Kickstarter

About the book
This book was inspired by two talks I gave to Mrs. Ellingson's 4th grade class after seeing my son Logan doing science homework about atoms and molecules. I offered to give a talk and the kids sent me a bunch of amazing questions about quantum physics, relativity, and what it all meant. I gave the first talk that lasted about 90 minutes until the bell rang at the end of the day. The kids actually protested having to leave and go home!! They had so much fun that I came back and talked through their lunch hour because the kids decided to give up lunch and learn more. I brought in pizza and fruit salad and we talked about relativity and more topics.

Wanting to gift each child a book on the topic, I looked on Amazon and other places for suitable books about quantum physics, relativity, etc. but found nothing worthwhile... so I decided to write the book myself.

All parents in the class have given permission for their kids' names to be used and for the kids to contribute the artwork to the project. Each kid will get a copy of the book once it is done and they retain the copyright to their work; I have nonexclusive rights to use it. I will give the proceeds from all books sold at the school to the school and will a portion of all proceeds to the school.

Storyline
The kids show up for the first day of school. They clap in and walk to their new 4th grade classroom with their teacher, Mrs. Ellingson. Once everybody is settled, Mrs. Ellingson gives them field trip forms that say "everywhere" and "everywhen" and tells them that they all are about to go on the most amazing field trip ever.

Next day, the kids show up and there is a big round blue carpet in the room with yellow stars on it. Everyone sits in a circle and off they go on an adventure through space and time that includes (in no particular order):

- Ancient Physics

- Isaac Newton

- Lord Kelvin

- Two Small Storm Clouds (blackbody radiation and the speed of light)

- Grainy Reality (Planck length/time/mass/density/etc.)

- Particle Structure

- Matter and Antimatter

- Exclusion

- Stability

- Entanglement

- Nonlocality

- Delayed Choice

- Superposition

- Waveform (Shrodinger's Cat)

- Dual Slit (Complementarity)

- Randomness (Heisenberg)

- Space and Time

- Time Dilation

- Length Contraction

- Mass/Energy Equivalence

- The Ultimate Speed Limit

- Curved Space

- Expanding Universe

- Space and Gravity

- Superstrings

- M-Branes

- Loop Quantum Cosmology

- The Big Bang

- Black Holes

- Cosmic Background Radiation

- Dark Energy/Matter

- Many Universes

- Holography

- The Illusion of Time

- Nothing

- Everything

 (All of the above will be put into order and told from the point of view of traveling through time and space to see all of this as it unfolds.)

 - What Does It All Mean? (This will cover different interpretations of the science and what some of the philosophical implications might be.)

At the end of the trip, the class arrives just in time for lunch--which is good because zipping through space and time is hungry work!

After school that day, all the kids go off with their parents telling them about their amazing day and how much they love 4th grade and how great their teacher is. One boy named Logan goes to the playground and gets on the swing. As he swings, he sees the sky and the ground and thinks about his day and realizes that he lives in a pretty amazing universe.

The best coauthor
my son Logan is helping me write and illustrate the book. He is making sure that I am explaining everything in a way that kids can understand, and is putting his art talent to work on the illustrations inside the book. (Another student did the great cover image.)