--- title: Calvin and Hobbes Dad explains science date: "2007-05-04T12:00:00Z" lastmod: "2022-02-02T07:50:10Z" categories: - funny wp_id: 83 --- ![Calvin and Hobbes Dad explains science](/blog/assets/Calvin-Dad-Explains-Science.webp) My second most favourite series from [Calvin and Hobbes](/calvin/), where Dad teaches Calvin the wonders of science. ![How do they know the load limit on bridges Dad? They drive bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks. Then they weigh the last truck and rebuild the bridge. Oh. I should've guessed. Dear, if you don't know the answer. Just tell him!](http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1986/ch861126.gif) ![Why does the sky turn red as the sun sets? That's all the oxygen in the atmosphere catching fire. Where does the sun go when it sets? The sun sets in the west. In Arizona actually, near flagstaff. Oh. That's why the rocks there are so red. Don't the people get burned up? No, the sun goes out as it sets. That's why it's dark at night. Doesn't the sun crush the whole state when it lands? Ha ha, of course not. Hold a quarter up. See, the sun's just about the same size. I thought I read that the sun was really big. You can't believe everything you read, I'm afraid. So how does the sun rise in the east if it lands in Arizona each night? Well, time for bed. I hope someday I'm as smart as Dad is. Why, what did he tell you now?](http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1989/ch890730.gif) ![Dad, will you explain the theory of relativity to me? I don't understand why time goes slower at great speed. It's because you keep changing time zones. See, if you fly to California, you gain three hours on a five-hour flight, right? So if you go at the speed of light, you gain MORE time, because it doesn't take as long to get there. Of course, the theory of relativity works only if you're going west. Gee, that's not what Mom said at ALL! She must be totally off her rocker. Well, we men are better at abstract reasoning. Go tell her that.](http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1990/ch900413.gif) ![How do bank machines work, Dad? Well, let's say you wwant 25 dollars. You punch in the amount... and behind the machine, there's a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot. Sort of like the huy who lives up in our garage and opens the door? Exactly.](http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1992/ch921126.gif) ![Why does ice float? Because it's cold. Ice wants to get warm, so it goes on top of liquids in order to be nearer to the sun. Is that true? Look it up and find out. I should just look stuff up in the first place. You can learn a lot, talking to me.](http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1995/ch950617.gif) ![Wow, honey, you're missing a beautiful sunset out here. I'll count to 10, and then... POW! Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then? Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs ARE in color. It's just that the WORLD was black and white then. Really? Yep. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too. That's really weird. Well, truth is stranger than fiction. But then why are old PAINTINGS in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted it that way? Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane. But... but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn't their paints have been shades of gray back then? Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s. So why didn't old black and white photos turn color too? Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember? The world is a complicated place, Hobbes. Whenever it seems that way, I take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner.](http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1993/ch930919.gif) --- ## Comments - **Joe** _24 Oct 2008 5:56 am_: Awesome!\ \ I always love this strip! - **Elizabeth** _21 Dec 2008 12:51 pm_: Dad's know EVERYTHING. XD - **Josh** _23 Feb 2009 11:26 pm_: ha ha - I love this strip. he should return!! - **Frankie** _17 Jun 2009 5:07 pm_: Absolutely true! And I remember when you actually carried out the last frame of comic strip #3. Now...let's go build some crazy snowmen! - **domenico** _23 Jul 2009 3:16 am_: I have always been a fan of this strip... - **domenico** _23 Jul 2009 3:17 am_: Sounds like me explaining stuff to my kids when they were growing up...I don't know how they got so screwed up... - **RaGe** _13 Aug 2009 2:50 pm_: Got the one about black and white photos and the world being black and white? R - **Nethra** _1 Sep 2009 10:42 am_: Awesome! - **[The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net](http://www.s-anand.net/blog/the-calvin-and-hobbes-search-takedown/)** _21 May 2010 11:56 am_ _(pingback)_: [...] able to do a lot of cool stuff with this, like statistically improbable phrases and some amusing posts as [...] - **Blake** _4 Aug 2010 4:41 pm_: You're missing the one time Dad gets it right. He explains a fact about two points on a record and Calvin is scared out of his mind. - **Daren** _7 Nov 2010 11:09 am_: "Where does wind come from?" "Trees sneezing." - **[New Subreddit: Explain It Like I’m Calvin | Slacktory | The only site on the internet.](http://slacktory.com/2011/09/new-subreddit-explain-it-like-im-calvin/)** _22 Sep 2011 8:47 pm_ _(pingback)_: [...] the canonical answers from the actual comic here. And then go make up some answers for the current questions at [...] - **[Don Wood](http://www.suncoastclaims.com)** _6 Jun 2012 7:10 pm_: All four of my sons grew up with Calvin and Hobbs. That explains everything. - **Paddy** _23 May 2012 5:12 pm_: Thanks, I've been looking for the B&W world strip for ages, and now not only did I find it here, you've collected strips from one of my favorite themes from C&H! Thank you! - A dad maybe a bit too much like Calvin's - **Anjali** _14 Apr 2012 1:33 pm_: Ha, brilliant!! My favourite strip of all time. - **[Saturday 6.25.11 « Crossfit South Bend blog](http://brandon83.