• Question: Do all of you scientists like to work together or with anyone else and also what kind of learner are you.By that i mean are you are a visual learner, auditory, read and write or are you a Kinesthetic learner.Thank you very much.

    Asked by jellybeans123 to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 9 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 9 Mar 2013:


      Wow great question!

      I work with a lot of different people on different projects. A few of them are with me in Cambridge, but most of them are spread out over the world (France, Spain, USA, Canada, Australia…). That means there are a lot of emails and phone calls to keep track of what everyone’s up to.

      I learn in lots of ways, but I think the best way is when I have to explain something to someone else (like on imascientist!). Then I have to really think hard to make my explanation clear. Most of my astronomy learning means reading since that’s how we communicate our ideas to other scientists, it can be in emails or articles. Sometimes I have to do some maths to figure something out, which means writing things down and drawing pictures so I can see what’s going on.

      If I’m lucky I get to go to telescopes, and then it’s definitely kinesthetic learning, since the best way to learn how to work a telescope is to use it!

      g

    • Photo: Martin Archer

      Martin Archer answered on 10 Mar 2013:


      Working with other scientists is pretty important as it pools knowledge and experience to get a much better idea of what’s going on. Because science is all about coming up with ideas to explain what we see, it’s a good idea to bounce ideas off of people to see what they think. If they hold up to other people’s opinions you’re probably onto something!

      I think I learn in different ways depending on the problem, sometimes drawing pictures is really helpful whereas other times reading other people’s work helps your work come together. In terms of communicating my work though I find I prefer talking to writing, that’s why I love going to conferences and meetings to present and discuss it.

    • Photo: Amy Tyndall

      Amy Tyndall answered on 10 Mar 2013:


      Working with other people is definitely one of the more fun sides of doing scientific research – being able to talk to people and share ideas, get advice from someone who knows more about the topic than you, and be able to share the happy feeling that a newly published paper or completed project brings. It’s quite a rare thing for anyone to work completely independently, I think – who would you talk to over morning coffee and biscuits?! 😀

      I am most definitely more of a visual and kinesthetic learner, and I have been since I was in school – I just get to grips with things a lot quicker if I can ‘see’ it in my head and have a go myself! But of course, you have to utilise all of the skills you mentioned to be the best you can at your job

    • Photo: Shawn Domagal-Goldman

      Shawn Domagal-Goldman answered on 12 Mar 2013:


      I LOVE working together. Many of the things I work on require huge teams of people. When we’re looking for life elsewhere, we have to know a lot about biology, and geology, and physics, and climate science, and chemistry. Whew. And to build robots to do this or send humans elsewhere, we also need lots of engineers. But that’s WwwwaaaayyYY too much for any one person to fit in their brain! So we have to work as a group!

      I tend to learn best through reading. But I’m a slow reader, and so don’t always have time for that. When that’s the case, I prefer visual learning through videos and stuff.

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