The Art of Seeing Science: Part 1

 Science.   A fancy word for a subject that merely seeks to explain how the world works.  Questions about this universe can be answered by science, or at least part of them. Yes, we humans tend to boast about knowing a lot about the world we live in, but we all know that there’s much more out there that we haven’t yet grasped. The more important thing than knowing everything is the quest for understanding it. A fun journey, if I might add.

 

As scientists ask important questions, like how quantum mechanics can be united with the theory of general relativity, we people of the younger generation have much more burning questions in our heads. “What exactly are we learning in school?” “How is being able to calculate the speed of a car ever going to help me in my career as an architect?”

 

These adults trying to shove textbooks down our throats just isn’t our thing. Why can’t I learn what I want for once? The answer is simple. The basics for what you want to know and learn are obtained through the understanding of science. There it is again … that big word … something which we don’t really understand and rather not waste our time thinking about.

 

Let’s face it. Malaysia is a developing country. Rarely are scholarships given to those who want to do a course in philosophy. But scholarships for engineering and medical courses are dished out by the hundreds. Why? Simply because we need people who can come together to build the country, help it reach the objective of becoming fully developed by the year 2020.

 

Yada yada, we’ve heard all this before. “Yes, we’re working towards it, so what’s your point?” you say. Well, we, the youths of Malaysia, have to do more than just “study”. Sadly, our common definition of this word is that we have to memorise each and every textbook cover to cover. Yes, it does get us our A’s, but does it really help develop our minds? Don’t we ever want to think about more than what there is in the textbooks? 

 

Scientists who invented ingenious devices which have made our lives ever easier and which have truly pushed us forward to becoming more developed, didn’t just read their textbooks. They actually gave thought to what they were doing, beyond what was taught in the lecture halls. They looked at the world around them, identified the problems or needs, then the resources that they had, and embarked on a quest for turning those resources into solutions. They helped discover the world.

 

“Yes, yes, I’ll get to that when I start working”. Wrong attitude! It has to begin now, when we’re still young and fresh. Many great scientists had a vision or were inspired when they were young, which was brought out when they became scientists later on. Their curiosity as children and their fearlessness of the unknown brought about their desire to seek the answers to the world.

 

“Nurture we must, this thing called curiosity”, as Yoda would say. We have to train ourselves, if it’s not already deep within us, to think and be creative. Imagine, we only use 10% of our brains. What happens if we use more than that? Are we all Einstein’ underneath? Maybe. Nevertheless, we know that it is scientifically proven that if you use more of your brains, it gets better. It’s like a muscle, they say. You work out, it gets stronger. It’s the same with the brain. How do we train then? Well, by looking at our daily lives and its contents, and simply thinking about how they work, and ultimately, how we can change them one day, gets our minds going. We constantly call ourselves the future leaders of this nation. Let us start now. It sure doesn’t hurt to try.

 

A simple question can lead one to many answers. Just thinking about things is the first step to appreciating them. Science is everywhere, haven’t you noticed? We’re teenagers. We’ve been told this hundreds of times. But it’s just too tiring to try and understand it, on top of which you run a risk of being called a geek or a nerd if you do. And for me, truthfully, unless knowing something will help me get an A for the exam at the end of the year, I don’t really care about anything outside of class. On the other hand, I guess it is fun to actually ask why and how things happen. Trying to figure things out on your own. Toying with the idea for a while, and then looking it up later. Yes, it does make you feel good when you’re able to actually think of why things are the way they are.

 

“Get to you point”, you say. “I’m getting there, just need an example”.

 

It’s a routine morning which, maybe, most of us can relate to. I wake up, and take a shower. I use soap. Interesting. It isn’t revolutionary, but it is one of man’s miracle inventions, which we are much grateful for, especially if in a crowded bus. Yes, the soap that makes the dirt more soluble so that the water can get to it and wash it away. It’s like the dirt was wax, which can’t mix with water. We always associate soap with being slippery and smooth. Harmless. But that are actually the properties of alkalis, and if it were Sodium Hydroxide which would burn through your skin and flesh, it would still be smooth and slippery. Also, it is scary to think that water, being H2O, is harmless, the source of life as it is, but sodium peroxide, H2O2, is almost the direct opposite, looking absolutely transparent and doesn’t have a smell too, just like water, but it can kill you instantaneously if drunk.

 

Then I dress up and go down for breakfast. My mother, on those rare occasions, is frying something for me. I always thought it weird that what we smell, those little molecules must surely go right to our brains. That our brain itself “smells” the food. That’s how it knows what it is. But it doesn’t. What we perceive as smell is actually just how the brain interprets chemical signals sent to it by receptors in our noses. So actually smells can differ from person to person, but they don't because we all have the same brain. Problems arise when something goes wrong in the brain and the wiring is changed, hence changing how the brain perceives these signals.

 

 

I get to my car and the moment I step on the accelerator, I jerk backwards. Newton’s First Law of Motion states that an object which is not moving or in constant motion, will stay in that state unless affected or changed by an outside force. So sitting in the car when it first speeds out of my driveway, my body wants to stay in its position, which is still, but the car pulls me forward, bringing my lower body first, followed by my upper half. Good thing there’s a head rest which stops my head from snapping backwards too much. My father waves me off, shaking his head. 

 

I reach a traffic light. Wow, it has three colours! Yes, wonderful observation I have made. My car or the traffic lights don’t really have a colour. Instead, it has a chemical, or a “paint” that absorbs certain colours and allows other colours to bounce off it. Hence making it to appear whatever colour it was meant to be. That’s why when there is different lighting, for example when a blue light is used, white or yellowish objects turn fluorescent yellow.

 

Finally I reach my college. First I take the stairs up knowing that the breakfast that my mother had made for me had been turned into ATP cells that were busy firing away to provide me energy. After one flight of stairs, I feel that maybe I should save up my other precious ATPs for my debate with my lecturer later about why I should get an extension for my assignment which had long passed its due date. I decide to take the elevator. Hey, I’m not lazy. I’m just using my resources efficiently. 

 

I step into the elevator. I distract myself with the elevator music. I’m scared of heights, and I hate to think of what would happen if the wires holding the elevator up snapped. As the engine or generator uses energy from the electricity that is powering it to raise the elevator to the 8^th floor, the elevator has gained potential energy. If those wires did snap, then the elevator would experience free fall, where it falls with the acceleration of gravity. All the potential energy that it possessed would change to kinetic energy. This means that the closer the elevator was to reach the ground, the more potential energy would be turned into kinetic energy, hence making it fall faster and faster. Yes, if I were in that elevator, I would be falling to my death at an increasing rate. Phew. Thank God they make good, strong, sturdy wires these days.

 

Ding! Level 8. As I make a dash for class down the hall, I am grateful for friction between my shoes and the floor. Without it, my usual sprints that I make due to being late almost every day would never happen, as I would be slipping and falling. 

 

The point I’m trying to make is that, science is everywhere. There isn’t a little piece of paper or write-up on every object or event that you see, stuck to it, to explain why it’s there, how it came to be and how it works. And even if there were such a thing, I highly doubt that there would be anybody reading it. I guess we just don’t have it in us to ask about how our world works. But just take a moment to think about things. Yes, a certain amount of background knowledge of physics, biology or chemistry is needed to understand these things. But thinking about it is fun, and it’s a step closer to understanding it, isn’t it?