That Eureka moment

[Donk]

Kids often go for a career that they hope will make them rich/famous/attractive to the opposite sex. So why be a scientist?

 

I remember sitting in class, aged 11. We'd been using algebra for a couple of terms, and Pythagoras's Theorem for a few weeks. The teacher went to the blackboard and in a few simple, understandable steps proved that a² + b² = c². Something very strange happened. A ripple of delighted laughter ran around the classroom. We'd just seen something beautifully true, and it affected us deeply.

 

Many of that class went into maths or the sciences. I did for a while, then with an unplanned baby on the way had to switch into commerce for 50% more money. But I never forgot that Eureka moment.

 

I suspect that most scientists – professional and amateur – got into it because of a Eureka moment in childhood and want to repeat the feeling. Am I right? Can anyone else remember theirs?

[pamela]

hmmmn does high school count?

I have always loved anatomy and biology.On a field trip we went to a pathology lab at a medical institute.I was first in line into the cooler where the cadavers were placed.Now someone had made a grave error and had placed an unprepped gentleman in there as well.I looked upon this guy...his jeans, his flannel shirt, his boots and cowboy hat....his face... and then i noticed the cause of death in his chest area.Now the kids behind me started screaming and running, while i stayed there just observing.Many things ran thru my mind in those brief seconds before the staff ushered me out.When the gentleman had been relocated, we were allowed to go back in.Table after table of cadavers, they all looked the same.There was no personality, no face, they were mannequin like. We left the room and moved on to the tables.

I held a heart in my hand.....i held a gentleman in my mind and a love of humanity was borne that day

[Buffy]

My daughter is still a few years away from college, and she's already decided she wants to be a Chemistry major....don't ask me why, I don't know.

 

I have to admit I went into computers because there were dollar signs out there, but first and foremost I liked making them do stuff, but I actually have no memory of when that happened, but then I started at a pretty young age helping my mom learn PL/1 with punched cards when she was getting her masters at UCLA....

 

I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at... ;)

Buffy

[CraigD]

My “wonder moment” occurred a few months before my 13th birthday, in my first semester of the 7th grade. The past summer, I’d bought a kit in my usual hobby store (the kind of little one-person business that was common in the 1970s, much less so today) for measuring the altitude of the little solid fuel rockets I and my friends were fond of (Which can still be had in most toy and hobby stores, plans, kits, and motors available only by Estes in those days). It contained a little how-to booklet, the last few pages of which was a small table of sin/cos/tans.

 

I was fascinated by the table, wondering how it had been calculated. I dreamed up a scenario involving precisely machined cylinders and rulers, imagining such operations tucked away in universities and publishing companies, and after several uninformative conversations with a few adults with science educations, described my imagined scheme to one of my teachers. He immediately explained that that wasn’t how such tables were calculated at all, and proceeded to show me the Maclaurin series for cosine:

[math]\cos x = \sum^{\infty}_{n=0} \frac{(-1)^n}{(2n)!} x^{2n} = 1 - \frac{x^2}{2!} + \frac{x^4}{4!} - \cdots[/math]

I was astonished. Simple arithmetic – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, performed with paper and pencil, could be used to write trig tables of whatever precision I wanted. That such a thing was possible boggled my mind – and still does.

 

Since then, I’ve learned as much math as I can, getting a BS in it, tutoring and teaching it, and using it deeply and shallowly with my other great object of fascination, computers. Nearly as astonishing as math, I’ve been able to spend nearly my entire adult life getting paid to play with computers. My good fortune at having been born when I was astounds me.

[paigetheoracle]

I'm palpably not a scientist but I'm always getting Eureka moments: Stumbling through life, wondering what the hell is going on, head down. When the realization/ revelation/ answer comes - up goes the head, a smile bursts onto my face to replace the furrowed brow and I literally have a flash of inspiration (I see a burst of light before my eyes, projected from what is usually a pretty feeble brain: I had a brain scan recently because of my related migraines* but I don't think they found anything! [Low brow joke!]).

 

[*there's a price for everything, including insights and the work needed to get them]

[freeztar]

I remember my eureka moment vividly.

 

I was in third grade and my parents had bought me an illustrated science book simply entitled "Earth" (wish I still had the book). It covered everything from layers of the Earth to major rock types to the atmosphere and the waters. I was enthralled with it and it was my first real introduction to Science. Something had clicked.

 

No wonder I'm a rock hound to this day. ;)