h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How big a part does the thought and idea of science play in your life? How much do you value it? Do you think about it a lot, occasionally? or never? Do you work in science, or a science related job?

I thought about it a fair amount as a kid and read books on evolution, fossils, birds plants etc. I loved using my microscope and playing with my chemistry set, but like most people I had plenty of other interests as well eg sport and reading fiction.

Nowadays it's much the same, eg I watch programmes on telly with a science basis, read articles on its discoveries, enjoy discussions with people. Sometimes I think about it a bit eg the invention of medicines and sometimes I take it for granted, like the fact of being able to use my computer, being able to rely on energy for heating or driving my car. Often, I don't give it a second thought, eg like when I'm cooking, gardening, shooting some video etc even though its ideas probably underpin what I'm able to do.

And in terms of human relationships I never think about it at all.

Not much chemistry in you relationships then?

B

No not at present unfortunately.

All the time... I've spent most of my adult life at least 'doing science', two years A levels, 3 years BSc, 1 year *cought* and a bit doing a MSc, and regularly get called on by friends and family when it comes to anything medical happening in their life to explain the misinformation they're exposed to by Doctors and in the media And I've worked in Financial services/sales and then computing, go figure
Although a obsessive amount of time is spent considering human reproduction and digestion..... which arn't necessarily mutually exclusive

I think of Science regularly having, like 2legs, spent all my education studying it and still, to an extent, do so today, and I am still fascinated.

The one aspect I think of most? The conversion of sugar, malt, hops and barley into CH3CH2OH (ethanol), CO2 and which is pure Alchemy!

MMF

Well I'm a scientist (of sorts) so I think about science a lot and value it pretty highly. I tend towards thinking of it as humanity's single greatest achievement but recently I've been wondering if maybe engineering is more significant than science. I don't actually read that much about science outside my field because I don't trust the reporting on it from my experiences of science journalists writing about my own field.

You mentioned that you don't think about science when you're cooking, and mostly I don't but actually it's quite a good way to improve your cooking to understand the science behind it. I guess the same would go for gardening, but I don't know anything about that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlHgbOWj4o

it works against the god botherers

Thinking about science is I think something we all kinda do without thinking we are a lot... err.... E.G., I'm in the kitchen slicing up some cheese and bread, and get out a to go in, bit of black pepper and I'd be thinking without realising it about balancin out food sorts and such like in relation to what I'd already eaten ... Which is at least subconsciously kinda thinking about nutrition and suchlike.....
Later on, on teh computer, working on an audio clip, altering the compression settings, which is applied mathmatics I guess and well, thats basically physics I guess, waves, mathmatics, etc...
At the supermarket, or listening to the TV adds, and I'm constantly yelling at them for their 'bad science', of a kind of 'Contains hairosilkins- making hair up to 100% more silky', and such like, which drive me mad.... A particularly bad example was a clearly invented/made up thing on a baby-milk add on TV over Xmas I saw
Just showered... noticing my heels have cracked again on my feet, and its time to get the foot-grater thing out... and without realising I'd probably immidiately draw to mind that this is the thickest area of skin on the human body normally, I seem to recall '7' as a number, seven layers... its been a while since I did any stuff on skin at Uni

I don't think about science much. Science explains stuff. I'd rather enjoy the stuff that science explains than think about the science.

*the above might not be strictly true*

I think about science less than I used to, actually. I used to spend more time reading popular science books on all sorts of topics. And a few less popular, more technical. I really ought to get back to it. I could start, I suppose, with getting back to Ben Goldacre's blog.

I have a degree in chemistry, but am working in web design. It's shocking, how much I've forgotten.

TRiG.

I agree with Roymondo. I constantly wonder in amazement at how wonderful the universe is, how well life has evolved to fit the thousands of niches there are, how amazing it is that the universe is 15bn years old, how we can explain the behaviour of 90-odd elements and millions of molecules, how the sun is basically is pressurised nuclear reactor, and how utterly mind-blowing it is that babies make you love them, without giving a crap about the methodology that underscores it all.

