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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?"
Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger is 35 as of this year, not 31....
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.
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.