• Question: What was your experience about science that made you become a scientist

    Asked by january to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 18 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by china1997, keira, 08hathwayr, shadzshoshobaybee.
    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      That is a great question.

      It’s the understanding that science gives you that i like… i want to understand how things work. I have always been particularly fascinated with light… Where do rainbows come from? Why do rulers look like they bend when i look through water? What is light and how does it get to us from the sun if there is nothing in between?
      This fascination led me to study science at A’levels and then, as i still didn’t feel the answers were clear enough, to do a degree in Physics… now i am working with the world’s most intense laser and i am still trying to understand light and how it works 🙂 It’s great fun though so i am very happy with those choices.

      Thanks for the question,
      Peta

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 14 Nov 2011:

      I was lucky enough to visit the Kennedy Space centre when I was 12 (holiday of a lifetime!) and when I was there we saw a shuttle launch (at about 4am) but despite being really tired it was phenomenal. We were 12miles away but you could still feel the ground shake and it was loud. You could see the shuttle going up and some really cool shadows from it too. From then I knew that science was cool – Iaunching rockets, exploring space etc etc – awesome!

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 16 Nov 2011:

      I’ve been interested in physics as long as I can remember, particularly watching science fiction when I was younger.

      But I think it was my A-level physics teacher who really made the difference. He lent me books, took the time to discuss things and was just enthusiastic and encouraging whenever we wanted to know more.

      He thought Physics was exciting and he was really good at making us excited about it too.

    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      I have to say it was my Chemistry teacher at school. Although I was interested, I never understood just how fun and exciting science was until I got to university. You are all very lucky, not because you get to learn about my love of Rihanna, but because you get to see that real people have science jobs and have fun doing it – I never had that opportunity!

    • Photo: Natalia Parzyk

      Natalia Parzyk answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      I always like getting to know more and more about different things. So at some points at school I came to conclusion that it’ll be cool to do it as a job. It wasn’t so precise though, been interested in bits of maths, chemistry and biology at same time (ended with physics..) When I went to University I meet some scientist and passion with which they talk about their research convince me that’s the right move to became a scientist. And now I’m still happy with doing my ph.d. at Physics.

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