Sciencey Heroes For Young Children? 614
An anonymous reader writes "Unhappy that all his friends have heroes he knows nothing about (they've all chosen hockey players — actually a hockey player: Sidney Crosby), my eight-year-old son asked me if I would find him a 'cool hero.' When pressed to define 'cool,' he very earnestly gave me this list of acceptable professions: 'Astronauts, explorers, divers, scientists, and pilots.' A second and only slightly less worthy tier of occupations includes 'inventors, meteorologists, and airplane designers.' To be eligible for hero status, an individual must be (1) accomplished in one of these fields, (2) reasonably young (it pains me to report that Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, NASA's youngest astronaut and now just 31, barely makes the cut), and, critically to my naive son's way of thinking, (3) respected by third graders nationwide. Ignoring that last criterion, or not, what heroes would you suggest from the sciences as people whose lives and accomplishments would be compelling to an eight-year-old mind?"
Age is a Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
His friends are all looking at sports heroes and you're looking at people with long careers. There's a big difference.
Athletes only have a few decades in which they'll do well, then they retire. So it's easy to find a younger athlete as a hero: as they get older, they lose it.
But almost all the other professions take time to get experienced in. They require learning and years of experience to excel, other than something like astronaut, which can include younger people.
Too bad you can't include people like Chuck Yeager or Wiley Post.
Re:Peter Parker? (Score:4, Interesting)
Adventurer / Surgeon / Rock Star (Score:3, Interesting)
Space! (Score:2, Interesting)
Put subject here (Score:0, Interesting)
Astronauts? They're passengers. Explorers? There's nothing left to explore. Divers? OK, but most of the real deep stuff is done with ROVs. Pilots? In the first tier? But the airplane designer is second tier? You can train a monkey to fly a plane.
"to my naive son's way of thinking"
Space Nutters never outgrow the naive part, so why discourage it now? Sure, by all means, worship passengers that have basically been hopping around low Earth orbit for the past four decades. Might as well put Mars Colonist on your list.
Sidney Crosby exists here on Earth, does something everyone can identify with, is healthy and makes more money than an engineer. Oh god, please don't let your son become an engineer. You won't find a bigger bunch of underpaid, overrworked deluded masochists than engineers. Society does not value engineering, does not reward it, but engineers proudly boast of the their low pay, long hours, job precarity and low prestige.
First Robotics competetion (Score:2, Interesting)
Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Here's a few (Score:2, Interesting)
XKCD Zombie Feynman says, "so what?" They've got the spirit of it, if not the formalism and rigor.
This is even more the case since we're looking at examples for young children who need the showmanship and wouldn't appreciate the difference anyway.
Mark Zuckerberg (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Jeri Ellsworth (Score:1, Interesting)
Bunnie the PHD that hacked the original Xbox is a better role model.
http://www.bunniestudios.com/
NIKOLA TESLA (Score:5, Interesting)
See subject-line...
APK
P.S.=> He's a PRIME EXAMPLE of that "once in a generation mind"... apk
Willy Messerschmitt (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Here's a few (Score:2, Interesting)
Then again, they've done this without those kinds of checks, which means that their science could be (and has been proved to be, on revisits of myths) incorrect.
Saul Griffith (Score:2, Interesting)
He may be slightly too old to fit your criteria, and probably no 3rd graders have heard of him, but Saul Griffith is a certified Genius (so says the MacArthur Foundation, anyway) and does interesting and inspiring work.
Elon Musk (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wile E. Coyote (Score:3, Interesting)
I can honestly say that without him as a role model, I would never have become a physicist or discovered how to paint the dimensional portal which brought me to this world years ago.
So what you're saying is that you're from Cool World?
Okay, but seriously, you'd probably like Phineas and Ferb [wikipedia.org], as would the kid in question. Not being real I guess they don't qualify as role models, but they're definitely worth watching until a real world role model shows up.
Mark Zuckerberg? (Score:1, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Meets the age range.
Has a move about him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network
Thor Hyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki crew were my heroes (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there's the Easter Island stuff. While crappy TV shows say "who knows why these roads go into the sea" Thor put on the scuba gear and found they were boat ramps. When the crappy TV show said "who knows how the statues were erected" Thor asked the locals, put on a huge BBQ for them and they showed him how it was done.
