Heard at Scienceworks
In the Light show in the Lightning Room. Audience of mixed-age families, most with children under 10. And a few young-adult couples enjoying themselves too -smile-.

I asked the audience: "What animals make their own light?"

The usual answers came up. That deep sea angel fish. (It's actually an angler fish, but small children confuse the two names sometimes.) Jellyfish. Electric eels. Glowworms.

That's a good catch for a small audience, it covers most of the possibilities. I'd normally stop there. But no-one had said the animal that is most often said first - fireflies. And there was one tiny waving hand right up the back. So I pointed and said "Yes?"

And in the tiniest, cute voice of utter confidence a little boy of about four said "Giraffes".

A quiet, that's-so-cute wave of chuckling swept through the audience. I couldn't help grin. His mum called out in that proud-but-trying-not-to-laugh voice "Giraffes are his favourite animal".

It left me with a slight dilemma, as we have a basic rule that you're not allowed to tell a child who gives you an answer that it's wrong. Encourage them to think through their answer a little more carefully, or add to it maybe, and you can even add a clause along the lines of "Well, I haven't seen one of those before but that would be really cool" - but not say outright that they're wrong. It's because we want to encourage participation and also because science is about guessing both wrong answers and right answers, we don't want to turn kids off that and make them think that there really is just one right answer that they have to get first time. So I had to say something to follow on. But all I could think of was fluorescent glowing giraffes, roaming the savannah at night. Possibly in hot pink. -grin-