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/saturday-6-25-11/)** _25 Jun 2011 12:01 am_ _(pingback)_: [...] Calvin’s father explains science [...] - **Dave** _30 Jan 2012 8:35 am_: I've got to say, I have based some of my parenting from what I learned in C\*H. Unfortunately, I've also taught my daughter to question things that don't seem right. And she does, she definitely does. - **Judy H** _23 Feb 2012 7:37 am_: I just remembered how I found your blog. I Googled "Calvin and Hobbes Bridge Load Limit", this being my favorite C & H strip, and up popped your site. Lucky me! I pinned the strip to "Pinterest", my newest favorite website, and that links me (and other folks who follow me on Pinterst) back to your site. Cool. I'm in California, BTW. Judy - **[If I could find words* « Mon Tout Petit Montréal](http://montoutpetitmontreal.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/if-i-could-find-words/)** _24 Oct 2012 7:20 pm_ _(pingback)_: [...] je songe à écrire un livre qui se nommera « Etymologie et linguistique pour le papa de Calvin« ) copyright : [...] - **[James Robert Smith](http://www.jamesrobertsmith.net)** _8 Dec 2012 4:34 pm_: I had completely forgotten that Calvin's dad was a total asshole! - **[From the mouths of babes and sucklings – technology and toddlers «](http://escape-velocity-blog.com/2012/11/28/from-the-mouths-of-babes-and-sucklings-technology-and-toddlers/)** _28 Nov 2012 4:03 pm_ _(pingback)_: [...] of entertaining myself by warping his mind with made-up answers the way Calvin’s dad does (for examples, see this link), I tried to answer his questions as simply and logically as possible. However, reality is often [...] - **[Why I’m Not Allowed to Have Children | Fangs and Clause](http://fangsandclause.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/why-im-not-allowed-to-have-children/)** _28 Aug 2013 4:35 pm_ _(pingback)_: [...] I like to call this the Calvin’s Dad School of Parenting. [...] - **[The insidious costs of disability for spoonies | Nourish Creativity](http://66.147.244.99/~sandran3/creativity/2012/01/13/the-insidious-costs-of-disability-for-spoonies/)** _31 Jan 2013 12:47 pm_ _(pingback)_: [...] I think about this, I am reminded of this Calvin and Hobbes strip: http://www.s-anand.net/blog/calvin-and-hobbes-dad-explains-science/ I live my life kind of like Calvin’s dad imagines civil engineers determine weight limits: I [...] - **[Samuel](http://kahran042.livejournal.com)** _1 Mar 2013 8:57 am_: Confession time: when I was younger, I actually believed Calvin's dad's story about how the world used to be black-and-white. - **[Minivans Are Hot | The Father to His Calvin](http://minivansarehot.com/2013/05/the-father-to-his-calvin/)** _16 May 2013 1:19 pm_ _(pingback)_: [...] Image Credit [...] - **[Calvin and his dad | ENGL388](http://bartbeaty.ucalgaryblogs.ca/2013/04/15/calvin-and-his-dad/)** _16 Apr 2013 3:17 am_ _(pingback)_: [...] http://www.s-anand.net/blog/calvin-and-hobbes-dad-explains-science/ [...] - **[Magic | Idle Log](http://idlelog.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/magic/)** _8 Sep 2014 6:43 pm_ _(pingback)_: […] of explanations on children. Bill Watterson satirizes it with Calvin’s dad, and it’s hilarious. Enjoy. It wouldn’t bother me much, but Liam was not asking very complicated questions. He wanted to […] - **[Dad, does the moon like me? | Just In Words](http://justinwords.com/2016/02/18/dad-does-the-moon-like-me/)** _18 Feb 2016 3:49 am_ _(pingback)_: […] One morning, after a full moon, the moon was clearly visible in the morning sky. I pointed it out to him. As we continued to drive, he noticed that the moon appeared to “follow” us — it basically stayed in the same spot in the sky as we drove along. “Dad, the moon’s following me…. Dad, does the moon like me?” My son clearly thought that the moon was following him and that therefore it only made sense that the moon liked him. At that moment I had a decision to make, I could explain to my son that the moon really wasn’t following us at all it just appears that way because the moon is 238,900 miles away and that at that distance, the angle between where we are and the moon would change so negligibly that it would only appear that the moon was following us; or I could lie, agree with him, and not shatter this adorable sense of self-Ptolemaic importance, somewhat like Calvin’s dad in these Calvin and Hobbes Comics. […] - **Kaushik Banerjee** _12 Nov 2017 5:22 am_: Amazing alternative explanations . Why not, even scientists and everybody once knew that the Sun goes round the earth. - **[Hilariously Untrue Dad 'Facts' Part 1: Brought to You by the Father from 'Calvin & Hobbes'](http://naturalpapa.com/parenting/hilariously-untrue-dad-facts-part-1-brought-father-calvin-hobbes/)** _23 Jan 2018 10:25 pm_ _(pingback)_: […] collected some of Calvin’s father’s most sagely wisdom for you to try on for […] - **[Why does JNDI return a DataSource with a NULL uri instead of a lookup failure? - Tutorial Guruji](https://www.tutorialguruji.com/java/why-does-jndi-return-a-datasource-with-a-null-uri-instead-of-a-lookup-failure/)** _13 Aug 2021 7:55 am_ _(pingback)_: […] Why did lookup create a useless BasicDataSource with a null URL? Is there a better way to detect if a JNDI name ‘doesn’t exist’ than to try using it and see if it blows up? That approach reminds me of how they test bridges. […] - **[70 Posts From ‘The Dad’ That Perfectly Encapsulate Parenthood - Success Life Lounge](https://www.successlifelounge.com/70-posts-from-the-dad-that-perfectly-encapsulate-parenthood/)** _18 Oct 2023 12:55 pm_ _(pingback)_: […] fathers is to simply make things up, perhaps most famously, the dad in “Calvin and Hobbes,” whose hair-brained explanations for curious Calvin work as a pretty effective punchline. Instead of rolling their eyes, true […]