Then of course there are plenty of other examples of people in science doing things kids will find heroic - vulcanologists in rubber boats on acid lakes, polar explorers and many others.
Another Brian (Score:5, Interesting)
How about another Brian [wikipedia.org], a bona fide rock star (i.e. older than most people on /.) and also astrophysicist. Took a detour from his PhD work to play lead guitar for the British rock band Queen [wikipedia.org]. Finally finished his PhD in 2007. Is one step from away from knighthood.
Ray Kurzweil (Score:4, Interesting)
He's an inventor, scientist, author, futurist, musician and probably plenty more I don't even know about. And he's still alive... and hopes to be alive forever due to evolving technology.
How about these guys? (Score:2, Interesting)
"...The recipients include the engineer behind the digital camera, the Intel team that designed the first computer microprocessor, and the inventor of the adhesive 'super glue.'”
http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2010/11/17/obama-honors-scientists-and-engineers/ [voanews.com]
Galois (Score:4, Interesting)
Galois (look him up!!) is long dead, but he was quite possibly the greatest genius ever to walk the planet. Too bad he was killed in a sword fight when he was 20. As a teenager, he solved a centuries-old math problem and created a fundamental branch of advanced mathematics.
Steven Hawking (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Outreach (Score:4, Interesting)
http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/spirit_rewrite_unknown_author.png [xkcd.com]
Re:Wile E. Coyote (Score:3, Interesting)
When I applied to MIT anno 1980, part of the application process was to write an essay titled, "What is my favorite cartoon character and why." So this was essentially a "Who's your hero" question. I chose Wile E. Coyote. The focus was about his persistence: despite that all his ingenious attempts to catch the Roadrunner with cockamamie contraptions failed, he never gave up. He always came up with something new to try.
The admissions folks loved it, and I got a call from the local MIT rep to come by for a chat. I was accepted, but chose Princeton instead. The application essays for Princeton were more difficult. I had to write a "Personal Statement" and an "Engineering Statement." No topics were given; "just write something about something." This was a more subtle way of saying, "find the hero in yourself." How children choose their heroes is determined by the values that they have developed under the guidance of their parents. If the parents are big hockey fans, a hockey player will probably be a hero for their children. If the parents take their children to science museums, a scientist will probably be a hero.
At any rate, don't underestimate the potential of writing about Wile E. Coyote.
Oh, and in defense of engineers, I took 300 and 400 literature classes at Princeton. After I submitted my first essay for one coure, the Preceptor called my aside after the class. She asked me point blank, "You're engineering student, aren't you?" She went on to say that engineering students wrote the most comprehensible essays, which were always structured very well. She complained that the literature majors' essays were more insightful, but tended to meander to the point of confusion.
Re:the youngest billionaire in the world of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Because he couldn't possibly be getting most of that back as profit [techrights.org] now could he?
Re:Richard Stallman (Score:1, Interesting)
The description of the book is pretty lousy. The book is principally set on a space station. Only a small amount of the book is actually set on Athos, and Athos isn't entirely populated by gay men. It takes place in Lois McMaster Bujolds sci fi universe in which, centuries before, a wave of human colonization left earth to explore and colonize the galaxy via a series of naturally occurring wormholes. In Bujold's universe, all kinds of national, corporate, and idealist groups have founded their own colonies sometimes with very specific purposes. In the case of Athos, the colony was founded by some sort of group of religious misogynists (or at least gynephobes) who intended to found a celibate, religious utopia free from sin (by virtue of being free from women). In the time the story is set, celibacy has gone out the window for some part of the population (percentages are never given) and on a planet with no women, if you're not celibate, you only have one choice, which has obviously become an accepted mainstream thing. The story doesn't delve too deeply into their society, but there's undoubtedly some hard core fanatics somewhere who futilely condemn all sexual activity. In any case, the entire society views women as the source of evil and as a bogey man waiting out there in the rest of the galaxy to destroy mens minds. All information sources from the rest of the galaxy are censored, which isn't too difficult since the planets only contact with the rest of the galaxy is via a galactic census ship that comes once a standard year for a few days and carries all trade goods and communications (pretty much limited to incoming trade journals) and inbound immigrants (virtually non-existent) and the extremely rare outbound traveler with some sort of approved diplomatic or business purpose out in the rest of the galaxy. The title character, Ethan, is a doctor at a reproductive clinic which is where men come to have children grown in uterine replicators from their sperm and eggs produced by ovarian cultures. The ovarian cultures are hundreds of years old and just won't produce enough viable eggs anymore, so they've ordered a shipment of ovarian cultures from offworld, but when they arrive the crates that are supposed to contain cultures grown from human female ovaries carefully cryopreserved actually contain whole ovaries, wrapped up in bubble wrap, completely dead, and some of which are from animals. So, the character Ethan gets chosen as their representative to the rest of the galaxy and is sent out with the planets entire trade budget for the year to find out what happened to their shipment and secure a replacement for the following year. This is the setup for the rest of the book which, after the first chapter or so, leaves Athos and doesn't come back until the very end of the book.