In a way science is boring. The totality of what is, though, will always be fascinating and worthy of total respect and wonder. The methodology of how we know some of this isn't.

So Trig, no Science there then?

Fractals? Colour balance? Perspective? Space versus time equations?

My preferred quote, used regularly, is when someone bumps into me.

"So you never studied Physics then? Never heard the rule about 'two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time'?"

It does cause some confusion, but UI can't remember which law it is!

MMF

"two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time'?"

That does my head in something proper. That something can be in two places at once properly shreds my head.

Ain't physics great?

But.... both beer and kebab can occupy teh same space at the same time.... and then later on be in two places at once

I kinda like science, but only kinda... Author Philip Pullman wrote something along the lines of "Although I like science, I am not fundamentally a scientist. I do not love science for its own sake, but for the stories I can tell that involve scientific discoveries." This is a) poorly quoted from memory and b) a bit like the way I feel about science. It is interesting and fascinating, but as soon as the horribly complicated details are explained, my head goes "yaddayaddayadda".

I love some of the ideas arising from quantum physics - entanglement, multiple universes, compactified dimensions. But I love them because it fills me with a sense of wonder. I would never be interested enough to really go into detail or try to understand the details (like, how do you actually make an atom spit out two entangled electrons, and how do you measure it that when one of them is later horizontally polarized, the other becomes instantly vertically polarized. I like how strange this is because it is strange. I would not try to understand how this works - maybe because it would no longer feel so strange?)

Y.

Yes Dogster I sometimes think about cooking and gardening to a degree in a scientific way because I know that can be useful as it for sure underlies stuff like eg a certain temperature results in the best chips and it's best to use a thermometer in the oil...but I just can't be bothered to think about it most of the time in that setting. I just know if you do xy and z this gets the best results without understanding the science in any detail

And eg in gardening certain plants need certain chemicals to flourish properly, but I just mostly tend to chuck a load of compost I make myself throughout the year, say on the tomato plants, and that does the trick. I'm just not bothered by thinking in great detail about the percentages of phosphates, nitrates etc in that setting to maximise the flavour and cropping. I like the fun side of being a gardener in a bit of an old fashioned way.

Were I a farmer though I would certainly concentrate much more fully on the underlying science. It would become much more relevant to making me a good farmer. But I'm not relying on making my living from plant production as I'm not a professional chef.

How big a part does the thought and idea of science play in your life?

A big part.

How much do you value it?

I value it very highly.

Do you think about it a lot, occasionally? or never?

A lot because...

Do you work in science, or a science related job?

It's my job - I'm a lecturer/researcher in organic chemistry - specifically what they now call Chemical Biology (was bioorganic chemistry for a while and simply a part of organic chemistry before the powers that be decided everything needed relabelling)


>I thought about it a fair amount as a kid and read books on evolution, fossils, birds plants etc. I loved using my microscope and playing with my chemistry set, but like most people I had plenty of other interests as well eg sport and reading fiction.<<

Same here - oddly enough I still do have interests outside it. But the difference is, it is my calling - from an early age (less than 10) I knew I was very good at it and that is self-reinforcing. being good at it encourages further interest and you get better etc.

Knowing how stuff works and applying it (essentially what science is) - is pretty damn cool I reckon.

I love science and think about it and use it alot.

I had really crap science classes at high school (my biology teacher left out the bit about evolutionary theory, and my fifth form science teacher's idea of 'teaching' was to make us copy everything by rote off the blackboard), so I often feel like my adulthood has been about redressing that. I can imagine how cool it would have been to have been taught science really well. I did some health science training in the early 90s but mostly I've just gone and read stuff or asked people to find out how it works.

Unlike many here, I don't see science as the pinnacle of human knowledge. For me it's one way of understanding the world, and there are times when it's very useful, but I have other ways of understanding the world that are just as, or more, important.

