Non Sequitur Box

As a disclaimer, I suck at math, I suck at swimming in currents, and I am not a math teacher. At the Patriots Half this weekend, we were challenged to come up with an easy way to explain swimming in currents. This is my attempt. Also, please note that some things are not drawn to scale/properly. I'm attempting to explain the idea of swimming in currents while avoiding math/numbers. Below is an example of a swim route. The wiggly yellow man is the finish. The yellow triangles are turn buoys and the orange circles are sighting buoys. In aqua is the current. The dashed lines are the vertical and horizontal motions of the current, and the solid line is the resulting current. In this example, swimmers have to swim at about a 45 degree angle to the current on the trip out to the third buoy and back to the finish line. We will address the final leg back to the finish line. In the dashed red line below, the swimmer is just thinking, "I have to swim straight to the wiggl...

Back in first grade, I had to write a report about birds. This "report" was really only four sentences long, but I remember having a terrible time with it. I remember getting frustrated, writing my facts, erasing until the paper was worn through, and rewriting new facts until I decided that the report held the most significant information about birds. Mind you, that is difficult to do in four sentences! Birds have different bills to survive in different environments. Birds have lightweight bones and wings to help them fly. Birds evolved from dinosaurs. Birds chew their food for their babies. I'm sure that's what I wrote. I decided that I will continue these short science "reports" that I had to write in my early career as a scientist. Here are my first two "reports." Bees There is so much information about bees. Here are my four sentences. Bees are a special type of wasp. Bees feed on nectar and pollen. All bees have two sets of wings (a larger...