We were talking about ear wax, and he asked “what is wax?” I gave him examples like candles and beeswax, but he hasn’t really observed enough of those things for the examples to help.
In: Engineering
It’s a type of substance, like how “clay”, “liquid”, “stone”, “wood”, etc. are substances.
All substances have qualities, like wood and stone are hard. Liquid moves really easily and takes the shape of its container. Clay doesn’t move as easily as liquid but it can still pretty easily change shape. Wood can burn, while stone cannot. You can cut wood with a saw. You need a very special saw to cut stone. You can cut clay with lots of things. You can’t cut liquid because anything saw-like would just pass through it.
Wax usually feels kinda soft to the touch – softer than stone, at least. It gets softer when you heat it up, and if it gets hot enough it’ll turn into a liquid. (Don’t touch it when it’s liquid! It’ll burn you!) As it gets warmer, it becomes shapeable like clay. When it’s cool, it will feel harder and keep its shape. It can also burn like wood, which is why it’s used to make candles.
Inside their hive, bees make containers out of wax and use it to store honey or eggs. We make candles out of wax. You can use thin amounts of wax to seal up things or make things shiny.
Our ears use wax to trap stuff like dirt and dust and push it out of the ear. Our earwax is very soft and a bit sticky, so it’s good at trapping things like that. Our body keeps making more and more earwax so it’ll slowly push the older wax out of the ear, along with everything it trapped. You don’t usually notice this happening because it’s so slow. You don’t usually need to take the wax out of your ear yourself – it’ll come out on its own when it’s ready.
We do not use our earwax for any jobs like candles or sealing jars. We use other types of wax for that.
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