Teleportation, while a time-saver for the captain on his away mission, violates the laws of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Teleporters, popularized by Star Trek of course, are neat to watch and fantasize about. Children, while not be expected to fully wrap their heads around it, should understand that this is the most absurd sort of fiction. Teleportation basically is explained away by claiming it breaks down matter into energy, then beams it across space. This would be the same process as obliterating someone with a phaser on kill. The very basic reason it violates all the scientific rules mentioned above, is that position and momentum of particles cannot simultaneously be known.
It’s quite simple really, and takes the core of the word teleportation. Port. Transport. As parents, we are the transporters and our cars are the teleportation devices. We move children from one state of being to the next. To school, a mostly sedentary existence, to the kinetic soccer practice that is a great place to learn about energy distribution. If we think of it that way, while it may be a more manual process to the science, teleportation is not that obtuse of a concept. This line of thinking may foster a greater respect for the effort put into the constant movement and shuttling in their lives, done on their behalf by the parent. It also might just elicit a smart-ass response like “why don’t we just get a transporter like on Star Trek?”
An ultra-fast zoom out of the universe starting from point A on Earth reveals one of the following: the universe is contained in jar on a shelf, the universe is contained inside a necklace on a cat, the universe rests within a lamp shade in a bedroom occupied by Rob Lowe and Adam West, et al.
The universe is a large and mysterious place. We have only discovered a tiny fraction of the known universe and are relative light years away from fully understanding the science of the universe. Yet, it appears as equal a mystery that the universe tends to revolve around a singular child. Similar to early theories about the rotation of the planets, children believe they are the Earth and we are nothing more but hovering planetary objects stuck in their gravitational pull.
While some days we may feel like helpless asteroids wondering listlessly among the stars, it’s not a hopeless effort to explain to children that they are not in fact the center of the known universe. Not to mention, there is more in the universe in relation to their little lives that is left to be explored. When these cliche moments present themselves in sci-fi, a correlation to real life can quickly be made.
The point of all this is breaking down the singular view of the world that occupies children’s brains. By pointing out the mysteries in life, teaching them to expect the unexpected and find the mysteries of life, they may start to expand their little universes to encompass more than just them.
The plucky sidekick super genius kid or the droid with the questionably protruding interface can pretty much override any security system in any secure facility if you give them covering fire, not only being able to comprehend a system they’ve never interacted with, but doing it quicker than humanly possible.
This cliche is especially present in sci-fi and adventure aimed at children. There always seems to be the one smart kid in the group that can either hack anything with little or no apparent effort. Either that, or some droid plugging into a foreign computer system with relative ease and disarming the security. The quick lesson learned here is that this kind of stuff is easy. Need to break into an ATM or the school’s computer – no problem. How about starting World War III by simply hacking into a military installation?
The deeper lesson here is how easy the hackers make the task appear. Yes, the reality is skewed but if the hacker is human, the assumption can be made that these skills were not intuitively learned by some sort of strange osmosis. Instead, a learning opportunity can easily take place. With any skill in life, practice and education are equally as important as intuition. Chances are, that really smart kid hacking into a military mainframe spends a great deal of time working with computers.
While this can make a great segue into the importance of going to college or learning a craft, it’s probably better not to push it too much with their young minds. Instead, focus on more tangible things, like playing with LEGO leading to architectural design, or how HTML is used to build web pages. Most kids with a willingness to learn will be able to make these connections in life. They’ll be able to see the building blocks of higher learning and will be electronically changing their grades in no time, saying to you “there’s an app for that. I wrote it.”
Wired