Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger is 35 as of this year, not 31....
No Kari? Sacrilege!!!
Richard Feynman!
Bill Nye the Science guy was the only educational show that was actually cool to watch. Lets get another season of Bill Nye and teach these kids how to make volcanoes.
AKA The Bad Astronomer. Read Death from the Skies with your kid - it's quite entertaining and has a persistent message that rational thought is superior to sensationalism.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Actually, Ladyada is Limor Fried.
But both of them are absolutely hero material.
Is this list for him, or is really for you? =P
Joking aside, tell him about Joseph Kittenger and Felix Baumgartner. Kittenger was the pilot/sky diver involved in Project Excelsior. The highest/longest sky dive in history. 15 minutes of free fall. Felix Baumgartner is a dare-devil currently trying to break that record. He's being sponsered/supported by Red Bull (come on, thats instant cool), and Kittenger is consulting on the whole thing. If all goes to plan Baumgartner will break the sound barrier. With his body.
If he wants famous aircraft designers, two giants that come to mind are Ben Rich and Kelly Johnson, both of Lockheed Skunkworks fame. Unfortunately, they're both gone from this world... the days of airplanes being a single person's brain child is quickly faming (if not gone). If you wants some famous pilots, probably the single most important pilot would be John Boyd. One of the best fighter pilots ever, he also went ahead and pushed an entire generation of air force fighters into service, developed an entire engineering metric on comparing the performance of fighters, and then went ahead and revolutionized the way we fight wars (look up Maneuver warfare... all of the official doctrines of the armed services are based on his ideas).
The dude was a pilot and all - but he went on to really design and build these planes. He was such a "hands-on" guy, a real genius and innovator. I never knew any of that about him before watching some movie about him. I'd recommend the same.
My 8 year old daughter's idol is Buzz Aldran. I totally respect the guy too. Aside from obviously being the second guy on the moon - he was (I think) #1 in his class at MIT after doing his thesis on Orbital Docking manuvers - before any such thing was actually done.
Aside from just "flying the spaceship" and "walking on the moon" - even today, he continues to innovate in the area of space travel. He has a web site where you can see not just some of his old stuff, but new stuff as well. He's not just part of history, he's really part of the present.
Robert Ballard
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Brian Cox, aslo known as the "rock star of Physics". Works on the Large Hadron Collider, has his own TV series on the solar system, was in the 2009 "sexiest men alive" issue of People, and played the keys for some semi-famous 90's bands. Not too shabby.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
He wanted heroes, not super villains.
He's a Mythbuster, has an EE degree, success in BattleBots. He is 40...but he *looks* much younger.
Sylvia Earle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Earle should be a hero to all 3rd graders
Watch her TED Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/467 , it's fascinating.
Should be everyone's hero...
Jeri Ellsworth is known as 'Jeri Ellsworth'.
http://www.youtube.com/JeriEllsworth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth
http://www.jeriellsworth.com/
Race cars, pinball, electronics...
http://www.google.com/search?q=racecars+pinballs+electronics+c64
The latest Slashdot meme.
While he is a fine young hockey player, and I fully expect him to lead his team to a Stanley Cup, there is one thing that every eight year old should know about him before indulging in any form of 'hero worship'.
HE HAS COOTIES!!!
The latest Slashdot meme.
EXACTLY what I was here to say. He doesn't quite fit the criteria, but what 8 year old _wouldn't_ love him? He's _CLASSIC_ mad scientist! Only problem is that you'd have to spend some time explaining who he is. But seriously - the world as we know it would not exist without him...and this is the same man who was thinking of death rays, worldwide free wireless electricity, global communications - he damn near thought of the internet before we even had electricity!
January/February of 2011, you'll get the first book in the League of Scientists. It's about a group of science geeks in seventh grade who use science and critical thinking to solve seemingly-supernatural mysteries. Seems to be right in line with the poster's request.
[Disclaimer: I'm the author.]
Teenage video-game prodigy and self-made astronaut Richard Garriott!
A whole program trying to deflect bullets with magnets. Aren't they made of lead?
Ever heard of Lenz's law? There is a very simple demo of it where you can make an aluminium ring jump off the pole of an electromagnet - this would work fine for lead as well. Not to mention paramagnetism and diamagnetism (not sure which applies to lead) - all materials containing atoms will interact with a sufficiently strong static magnetic field.
This series from the 1990s is somehow owned by Disney, despite it being funded by the National Science Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (in otherwords the taxpayers should own it). I tried to find a way to buy the show on DVD but all I could find was the educational institution price of something like $700 for the whole series. That was obviously absurd, so I found it via bittorrent. Anyone who reads this site should also be able to find it.
It's great fun and educational. My son loves the show. He asks to watch it. We've been watching it since he was 2 or 3. Now in second grade he's way ahead of his class in science and math.
Bill Nye! Bill! Bill! Bill!
-- QED
People also learn how not to be rigorous and how to be lazy (not look for holes in their hypotheses or experimental technique then just dismiss these shortcomings)
You have never actually watched a Mythbusters episode, have you?
They are always looking for hole in their hypotheses, any demonstration they do present alternative theories and the checks they do to verify them. It's only that the time they have on air for each one is limited, so they need to have priorities.
Because our brains are pattern matching engines and we need to see patterns in order to recognize and or emulate them.
The fitting in part is a necessary part of growing up and we don't have a better way to do it yet.
Why has nobody mentioned Michio Kaku yet? I know he's too old, but he's the only one on TV right now with the old Carl Sagan vibe.
Also Phil Platt for Bad Universe if there were more episodes.