web designing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Scientific method != science (Score:2, Interesting)
Who said you got to STUDY to be a scientist?
Being a scientist means doing original scientific research i.e. something that nobody has done before, otherwise it is called history.
This seems like an absurd view of science. None of the definitions [google.co.nz] i got from google say anything about originality directly. Perhaps you would care to furnish us with the one from your dictionary just so we can have the same true understanding that you have.
In the meantime I don't think I even understand how to measure originality. How am I to know what has been known in the past? If information is lost to the scientific community (eg. the burning of the library at Alexandria) is a subsequent study of that subject not science? What if I am stranded on a desert island, and I use the scientific method to work out how to grow/prepare food and work out which plants are poisonous. It seems like something very akin to science and I wouldn't call it history. Perhaps you are thinking of the value of science. If sufficient study on a subject has already been conducted then further scientific study has no value. Many of the definitions linked refer to something like this. The difference is that science is a noun not a verb. One is not producing science if ones results are already known. the definitions speak of producing solutions to problems for example. One cannot produce solutions to problems that are already solved. The scientific method is the method by which one builds science, not all applications of the method produce science, but any application that produces useful results has produced science. Another example might be if you do some scientific study that has never been done before, but you refuse to give me your results. I might do the same research to solve my problem, which is that you wont tell me your results. I might then achieve the same results as you and therefore solve my problem. The knowledge i would gain from this fits every definition of science on that list (except the band and album titles).
Discussions of originality aside, the quotes you responded to also stand, you dont have to study to do science, even by your own definition, and there are not only uneducated people doing reasearch by the scientific method, there are even some that are thereby producing original science as aresult.
Re:Here's a few (Score:3, Interesting)
Einstein was a patent clerk.
Da Vinci was a painter.
Priestley was clergy (he discovered oxygen, & invented carbonated drinks).
Since when was a lack of university education & a job in the field a requirement to be a scientist - all you need is the ability and interest to investigate the subject. Even better if you can encourage the next generation to become interested too.
Studying science academically just means you're taught what everyone else already knows and your thinking is moulded by your lecturers.
To make decent and safe explosions, you need to be a physicist as well as a chemist, and I'm sure most pyrotechnicians don't have either of those to degree level.
Emily Rosa - She's still young (early 20's) (Score:4, Interesting)
As a 9 year old girl, she debunked the whole Therapeutic Touch nonsense, with a sensible experimental design.
If it helps, she grew up to be a smoking hottie, as well as having brains to burn. IMO, young kids could look
up to her for both her critical thinking skills, and the way she was no swayed by arguments-from-authority of
the "we're older than you, so we know better" sort.
Re:Age is a Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, you have that backward. Astronauts require YEARS of training, which usually doesn't even start until they've had a reasonable distinguished early military career.
Most of the "rock stars" of science made their contributions while still quite young... Einstein published on special Relativity at 24, James Watson (of Watson & Crick) published on the structure of DNA (which he later admitted to "discovering" while trippin' balls) at 25. Alan Turing published his On Computable Numbers... at 24 and built the world's first real computer at 32.
I could go on.