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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....
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.
There is no other.
...the superhero with the power to wait patiently while supervillains expend too much energy, returning them to an inert and nonthreatening state!
You kid seems smart. Maybe ask why he feels the need to have a hero? And why this hero needs to pass some sort of test of being 'accepted by your kids peers' ?
I understand the need for kids to fit in somehow, but maybe he can transcend this.
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)
Neil deGrasse Tyson I wish I read his book "The Universe Down to Earth" when I was in grade 9. I think it would have greatly shaped my school pathway for a 'real' science career. http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/
no love for the safe-crackin', bongo-playin', Challenger-investigatin' Richard Feynman?
the coolest club on
Actually, Ladyada is Limor Fried.
But both of them are absolutely hero material.
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.
Unfortunately, the rules of physics seem to be slightly different here for some reason, and I have been stranded ever since. Oh well...
See subject-line...
APK
P.S.=> He's a PRIME EXAMPLE of that "once in a generation mind"... apk
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.
Burt Rutan, spaceships have got to be waaay cool to an 8 year old.
I don't think 8 year olds are allowed on Facebook. It's 13 and above, last I checked. Larry Page or Sergey Brin would be more worthy heroes, I'm sure the kid uses Google at least once a week, versus using Facebook never.
The willingness to revisit myths is a hallmark of the scientific process, though. They have a hypothesis -- the myth -- and collect initial evidence to determine a certain level of plausibility. They then move to large-scale experiments. In some cases, their experiments disprove the hypothesis. However, upon peer review (using the term loosely), problems with their experiments may be pointed out, and they revise and rerun the experiment. Sometimes the original results are overturned, and they can, to some degree, form a theory.
The Mythbusters are the first to claim that what they do is more entertainment than science. You just don't often hear things like "Jamie wants big boom" coming from real scientists. But normal people learn from their abbreviated process anyway, as you said, and that's what is important right now.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla... you can literally change the world with technology, and get reasonably rich doing that.
Not only did they test out a migration theory by sailing across the Pacific on a balsa wood raft, half of them were extreme badass commandos that blew up a Nazi nuclear facility in WWII.
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.
How about another Brian, 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. Finally finished his PhD in 2007. Is one step from away from knighthood.
I thought it was a parent's job to hunt around for acceptable role models for their kids.
Gee! I always thought it was a parent's job to *BE* an acceptable role model for their kids.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
To be eligible for hero status, an individual must be (1)...(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)...
Since when do 8-year-olds know the difference between 45-year-olds and 30-year-olds? They were all just grown-ups to me when I was that age. There were, like, 4 categories of people: kids, big kids, grown-ups, and old folks (technically a subset of grown-ups, but distinguished by completely gray/white hair and large amounts of wrinkles). I don't think I became aware of the difference between 45 and 30 until I was at least 11.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
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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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....