• Question: is being a scientist cool

    Asked by Debbie to Francesca, Laura, Matthew, Andrew, Rebecca on 10 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by philip, holly curran, hello??.
    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I think it is!
      I work with stuff that amazes me all the time, and I’ve lost count how many times we get a new piece of kit in the lab and greeted it with a “Dude! That’s *awseome*!” exclaimation.

      Ok, I don’t expect everyone to get fired up about the stuff that I do, and I don’t expect everyone to think such things as cool as I do (seriously, last week we had an NMR spectrometer the size of a shoebox in the lab. Normally they take up an entire *room*!).

    • Photo: Laura Schofield

      Laura Schofield answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      YES! Absolutely! Though we are very biased!!
      I grew up being told I was a nerd for liking science, but realistically, how can you not find science cool?! If you think your mobile phone is cool, you must think physics is cool! If you think 3D printing is cool, you must think being able to print body parts and transplant them into humans is cool! So biology is pretty cool! And if you like flashes, bangs and colour changes in an experiment, you’ve got to love chemistry!
      There’s really no escaping science nowadays and most of the things we get told are nerdy are the most impressive!!!
      Also, Andrew, that NMR machine sounds awesome!!

    • Photo: Matthew Camilleri

      Matthew Camilleri answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I think it is, it tends to go well when I introduce myself to someone new (although I might be imagining that). My honest biased opinion is that it is the coolest thing ever as there are no jobs out there that will let you play around with explosives and poisons in order to be able to do your job properly.

    • Photo: Rebecca Ingle

      Rebecca Ingle answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      I obviously think being a scientist is cool, there are so many moments where there is stuff to get excited about and geeking out about things is positively encouraged by your co-workers.

      I find generally people think lasers are really cool and always actually seem very interested to hear about my research and what being a scientist is like. I guess people don’t meet that many scientists?

    • Photo: Francesca Palombo

      Francesca Palombo answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      Very! It sounds awesome when people ask about what you do for a living

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