Camp physics

Aaron is in a “Rockets and astronauts” camp this week. Little did I know it was physics camp!

Aaron: Mommy today I learned about kinetic force and potential force.
Rachel: Really! Please tell me all about it.
Aaron: Kinetic force is the force that something has because it is moving. Potential force is the force that it has when it is not moving yet, but of course it could move, so it has the potential to be moving. And also when it is moving and it has kinetic energy, it has the potential to be not moving. So they go together.
Rachel: I totally love to hear about this. One of the things that I study at my work is how to teach people about exactly these kinds of things, including kids, so I love to hear from you how you are learning about it.
Aaron: Another thing I learned today is that when an airplane flies, there are four forces that keep it flying.
Rachel: Oh really? Tell me about that.
Aaron: One of them is lift which keeps it up. And one of them is gravity which of course pulls it down. And Mommy did you know that when an airplane is just staying at one level it has both of those? Let me show you with my lunchbox. One pushes from one side and the other pushes from the other side! [demonstrates by pushing his hands on the left and right sides of his lunchbox.] And so even though it has two pushes, those pushes push one way and the other way at the same time, so they keep it where it is.
Rachel: How about that!
Aaron: And another thing I learned today is that our car is not red.
Rachel: Really? I would have called it red!
Aaron: No mommy. Actually somehow they made it so that it is every color except red, and the red, it bounces off the car. So the red, is not the color that the car is. It is every other color, but you see the red.

In case you are wondering I have no interest at all in correcting any parts of this that are not the same as the scientific canon. I am too interested in hearing what he makes of it, and if I jumped in with a lecture I would risk curtailing his expression. I hear him having taken in that there are two complementary kinds of "strength"-type quantities, one associated with motion and one associated with not-motion. I hear him expressing that stability can be associated with balanced pushes. And I hear him saying something about how the color a thing "is" is the colors that it "keeps" (as opposed to those that it "rejects"), which totally makes sense in a way. It reminds me of some light bulbs I recently bought that claimed to "make colors appear as they really are." Quite a puzzle really.