That's why I find some of the convos here challenging, because so many people see the world through science in a much more complete way. I think there is definitely a place for that, eg we need specialists in hard science and I suspect that you can't be that unless Science is the way, but it does concern me alot that culturally we often hold science as the Truth when it's not. It's a tool.

It also bothers me that science has been co-opted and corrupted by commerce so much. And that people think it is largely infallible.

So, as some of you know I like talking and thinking about what science is and isn't, as much as how it explains the world.


Most of the science I read now is about biology - either human health, or environmental health, and the sciences I need to understand in order to understand those. Unfortunately both those aspects of science can be hugely depressing in the context of the politics and the bullshit being done. But there is still the core stuff that is pure eg how a nerve cell works is independant from the politics (well almost).

I also really like finding the places where science meets other bodies of knowledge. Eg neuroscience is finding out rational ways of talking about stuff that eastern spiritual traditions have been doing for millennia. I think this is a good thing, very exciting.

I s'pose I spend most of my time reading and thinking about Science.

I was inspired by one of my older brothers. I am the middle one of 6. My eldest brother went to secondary moderm school and my next eldest brother (10 years older than me)went to grammar school and then on to university to read chemistry. I was always fascinated by his practical write-ups which were meticulous with very accurate and neat hand-drawn diagrams of apparatus etc. He also had a cemistry set and microscope and biological slides etc,which I inherited

I went to secondary modern school where they only taught biology and physics - not chemistry. So, I persuaded them to send me to the College of F.E. so study for Chemistry 'O' Level. I failed this first time around, and also my poor mathematics at this age allowed me to get only a CSE Grade 4 in maths and a CSE Grade 3 in physics. Consequently I left school with 'O' Levels only in Biology and English Language, and CSE Grade 1` in Human Biology. (I don't bother listing the CSEs lower than Grade 1. I was then fortunate to get my first job as a'Juvenile Experimental Worker' (aka 'bottle washer') with the Ministry of Defence. While there, they paid me to attend Day Release classes where I retrieved 'O' Levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry. I then transferred to a different college where I obtained ONC in Physical Sciences (Maths, Physics, Chemistry) and HNC in Chemistry. I then transferred to a Polytechnic to do Graduateship of the Royal Society of Chemistry and then to University to do an MSc in Biochemistry. All this was paid for by HM Government after I'd left school. All the while, I was trying to be like my older brother.
At wortk I progressed through the ranks to finish as a Senior Scientist working on the development of new virus vaccines.
At this time, my work was my hobby, so I was cominh home and reading New Scientist, Scientific America, Nature etc, and watchng the science strand programmes on TV (e.g.); so I wasn't distinguishing between my home life and my professional life.

Unfortunately, when I left to become a teacher, I carried on like this for a good while, and suddenly realised that I was spending every evening and weekend preparing and marking work . In fact, to my consternation I realised that, as a student, I'd been working far harder than my teachers/lecturers and, perversely, as a teacher/lecturer, I was still working far harder than my students. This seems to be because modern day students seem to expect everything to be presented to them 'on a plate', and that teachers should be preparing them to pass exams - not actually teaching them the subject. i.e. They want to be 'passive learners'. I've lost count of the number of times students have asked me to leave the interesting topic I was telling them, pertinent to the day's news, and just teach them what's on the syllabus. All they seem to be interested in is receiving sufficient information to pass their exams. This is the damage that 'League Tables' has done. League Tables are also distorting issues pertaining to the NHS

Anyway, much of the interest in science comers from being able to achieve greater understanding of the world about us by fitting existing knowledge into patterns (e.g. Periodic Table, electromagnetic spectrum, biological keys etc etc). Once you have these bases it is possible to fit in new experiences, phenomena etc etc, to make more sense of them.

I've been having fun this week with my 6 year old grandson. He is fascinated by the fact that, by rubbing balloons on his hair we can mnake them stick to the ceiling. He also likes cooking, whih enables us to discuss phenomena like dissolving, why cakes go solid when cooked eytc etc.

At least your class want to be taught the syllabus! The majority of mine don't even care about that...

B