• Question: do you see yourself as scientifimacally smart??? like a high level of smartitude???

    Asked by robertthefriendlydragon2 to Alan, Caspar, Diana, Murray, Sarah on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Alan Winfield

      Alan Winfield answered on 11 Mar 2011:

      No, not at all. I’m an engineer and I think the thing that’s most important in engineering is attention to detail – in other words worrying about the little things. Take your mobile phone – it is made up thousands of parts and every single one has to work properly in order for you to be able to make calls, send texts, etc.

      So the only smartitude (great word!) I think I have is that I’m obsessive about getting all the details right.

      ps. Great question!

    • Photo: Murray Collins

      Murray Collins answered on 11 Mar 2011:

      Hello friendly dragon

      Hmmmm…interesting question. I would say that science gives you a set of tools to answer questions about the world and the way things are. You look at the evidence for something, and work out the best explanation for what you have found. Other people also use those tools to question what you have found, which means scientists are always talking, and science is constantly changing. This means our knowledge about the world is changing also.

      There are loads of different tools you can use in science, but I can’t use all of them, like the ones Sarah or Alan use! And I don’t know much about electronics or chemistry sadly, so I am going to say that I am not scientifimacally smart. (Did I spell that correctly?)

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 11 Mar 2011:

      I wouldn’t say I am scientifimacally smart but I am highly practicalible, and I have lots of dedicatimification… However, I am good at Countdown and being analyticalitive. But mostly I have a severe case of dreameritude and curiousity-killed-the-cat syndrome.

    • Photo: Diana Drennan

      Diana Drennan answered on 11 Mar 2011:

      Well, I’ve always done well in school. I never been the smartest one, tho, just one of the smart ones. I think what’s more important than “smartitude” tho, is wanting to learn more. I read about science in my time off. I’m always asking “why” about the news and then go google it to learn more. If someone says something I’ve never heard before, I’m liable to say “Cool. How do you know ?”. Or if I see something new I’ll think “I wonder how they did that ?”. I think that kind of attitude is more important than actual IQ.

    • Photo: Caspar Addyman

      Caspar Addyman answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      A very good question.. Studying hard and learning lots of facts about your specialist area is important for doing science.. you have to be thorough and exact, to make sure you are doing tings properly. but at the same time you also need to be creative and intuitive to invent new theories to test and new experiments to run. You also need to be able to explain your ideas clearly to other people so they can understand what you are doing. so there are quite a few different skills involved.

      You also have to work hard. As Albert Einstein said ‘Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.’

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