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With various social work trundled along its merry way, Astrid is formally adopted as Astrid Irene Adams, declared to be four years old with a birthday on March 30 for paperwork purposes, and successfully passed off as human to all prying eyes.
She grows and falls over a lot and maintains her orange coiffure and reads books and is generally precocious. The veganism and the aversion to salt and lipids persist.
Her fifth basketday approaches.
bulrushes
asmyown
"All right," says Lynn, brightly. "Then finish up your enhanced fruit cake and we can go get some balloons."
asmyown
Lynn waits, and absently plans for how she'll explain this. She thinks she's going to demonstrate why ordinary boats are fine for bailing water out of, too. When Astrid's finished with her enhanced fruit cake, they head off to a store, grab three balloons filled with helium, and return home for Lynn's demonstration.
"Okay," she says, "first, do you know why balloons float?"
"Okay," she says, "first, do you know why balloons float?"
asmyown
"Exactly right," she agrees. "To be more specific, the helium in the balloon is lighter than regular air. So, when something is light enough in comparison to how much helium it has, it can carry it. Makes sense?"
asmyown
"Possibly," snorts Lynn. "But you have lots of things inside of you, and there wouldn't be room for helium if they stayed. And you need to keep those things in you, they're what keeps you alive and walking about."
asmyown
"True, but I don't recommend trying it, there are lots of things in you that do more than just let you walk around." Lynn pokes her nose affectionately.
asmyown
"So!" says Lynn, and she retrieves a pin to pop the balloon. "When the helium isn't there anymore to make the balloon lighter..." Pop! Whzzz, hsss, flop, goes the now deflated balloon. "It sinks to the ground."
asmyown
"Well, because the balloon was keeping all of the helium bottled up under pressure inside it. So the minute the helium saw an opening, it rushed out because it - didn't want to be under pressure and trapped anymore."
asmyown
"Not the way we consciously do, but - matter wants to reach an equilibrium. While the helium was trapped in the balloon, there was an equilibrium inside it, and in the air outside of it. But when a hole was made in the balloon, there wasn't an equilibrium between the two, and they could interact with each other, so it reacted accordingly to fix it."
asmyown
"Well, certain objects are - more resistant to going back to equilibrium than others. Because the - pieces that make up the object are sort of... Bonded. Or connected. So they don't easily separate, and they don't easily let things on each side pass through the surface."
asmyown
"Well, they do interact with the balloon, but they can't get the balloon to let them through to interact what's on the other side of the balloon very much. But, the balloon being inflated was the helium inside interacting with it, keeping pressure inside it to make it bigger than it normally would be."
asmyown
"It does, actually." Lynn smiles. "And you're quite clever for asking that question. But the pressure outside was lesser than the pressure inside, so the helium was - gaining more ground."
asmyown
"Well, because the air is everywhere, and it's not concentrated like the helium was. If the air were concentrated into a small space, like the balloon, it would certainly win, but with it all over everywhere, that's not so. It gives small amounts of pressure everywhere, instead of concentrating on the balloon."