Science Tuesday

I had to do a 300-mile drive alone this weekend. In anticipation of this event, I loaded my mp3 player with more than enough podcasts to fill the six hours. As I was thinking about the ones I had chosen to download and which ones were my favorites to listen to, I made an amazing discovery:

I like science.

Let me explain: When I was in high school, I was one of those kids who didn’t really have to work very hard to do well. I paid attention in class and did my homework, and this level of effort served me well—except in science. I had a devil of a time understanding moles in Chemistry (not the small rodents), and my Physics class was tainted by a teacher who reminded me of Roseanne Barr and spent entirely too much time asking us, “Isn’t it?” It never seemed like she was asking in an “Are-you-with-me?” kind of way; more like an “I-don’t-know-and-need-reassurance” kind of way. I worked harder in those classes and got lower grades than my others. Science to me meant confusion, difficult concepts and formulas, and grades that were not good for my self-esteem (which was built largely on my grades).

I have been realizing in my adult life, however, that science transcends all that. (Does that sound too lofty?) Now science means astonishing, incredible, wonderful. How much we know (the collective “we,” of course), and how much we don’t know.

There were two podcasts in particular that were part of my epiphany. One is Brain Food. It is done by a Canadian college student. One of the episodes I listened to addressed both "Is air conditioning or having the windows down better for gas mileage?" and observational evidence for black holes. (Under 50 mph/80 kmh, windows down is better; over that speed the AC is better.) He reads bits of science news-- that same episode (#2) referred to a story about a man with a 126 IQ and an honors degree in mathematics who had a thin layer of brain cells lining his skull, which was otherwise filled with spinal fluid and not a brain. One of my favorite parts of episode 3 was the Lyrebird clip, as we heard the bird mimicking a camera shutter and a chainsaw.

The other podcast that I listened to a lot this trip was National Public Radio's Science Friday.
On my trip, they covered the planet definition "debate," AIDS vaccine development, String Theory (is it a problem that they haven't been able to form predictions yet to start experiments?), the physics of music, and more. One interesting story was about people who have the feeling of deja vu almost all the time-- deja vecu. They will refuse to watch a certain TV show because they've seen it already, even though it's never been aired before.

All in all, the whole trip was enough to make me think that I might possibly someday be able to attempt to understand the basics of Quantum Mechanics. Or at least that I would want to.