Discussing Deep and Deeper

The girls had dug a depression in the sand to attract the water that flowed from our cast iron water pump, then dammed it off to create a pool of their own.

One of them asserted, "It's deep."

The other replied, "It's not so deep." She stuck the blade of a shovel into the water, "See? It's just half a shovel."

"But look," her playmate responded, sticking her hand into the water, "it covers my whole hand."

"It's as deep as your hand, but only half as deep as the shovel."

"Yeah . . . But look!" She bent her wrist so that her palm now lay at the bottom of the water, "If I do it like this, it comes part way up my arm!"

"That's pretty deep."

"But if I hold my hand like this," she continued, bending her wrist so that only her fingertips touched the bottom, "It only covers my hand."

They messed with the water in silence for a moment, then, "We should make it deeper."

"How can we do that?"

"Maybe if we open our dam right here, we can let water in, but if we keep the other side closed, the water won't get out on that side." With that she knocked down a small section of their dam. The water flowed in as she had predicted. "Hey! See? It's coming in here, but not going out there."

"And it's getting deeper! Look, now it covers my whole hand."

"And it covers more than half of the shovel."

"Let's close it now." They closed off their dam, capturing the water inside their hole.

"Maybe we should make our hole bigger."

"We could, but if we make it wider it won't be deep any more."

"But if we make it bigger up and down, then it will be deeper. Way deeper."

They got to work digging, removing sand from the bottom of their hole. After several minutes of silent work, "Hey, it's not deeper. Look it's just less than half the shovel."

"And it doesn't cover my hand any more, either."

"I think some of the water sunk down in the sand."

"Yeah, because we were digging deeper, the water went deeper."

"We need to open up the dam for more water." They breeched their dam to let it fill. They stood leaning on their shovels as their hole filled, then without speaking blocked it again.

"It's deep now."

"Yeah, really deep."

"We could make it deeper."

"I know!"

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