm. For the sake of this question and the satisfaction of a 10 year old, helicopter blades spin anywhere from 250 to 600 rpm.

Where do peppercorns come from?

piper_nigrum_fruits-200x300Funny enough they come from the exact same place as eggs and milk – the grocery store. Did you know peppercorn is a fruit? Once upon a time it was a luxury and only available to the wealthy. In Once Upon A Time, I would not have had the luxury of having peppercorn. Peppercorns come from a peppercorn plant. Go figure! In the science community it’s known as piper nigrum. Native to India, they are grown around the world now. The different colors are produced by preserving the pod at different stages of ripeness or by using either the whole pod or its inner seed. You can get black, green, white, and red peppercorns. Pink peppercorns come from an entirely different plant not related to piper nigrum. Pepper is an antioxidant and antibacterial. It is also a carminative meaning it helps prevent intestinal gas. And that’s nothing to sneeze about.

What does cc mean?

In our house it could mean chocolate capacity. My face can hold 350 CCs of chocolate. I know because I measured. In email, however, it means Carbon Copy from the ancient days of using carbon paper to replicate documents. Sadly, this question has nothing to do with chocolate or email, though. When playing Mario Kart the races are divided up by CCs – 50, 100, 150, and 200. The higher the CCs, the faster the karts go. This is because CCs stands for Cylinder Capacity, or more scientific and mathematical it means Cubic Centimeters. Cylinder capacity = cubic centimeter. Therefore, the larger the cylinder the more gas it can take in. The more gas intake it has, the more it’s explosive force and therefore more energy. My kids have 97,000 CCs. This holds true with real life vehicles, too. CCs are also used to measure medicine. I’m sure you’ve heard on plenty of doctor dramas (yay for Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Doctor) to give a patience x number of CCs of a fancy medicine name. CCs are equivalent to milliliters (mL). CC should also be written in lower case (ccs) but I used upper case to help differentiate it. Plus, I’m not a doctor.

What happens if they find cancer?

Remember last week when the boys were asking about breast cancer because DW was going for her annual boob flattening check up? Well, we’re not done talking about boobs yet. According to lexicographer, Jonathon Green, there are at least 212 synonyms for female breasts. He would know, he wrote the most comprehensive dictionary of slang. I guess that makes him the human version of Urban Dictionary. Anyway, DW had swift response to this question. There was no thinking about what would happen should she discover she has breast cancer. I support her as much as her favorite bra. She will have it/them removed. Mastectomy. The end. You can guess down in the comments what they asked about after this answer.