That was a very interesting post, doubly so with discussion, and yet I got a feeling that somewhere along the way the discussion got sidetracked, or at least narrowed in focus. I would like to hear your thoughts on the question like ‘why aren’t more smart young people attracted to physics’, if your personal experience makes it the obvious choice.
(My own choosing biology had more to do with the way it was taught in high school. Yes, there was lots of stuff to memorize, but after the lessons ended for the day, people who wanted more could go to our teacher and spend hours discussing it and just socializing. He let us feed his snakes and keep ‘records of their lives’ - and we felt more like real scientists than when we had to do some lab work in physics class, where you have limited time and your results matter for your grades...but aren’t immediately useful, not in such engaging way. We talked about decaying and mummifying, and it was grounded in physics and organic chemistry. We talked about social insects, and it was (sci-fi) testable—so much more than measuring things we learned about in physics. We counted white blood cells on slides and worried about seeing too many eosinophiles, because it was his blood… The rest of our teachers could not achieve that level of awesome.)
Than again, we were not the smartest kids in school, just some of the smarter ones.
That was a very interesting post, doubly so with discussion, and yet I got a feeling that somewhere along the way the discussion got sidetracked, or at least narrowed in focus. I would like to hear your thoughts on the question like ‘why aren’t more smart young people attracted to physics’, if your personal experience makes it the obvious choice.
(My own choosing biology had more to do with the way it was taught in high school. Yes, there was lots of stuff to memorize, but after the lessons ended for the day, people who wanted more could go to our teacher and spend hours discussing it and just socializing. He let us feed his snakes and keep ‘records of their lives’ - and we felt more like real scientists than when we had to do some lab work in physics class, where you have limited time and your results matter for your grades...but aren’t immediately useful, not in such engaging way. We talked about decaying and mummifying, and it was grounded in physics and organic chemistry. We talked about social insects, and it was (sci-fi) testable—so much more than measuring things we learned about in physics. We counted white blood cells on slides and worried about seeing too many eosinophiles, because it was his blood… The rest of our teachers could not achieve that level of awesome.)
Than again, we were not the smartest kids in school, just some of the smarter ones.