Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for July 21, 1987

Paternity tests are usually given on Maury

Oooh! Just drive that blade home and TWIST, Calvin!

I guess this is why Dad makes up so much BS all the time, Calvin is downright hostile if he admits he doesn’t know something.

Hmmm. Clouds are tiny droplets of water, or even ices. They float because they are so small—and when they stop floating and begin to glom together, they fall as rain or snow. They are white because they reflect the white sunshine pretty well—only they are dark on the bottom (sometimes) or have other weird colors, like yellow-green, well, ummm. . . .

Clouds are made of cotton.

♪Bows and flows of angel hair

    and ice cream castles in the air

♪And feather canyons everywhere,

    I’ve looked at cloud that way.

♪But now they only block the sun,

    they rain and snow on everyone.

♪So many things i would have done

    but clouds got in my way.

♪I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,

♪From up and down, and still somehow

♪It’s cloud illusions i recall.

♪I really don’t know clouds at all.♪

Well, water vapor, and the intermittent space is filled with (give or take a percent) 96% Nitrogen, 3% Oxygen and then less than one percent of Sulfur Dioxide, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Ozone, Helium…

Dad: “Are you saying that I don’t qualify to be your dad? Choose your next response carefully, pal.”

CAUTION: BORING SCIENCE COMMENT

It’s easy. Clouds are suspended water and ice particles, with gasses that makes them float. The color things are, that’s easy too. Everything absorbs some light and reflects some. The sky absorbs all light exempt blue, and reflects blue. Well not entirely. Some colors aren’t in the light spectrum, so some things reflect more than one color of light too. If you mix lots of paint colors, you get brown. It’s the same thing with light. Just mix colors, and if the same exact colors are reflected, you have the same color as the one you just mixed. You could be copying the color of old bronze, which is the Statue of Liberty color. All light starts out as white. I don’t know if ultraviolet, gamma’ or X-ray lights have anything to do with colors, and if they do, then it’s complicated.

Chalk dust from clapping chalkboard erasers.

Maybe there should be.

Remember when Lil Petey in Dog Man kept on asking, “Why?”

Ever since then, Dad kept making things up whenever Calvin asked :P