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Sciencey Heroes For Young Children?
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?"
...the superhero with the power to wait patiently while supervillains expend too much energy, returning them to an inert and nonthreatening state!
Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger is 35 as of this year, not 31....
To be fair, I don't believe math was a requirement listed by his son.
I believe that's supposed to be written...
"Cap-tin Jean-Luc-Pic-ard ofthe U-S-S En-ter-prise" /technobeat
His kid probably asked the question 4 and a half years ago and it took this long to get published on slashdot. His math is probably good.
i dont know an obvious answer. i'm kind of out of touch with 8 year olds, but they havent heard of carmack or musk and think that tesla's a band.
wil wheaton isn't famous enough, oh i dunno maybe he is do kids these days watch next generation reruns on spike?
he pops up on eureka and csi and that one with the nerds... now and then. i guess 8 year olds dont watch the guild. or know who randall munroe is.
hey how about richard branson? a lot of 8 year olds are virgins these days.
I don't think I became aware of the difference between 45 and 30 until I was at least 11.
Impressive. I don't think i knew the difference until I was...30.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
he was killed in a sword fight
That explains why he lost, since Galois died of a gunshot wound.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
We're looking for science heroes, not science fiction heroes.
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No. But I've never taken LSD.
he was killed in a sword fight
That explains why he lost, since Galois died of a gunshot wound.
I think "genius" might be too strong of a word....