Why is science uncool? I don't get it. Science absolutely fascinates me. If someone shows interest in it, they are considered a nerd, geek, etc. Is it because science requires much thought and less socializing, therefor leading to less "fun time"?
Science requires reading. As a subsequent post pointed out, most scientists are not very good at oral explanations, so you have to read their books to learn about science. And Americans are not readers. Most books on the "best seller" lists don't sell 100,000 copies. Frankly, most Americans are barely literate: for a long time now, American universities have had to offer remedial English classes to entering freshmen. Even newspaper sales are falling, and this started before the internet was their competition. Most Americans settle for getting their news from TV: The News For People Who Can't Read.
I would think that because the sciences as a whole use mathematics or physics to understand them. Many individuals, including myself , don't have the wherewithal to figure out the high end math stuff so therefore don't get as interested in learning more than fundamentals about the sciences.
Math is the major part of physics, and it's almost the entire part of astronomy, but that's not true of the other sciences. You can get pretty far into chemistry with just arithmetic. And you can learn a lot about biology without even that.
I agree. My son has questions and when he asks the teacher, he's told "Its in your book. Re-read the chapter." My high school Chemistry teacher did basically the same thing. When he explained something it was like he was talking to other Chemistry teachers. It just seems like science teachers can't explain it.
Scientists were the original "geeks." (Well no, those were the guys in carnivals but we won't talk about them.) They were famous for not having good social skills, including good communication skills. The only really good science teachers I had at CalTech were the graduate teaching assistants. The professors were not very good communicators, and they were particularly bad at being able to answer a question a second time in a second way for people who didn't get it the first time. The English and history profs--the people who study people and language--were far better at their jobs than the science profs. I'm pretty unusual, not only fairly articulate but I can answer the same question over and over again in different ways until the questioner either gets it or gives up. And I'm not really a scientist. I bailed out of my courses and got a degree in accounting. Compared to scientists, accountants are cool dudes.
Actually, science
was cool for about fifteen years after Sputnik went up in 1957. The Space Race was on and it was like a giant football game between America and those nasty Rooskies. The general understanding of scientific concepts was much higher than it was today. If you ran into somebody at a party and started talking about science, there was a good chance that they would listen and try to understand. Math majors got dates, athletes and cheerleaders treated
us like heroes, and the
pachucos left us alone. Those were the good old days.
