Last night, I gathered the final piece of data on a long-term study of the relationship between park snacking and the sleeping habits of humans.Every morning, I take Dad to the park for snacks. It's a smorgasbord!
Some snacks used to be alive. Some snacks used to be inside other dogs. And some snacks were once sports equipment. One of my favorites is tennis ball skins.
Dad hates it when I snack. He doesn't realize that I'm just fulfilling my function as a scavenger in the Big Scheme of Things. (By the way, Jim Kalish, I notice that you're very quiet on the subject of ticks. I rest my case.)
Anyway, I swallow very quickly and run even faster so there's nothing he can do about it.
But I found out that snacking is highly correlated with a seemingly unrelated phenomenon: Dad's sleep patterns.
The more I snack, the more likely he is to get up at 3 AM, go downstairs, and open the back door. When I hit the snack mother lode, like I did yesterday, it's a virtual guarantee that we'll make a trip to the backyard together (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Relationship between park snacks and human behavior.I'm excited to have discovered this link, but Dad doesn't share my enthusiasm. Sometimes, he can be a wet blanket about science.
1 comment:
Dear Professor B3
Are there any basic science courses that you could enrol your poor dad on? Just to get him up to speed a bit? (though remember the damage you can do to self esteem if you push students too far beyond their capabilities)BTW we were impressed by your sensitive language regarding previously internalised snacks.
Redgirls' graph would be about rain. If it is raining or cold at approximately 23.30 hours (when we are invited to go outside to relieve ourselves) then we are sure to wake our mum up at 03.15hours. As a control experiment mum has been known to introduce an umbrella and language like "hurry up" Data so far suggests that this is not a valid hypothesis.
redgirls (who like men in glasses)XXX
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