Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Garlic Splats - Who Knew?

We recently decided to further study projectile throwing on Whyville - did you know that you can throw stuff at other folk on Whyville? This is a useful practice for 'reaching out and touching someone,' flirting (throwing hearts), and creating elaborate tag-like wars with your friends.

In pursuit of this fascinating topic, I though it would be valuable scholarship to buy some projectiles and throw them. I bought some oldies - blue balloons, mudballs, hearts - and some newies - maggots, garlic, spiders, and christmas lights. Now, some projectiles just stick to your target for a few seconds and disappear - like hearts. But some splat, like mudballs. Much to my delight and utter surprise, garlic splats. Who can explain the delight of throwing a head of garlic at someone and seeing it splat all over their face (see my target practice in the picture above)!

In fact, maggots also splat - a virtual and scintillating mix of body parts and blood.

In contrast, spiders mostly splat blood and little black legs.

Think about all the implications for context specific learning how to throw projectiles on Whyville - who to throw at, what to throw for what purposes, and how to respond when kids say "who did that?!"