My daughter just started a new science unit in her 4th grade class. After she explained
it at dinner tonight, I told her a story that I thought I’d share with you.

One day, a farmer got up, got dressed and went outside to the barn. He got out his
tractor and took it out to his alfalfa field, which he needed to plow under after
harvest.

He spent the whole day plowing, and finished the field. He turned his tractor around
at headed for home, but as he reached the edge of the field, it mysteriously stopped.
He backed up, and tried again. And again. No matter what he tried, he could not get
out of the field. He left the tractor and walked home.

The next morning, he got up, called the John Deere repair service, and sat down to
wait. At 10AM, the mechanic arrived, and they walked out to the field. The mechanic
patiently listened to the farmer’s story, shook his head, and started walking away
from the field.

“What are you leaving for?”, said the farmer. “You haven’t fixed it”.

“There’s nothing wrong with the tractor”, the mechanic replied. “You’ve got a magnetic
field there”.

After I told that, my daughter rolled her eyes and went back to eating. She does that
a lot.