Path to science?

[Fishteacher73]

We seem to have quite the eclectic group here with vastly diverse interests. Many of us have our Hypography addiction and read and type furriously on the boards. We all seem to have had some hobbies or interests that got us here.


For me, I remember it more clearly than any other memories from that age. (It's actually the only truly lucid and purely tangable memory that I recall from being about 4). My parents had gone over to a friends house and I had gone along. They figured that sticking me infront of the aquarium would be a good spot and keep me happy while they hung out for a bit. That tank was beyond anything I could have fathomed at that age. It was a saltwater tank (which were quite rare in the mid 70's) with a pair of octopi (Which are even reasonably rare today in captivity). I was glued to that tank and had to be forcably removed from the house when my parents wanted to go.

Many years and many, many, many tanks later (Even a few with an octopus) here I am, still in awe of the natural world.


How did you get your passion for science?

[orbsycli]

i was obsessed with dinosaurs and space as a little kid. i was into science projects and as i grew older i learned more and more about these things. now i'm here, still in awe with the natural world.

[Tormod]

My dad used to be the editor of a radio/television mag back in the 70s. When I was about 7 or 8 I got to draw a front cover for them...of Skylab. Later, around 1981, we watched Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" TV series, and for Christmas that year he got me the book, too. That got me hooked.

Since then I have always been interested in all things science. But unlike a lot of other science buffs I actually have very little interest in doing science myself. I was not particularly fond of science classes at school, and I am not the type to catch insects at the local pond.

I read just about everything I can lay my hands on, though - magazines, books, websites. And I love writing about science. I do book reviews for a national radio station in Norway (I actually worked as a science reporter for them for a while before I got my current job) and that gives me a kick - to talk about popular science books live!

And of course, I get a kick out of being at Hypography and seeing how everybody comes up with so many good posts. Sometimes I wish I didn't have all the backstage work to take care of (thanks all mods, jmods, admins and dev team for lessening the burden!) but I really enjoy what this is turning into.

[Turtle]

___The earliest scientifically inspiring experience I recall was watching the American space projects live on TV. Good old Walter Kronkite, hour after hour of experts & models & graphs & explanations. Man it was good!

[Buffy]

Space stuff. Lots of visits to the Planetariums at Griffith Park, California Academy of Sciences in SF, Chabot Observatory in Oakland, and the Hayden in NYC. Aquarium at the Cal Academy. Hands on stuff at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley. All thanks to my *grandmother*. Reading "Goedel, Escher, & Bach" and the Feynman autobiographies. History--which I was a freak for at a very young age--got me interested in the atom bomb which led to interest in physics...

Cheers,
Buffy

[orbsycli]

Planetariums! Oh man I remember those. I went to the mt. lick (sp?) observatory one time, that was the coolest thing ever.

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by Buffy

the Feynman autobiographies.

I didn't even get to read them until a few years ago - was totally ignorant about Feynman. A watershed.

Surely you must be joking.

[C1ay]

I started with this desire to take everything apart and put it back together just to see how it's works. I did this with many of my toys before I even played with them.

[Babbler]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

Planetariums! Oh man I remember those. I went to the mt. lick (sp?) observatory one time, that was the coolest thing ever.

At the Planetarium when my dad took me there, there was a picture of a man FREAZING to death. Scared the hell out of me, so my dad took me out of the Planetarium.

As for the question at hand, I cannot remember in great detail. People said I was smart, and I said was knew alot of thing especially in science, so I believed. Later, I read that sun and univerise is going end; so I shut it out, since its sound scary (this was when I was under 10-12 years old). Later, I going back into it because of an rekindalled interest in the colonization of space, and the fact was doing well in Physical Science. So I got back into the flow of things and accepted the fact that the univerise is going to end.

[pgrmdave]

The earliest I can really remember being interested in science was when I was really young, just asking all kinds of questions.I remember once, I was about four years old, and in the car with my mother and I was asking her all kinds of questions about time and movement. I remember being facscinated with moving my arm. I asked her, "What's the smallest distance I can move my arm?", "How can I measure that?", "If there is a smallest distance I can move it, does that mean that time is in frames, and not 'flowing'?"...of course, there was no way I would've been able to really understand the answers then, if I don't really understand them now.

I don't think I had any "Eureka!" moment when I wanted to do something with science, I was just...always interested in it.