The Waggle Dance

It seemed like a simple enough homework problem: given a fixed position of flowers and two known positions of the sun, describe the waggle dance a bee would perform. I mean, bees can manage it, I would think us homo facebookus would be able to manage it, too.

two hours later, we were no closer to the solution. We had tried two dimensional drawings. we had tried three dimensional model layouts. We scaled up the problem to include a cast of actors:

• My Lovely Daughter, performing the role of the Waggling Bee
• Suckup Dog, performing the role of the flowers because he got some people food for dinner and was both fragrant and immobile
• Yours truly, performing as the sun, moving across the sky and eventually out of the house in order to set properly
• Eldest Son, in the role of Omniscient Observer Who Is Cranky And Stressed Out That He Can’t Play Minecraft Because He Has To Do This Stupid Bee Assignment And Everyone In The Class Was Going To Get It Right But Him
• Mrs. Nostrikethat, representing herself, trying hard not to pee her pants

Even Wikipedia was of no particular help, in large part because the diagram had a Greek letter on it, and I didn’t know what that meant, and because Eldest Son was convinced that whatever I said was stupid.

I’m not making this stuff up, folks.