Science is a big deal in our house, it always has been. Growing up on the farm, I was surrounded by basic biology every day. I lived for the annual science competition in high school.

OK, maybe the three-day school-sanctioned vacation to the state competition had a little bit to do with my enthusiasm for that, but at any rate, it motivated me to participate in science labs outside of school hours. In college, I majored in biology, and now, my actual day job is in a scientific field.One of the reasons that I enjoy cooking and baking so much is that the kitchen is the closest thing to a chemistry lab in my house. Trying to understand how things work from the inside out is just part of my nature, and I frequently find myself sucking the kids into impromptu experiments or applying the scientific method to everyday problems.However, there is one law of the universe that I have to take issue with: Newton's third law of motion, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Sir Isaac Newton was many things: an astronomer, a physicist, a mathematician. Many go so far as to call him the father of modern science. He was not, however, a father of actual human children. Even before I looked it up on Wikipedia, I could have told you that.Had he been a parent, he would have known that his third law is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.Let's take the simple example of a light switch. This experiment is an ongoing one in our house. Every day, we start the day with a dark house. Then we wake up the kids. Within seconds, every switch has been turned on. Even in the laundry room, and we all know my kids have absolutely no reason for being in there at all. (Turns out that the laundry room is halfway between the boys' room and the bathroom and apparently, that stretch of hallway gets a little dark, so they HAVE to turn it on.)And that's it. The lights stay on. FOREVER. Or at least until I get the energy to run up and down two flights of stairs to turn them all off. I have begged, pleaded, threatened, ordered, cajoled, written cute notes, offered potential electric bill savings in bribes, you name it. I have come to the conclusion that it is simply impossible for my children to turn off a light switch.Same thing with doors. Car doors, house doors, cupboard doors. Every one of them can be whipped open faster than you can blink. Close them? I get funny looks from my kids when I ask them that. My "favorite" refrigerator came with a "self-closing" door feature. I think it took the kids about two weeks to train the fridge not to "self-close."I guess I can see their point. They're probably going to be going back into that cupboard/fridge/car sometime in the future, so why put a roadblock in their own way. However, I have a small glimmer of hope. I think the boys are about 3 or 4 inches away from discovering why open kitchen cupboard doors can be hazardous to one's head.Had Newton been a parent, he would never have had the time to casually rest under an apple tree, pondering the mysteries of the universe. Heck, he wouldn't even have had time to pee without needing to solve the mystery of why someone's imaginary pet Tyrannosaurs Rex ate someone else's secret candy stash.He would not even have had the chance to snack on an apple, because someone probably would have already taken three bites out of it and put it back in the fruit bowl. Which would have attracted a population of fruit flies. Who knows? With a vast population of fruit flies at his disposal, Newton might have become the father of genetics instead.Now, if you want to talk about the immutable laws of science that are supported by parenthood, there is always the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the universe tends toward disorder. We've been conducting this experiment in every single corner of our lives since 2006, and I have to say, the evidence to support the conclusion is overwhelming.Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.