Buttered Toast

I have often said to myself that if either of our kids ends up becoming a dull engineer as I did, it would not be our daughter.  She is much more likely to follow in the footsteps of her Grandma who is a creative genius possessing a God given way with animals.  Our daughter is passionate about animals and hopes to become an animal rescuer some day.  She is a voracious reader with such a wild imagination and dramatic personality that I can also see her writing fiction or creating animated films about animals.

She has been attending a science camp this week focused on elementary physics.  She is really enjoying this class and likes the creative reinforcement activities best. In the spirit of Rube Goldberg, who drew cartoons of complex systems of machines to complete a simple task, the students were asked to take a few minutes to draw a cartoon explaining how to make buttered toast without the use of a toaster or any other electronic device.  Her design is nothing like what you would expect from a left-brained engineer and needs some tweaking to actually work, but her imaginative ideas are priceless in my estimation.  Her design involves two trained animals and several simple machines.  A squirrel turns a screw.  This energy is converted into heat to toast the bread.  Then a dog transfers the toast to a pipe conveyor and rings a bell signaling that the toast is ready.

She is a constant source of amusement to our family, and we just know God must have big plans for her.