How to be a scientist
Last updated: October 5, 2009.
If you could be any famous figure from
history, who would you be? A great politician like George Washington or
Thomas Jefferson? A
stunning writer—William Shakespeare, perhaps, or Mark Twain? A
leader of men like Eisenhower or Sir Winston Churchill? A champion of
civil rights such as Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks? A jazz
musician like Louis Armstrong or Billie Holliday? All these people
achieved greatness in their lifetimes; it'll be a very long time
before any of them are forgotten.
Scientists (and inventors who put science to work) sometimes
achieve similar greatness—who could forget Benjamin Franklin or, in
our own time, the very inspiring Stephen Hawking.
But even scientists whose names are unknown can change
the world in very profound ways. You may not have
heard of a chemist called Wallace Carothers, but chances are your
house is a very different place thanks to his endeavors: he invented
nylon—and his spirit is in everything from your electric toothbrush and your
waterproof coat to your boardshorts and your washing-up bowl! If you
really want to make your mark on the world, becoming a scientist is
one way to do it. But how exactly do you go about it?
Photo: Could you make molecules fly down a tiny
carbon
tube? Courtesy of US Department of Energy.
How to think like a scientist
You might think science is a subject you study in school—and it
is. But it's not like any other subject. It's not a set of facts you
learn—like history. Science is a way of seeing and
thinking about the world around you. It starts with a basic
curiosity: What makes the Sun seem yellow? Why are carrots
cone-shaped? How can flies always tell when you're just about to swat
them? If you want to know more about the world and why it works the
way it does, you're already halfway to being a scientist. If you
approach these questions in a really systematic way—putting forward
theories and testing them out with experiments—you're a little bit
further on again. How about spending your entire life trying to
fathom out the secrets of the world. If that sounds like fun, science
could well be for you!
Photo: One of many displays at the ever-wonderful
Science Museum in London, England.
Photo by courtesy of Gaetan Lee, published on Flickr
under a Creative
Commons License in 2007.
How to read like a scientist
Photo: The Web has made it easier than ever to be
a scientist!
There's an extraordinary idea doing the rounds and it goes like
this:
since the World Wide Web came along, children don't read anymore. Oddly
enough, people said the same thing about radio and television. Well, I
think it's hogwash. My guess is that kids read more now than at
possibly any other time
in history. They may not read quite so many books, but they read an
awful lot of Web pages instead. They read Wikipedia, they read forum
posts, they read what other people say in chat rooms, and they read
what their friends write in emails and instant messages.
When I grew up, back in the last century (ho ho), there was no
Internet or Web. If I wanted to find out about science, I had to trek
several miles to the local library and read
books on the shelves that were sometimes 20 or 30 years out of date.
Today, you can type anything at all into a Google search box and be
reading the most bang-up-to-date information in seconds. It's never
been easier to find out what's happening in the world of science or to
take part yourself.
Want to know what's going on in the scientific world and what the
next technological breakthroughs are likely to be? Try
these sites for size:
- Howstuffworks:
The original and best how-it-works website.
- NASA Explores:
Lots of material for students from the folks at NASA.
- The
Naked Scientists: A friendly site that strips away the dullness and
makes science fun again.
- Steve
Spangler's Science: Here's an adult who really knows how to make
science fun for kids.
- How Products are
Made: This huge collection of articles covers just about everything
from air bags to temporary tattoos.
- Encyclopedia Smithsonian: Trust the Smithsonian to
provide such a superb collection of science and technology articles!
- Planet
Science: Fun and resources for under 11s and their parents.
- How
Things Work: Louis A. Bloomfield tells us all about the physics of
everyday life (it's a Web companion to his popular science books).
- Fear of
Physics: One of the harder sciences, physics, is explained here
with lots of computer graphics and animations.
- Students'
Classroom: This great site from the National Center for Educational
Statistics helps you with the maths behind science. It includes a
brilliant
create
a graph site to help you graph results from experiments and
coursework.
- Cocktail
Party Physics: Physics with a Twist: This great physics blog is by
Jennifer Ouellette.
- Youth Science Centre: Promoting science to young people for over four decadess.
Another great way to follow progress is through online science
magazines and shows. Here are some of the ones I follow regularly:
If it's inventions that really grab you, take a look at these sites:
How to go back to the future
The online world is still a very new thing and it's far from the
only place to discover
what science is all about. Before we had websites, science museums were
the best places to find out about science and technology. Unlike other
museums, which are firmly rooted in the past, science museums have one
foot in the future as well! A trip to a science museum is a brilliant
way to inspire yourself through the past, present, and future of
science. Here are a few of my favorites:
- American
Museum of Photography: The story of how photography developed.
