Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Weird Scientists

So good scientists usually have a boundless, random curiosity about things. 'Do you know how birds find their migration routes? I wonder what causes different drug reactions. Do you think if I heated this up more it would explode?' In our house, the dictionaries and encyclopedias sit next to the dining room table for easy access. Also, it's handy for crosswords. And my science trivia team in highschool won a lot.

A grad student in Mr S's lab just bought a pedometer. He's attaching it to everyone in lab for two days and taking readings every three hours, to see who moves the most and what patterns there are. Then he's going to chart it. I want a copy.

Still, so random!

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:58 PM

    I think that's pretty cool too. There was a woman where I used to work who wore hers all day long. Her goal was to walk like 10,000 steps a day or something. Fun stuff. I don't want to try that. Since I work from home it's probably pretty depressing how much I walk around...or how little.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous5:11 PM

    Best thing about being a scientist is the curiosity that extends beyond our own fields! I can have long, involved conversations posing alternative hypotheses for various phenomena - biological and non - with friends. Even if we don't have an answer at the end of the conversation, it's fun to speculate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I enjoyed the pedometer briefly after acquiring one, but I was all the time worrying about turning it on and off when I went the the bathroom or was sitting down or driving the car. The last thing I need is something else to obsess over. LOL!

    I'd love to attach one to my coworkers. I bet I got most of them beat hands down!

    ReplyDelete
  4. That sounds like a great experience. He should correlate it with productivity (research and otherwise). Maybe even do some longitudinal analyses if the pilot works out...... :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think he is planning to chart it with something else. We're all theorizing that the senior-scientist type, who reads papers and makes caustic comments all day, will register as clinically dead, and that the annoyingest person will jog in place just to raise his numbers!

    Turtlebella, I love random hypothesizing too! And you don't even have to do the experiments, either.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated, so it may take a day or two to show up. Anonymous comments will be deleted.