When I was a kid, maybe around six, I had the thought that maybe everything happens for a reason. I told that to my mom and she was stunned that a child would have such insight.
When I was in the fourth grade, I came up with a scheme that would surely produce perpetual motion. It used gears to create increasingly fast circular momentum which would power a generator that would power the original gear. My dad, an engineer, was surprised at the ingenuity and encouraged me to pursue it.
But obviously, things do not happen for a reason; what would that even mean to be true? Preordainment is not a thing.
And obviously, the very first law of thermodynamics prohibits my scheme. Perpetual motion is right up there with alchemy in terms of desirable but impossible feats.
I wish someone had corrected me then instead of encouraging my idiocy so that I could have steered my thinking in the right direction.
