Comments on: Future Scientists Revealed!

By: Makes It All Worth It | Cosmic Variance

Makes It All Worth It | Cosmic Variance — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:22:39 +0000

[...] …. and presented ourselves to the students, and let them do their dog-and-pony show. You’ll recall me telling you about my being a judge of the wonderful California State Science Fair last year, where the participants weere considerably younger….. well, this was rather like that, except that I was not a judge, and the students were older, and I did not ask them what they wanted to be when they grow up. There was enthusiasm, a bit of nervousness, some glances over at the project of your neighbours to see how they were doing, etc…. all just plain valuable fun. (Go and have a look at my description of that event, by the way). [...]

By: Electronics, Teaching, and a Quiz | Cosmic Variance

Electronics, Teaching, and a Quiz | Cosmic Variance — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 22:10:49 +0000

[...] But then there are four other questions. Bear in mind that these are freshman-level students. We’d like them to get into several useful habits, as budding engineers and scientists: (1) Ability to make useful estimates and rough computations (2) Having a good sense of the relative sizes of important things (3) Realizing what’s a convention and what’s not…. It’s simply interesting to see the answers to the following questions (compiled by my colleague Chris Gould (yes, he of the aforementioned Science Fair)): [...]

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 12:54:38 +0000

I owe my current career not to all the years I spent studying for my PhD, but to my participation in high school science fairs.

My senior-year project was an ambitious (perhaps overambitious) attempt to do something vaguely recognizable as numerical atmospheric modeling on 1980s personal computer hardware. The most impressive thing about it was the graphical display. At the Fairfax County regional fair, a judge from the American Meteorological Society saw this and knew somebody at NCAR who needed a summer student to write graphics code, and got me in touch– I came back every summer through college, and that was my first professional coding experience, and got me working knowledge of a bunch of useful algorithms.

When I decided to leave academia, that experience provided me with a viable Plan B. It was also an early lesson in the value of networking.

By: CapitalistImperialistPig

CapitalistImperialistPig — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:56:11 +0000

Gland you enjoyed it Clifford. I’ve enjoyed similar experiences many times. I think I can guarantee that you can get as many of these gigs as you can handle!

By: Fzplus

Fzplus — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:02:33 +0000

Ooh… I did one of those, or at least, an UKian analogy.

Silliest moment was when one of my friends, doing a project on Solar radiation anisotropy, was forced to fill out a form where one question was:

“In one sentence, explain the benefit to society your project may bring.”

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 10:35:45 +0000

Thanks z. All due to the great pictures and the well-organized Science Fair. -cvj

By: citrine

citrine — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 04:12:54 +0000

I’ve been a judge at regional High School science competitions in ‘05 and ‘04. It’s heartening to see the excitement and enthusiasm in the kids’ faces. The work I’ve seen them present has been pretty impressive!

I love these events for another reason. They take me back to the time I was in H.S. and got so excited about science fairs that I could hardly sleep the previous night. In my case the extra work that I did outside of school definitely got me motivated to do graduate work in Physics.

By: z

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 04:02:28 +0000

This was a great post, Clifford.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:12:30 +0000

Beautiful pictures indeed. Love the Dali tie.

I’m not sure that any of my high-school science classes equipped me to understand what it was like to actually design and perform an experiment. And I never did a science fair. If I were Education Czar, every high-school science class would have to devote a month to the following assignment: “invent an experiment and do it.”