I'm teaching accounting to non-business majors. These folks have never taken an accounting course, and probably have no desire to ever take one again after this one is complete. Since most of my accounting instructors were pretty boring, I'm trying to come up with ways to make the material enjoyable for them. The way I figure, if I can keep them interested, they stand a much better chance of getting something out of the class other than a letter grade and a few credit hours.
I've been struggling to come up with a good way to explain the most fundamental of accounting principles: the debits must equal the credits. Last night, as I was going through my notes for tonight's class, a thought hit me. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Awwwwwwww yeah! That's money! That's gonna work! Everyone knows that rule, and I can use that to help explain an important concept in class!
But wait... is that Einstein's theory of relativity? No... that's E=mc^2... so who came up with the brilliant "action = reaction" thought? It was getting very late, and my mind was fried. I asked my wife to enact her Google talents, and the following (approximate) conversation ensued:
Wife: Newton's third law of motion. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Me: Isaac Newton. Dang. Can't believe I didn't remember that.
Wife: Do you want to know what his first and second laws of motion are?
Me: Sure.
Wife: Nevermind.
Me: No, really, tell me. I'm interested. (Really, I was. I just sounded bored because of the tiredness.)
Wife: First law. An object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force.
Me: Ah, yes, inertia.
Wife: Second law. An applied force is equal to the mass of the object times its acceleration.
Me: Man. We take so much for granted. This dude was able to quantify things that had never been measured before. What a brilliant mind to be able to come up with formulas and quantify stuff like that. It's incredible.
Wife: (interupting my sermon) I can't even spell quantify.
Me: Now Einstein, that's different... why do we need to quantify energy? That doesn't make sense to me. But Newton! To be able to come up with that stuff... it's just awesome. I wonder if he was an accountant. (I must confess, I was quite tired and loopy at this point.)
Wife: (reading) Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, theologian, natural philosopher, and alchemist.
Me: Sounds kinda like Bowls. (Bowls is a guy we know who is ridiculously educated across many different areas of study.)
Wife: Newton never married and there are rumors that he remained a virgin.
Me: Ok. You must be on Wikipedia.
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2 comments:
either that or your wife is some kind of savant (although i would NEVER put idiot before that).
anyone who can make such awesome cakes and cool children must be pretty darn smart, too.
now you know why i loved physics.
the only science/math i ever liked.
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