- Chemical Achievers: Think chemistry's boring? Find
out about some of the people who built our modern world—literally, from
the elements!
- Computer
History Museum: The world's biggest museum of computers.
- IEEE
Virtual Museum: Lots of history of communications technology.
- MOSI (Museum of
Science and Industry): There's lots to see at the fabulous science museum in Tampa, Florida,
which has its own planetarium, an IMAX® movie theatre, and lots more.
- Natural History
Museum, London, England: Dinosaurs, bugs, and all kinds of other living stuff.
- New York Hall
of Science:
- Nobel E-Museum:
Find out more about the world's greatest scientists: the Nobel Prize
winners.
- Singapore
Science Centre: Gotta love science!
- London
Science Museum: England's prestigious science museum is in
Kensington, London.
- Think Tank: The ultra-modern science museum in Birmingham, England has over 200 hands-on displays and exhibits.
But don't think for a moment that science and technology is something locked away in museums—it's
all around us, all the time. There are lots of great places that
have fascinating connections to the inventions and discoveries that shaped our world.
Want to know more? Check out John Graham-Cumming's brilliant book and website called
The Geek Atlas.
Photo: The Geek Atlas: At last, a travel book for people who love science and technology! It's published by O'Reilly Media.
Science as a hobby: how to be an armchair scientist
It's never been easier to take part in science, no matter what age
you are.
You can hook your computer up to all kinds of online experiments such
as SETI@home,
FightAIDSatHome,
and
ClimatePrediction.Net—and,
in a matter of minutes, you can be part of some of the world's most
exciting, cutting-edge science. Or you could try some of the zillions
of home-science experiments and hobbies in the sites listed on our science activities page.
Photo: The model I'm running for Climateprediction.net
to help scientists understand global warming. Over 47,000 computers in
the world are helping to "number crunch" climate data for the project.
One thing scientists do is talk to other scientists. Scientists
aren't like polar explorers: they're not making solitary journeys for
fame and fortune. Okay, perhaps some of them are doing exactly
that—but every scientist is also part of a much wider effort to bust
the secrets of the world wide open. Want to know why something you've
discovered
is so weird and intriguing? Ask a scientist! And you can ask a
scientist
on all kinds of superb online forums. Here are just a few you can
check out:
Why be a scientist?
Photo: Not all famous scientists are "dead white
guys".
George Washington Carver (1864?–1943) was a pioneer of 20th-century
biotechnology. Photo courtesy of US
Library of Congress.
What are the biggest problems society will have to tackle in the
21st century? There's world poverty. There are illnesses like AIDS
and cancer. There's climate change,
of course. And what about producing enough cheap food and energy for the world's ever-growing population?
Who's going to solve all these horribly daunting
problems? Yes, politicians and world leaders will have a big part to
play. Yes, businesses will need to generate the economic wealth to
pay for some of these things. But who's going to make a really big
difference to something like AIDS or climate change? I think it's
going to be a scientist or an inventor who takes some new bit of
science and turns it into an important new technology. And maybe it
could be you.
If you like thinking about the world around you, why not
become a scientist? It doesn't mean you have to wear a white coat and
thick plastic glasses and spend all your time in a lab! Scientists do
all kinds of amazing things that you might not realize are actually
scientific! Forensic scientists,
for example, work with the police to find microscopic clues that bust
criminals and their
crimes. There are scientists working with the military to develop not
just new weapons but new military technologies that could help make
wars obsolete. Scientists work in schools and colleges—as the
teachers and professors who will train tomorrow's scientists.
Scientists even
wear suits and work on Wall Street, signing business deals that back
the fledgling companies turning science and technology into big, fat
profit! Think of any job you like and you'll find a scientist not far
away. Maybe you like cooking? You could be a food technologist helping
to keep fruit and vegetables fresher for long. Perhaps sport's your
thing? Do you
know that most top athletes work with sports scientists in a constant
quest to improve their performance. You could even be—and, hey, who
am I to recommend this?—the science writer who gets to spend his or
her life reading up on the latest advances and sharing them with the
world.
Looking for something to do for the rest of your life? My advice?
Take a long, hard look at science. It's fun, it's interesting, and
it's ever-changing. I love it! I hope you will too.
Photo: Could you make a breakthrough that helps
to feed a hungry world?
Photo by courtesy of NASA Kennedy Space Center (NASA-KSC).
Careers in science
Here are some sites that will tell you more about working in
science. If you know any more sites along these lines, please do let us know!
