Why did people hate science in school?

[Blandmum]

Follow on from the cross country thread and others.

There are lots of people on mn who hated science in school, I find this hard to understand mt self

But an honest question, and the answer would be useful to me to help stop kids now from hating it.

Why did you hate it in school? It would help if you can be specific in your answers, so if 'It was boring' is the answer if would be useful if you could also tell me why it was boring IYSWIM

Many thanks!

THis has been a very interesting thread ( I *am HMB BTW!)

I was very interested when yu said lonlymum

'You see, I am an historian, a psychologist, a geographer, a philosopher, anything but a physicist! '

As a psuchologist you have to be a tiny bit of a physicist, because the nervous system 'works' by electricity. I can only type this message because of millions and millions of sodium and potassium ions moving across the membrane of my nerves....creating a potenetial difference across the memvrane, in other words a difference in voltage....so physics!

Now you can say that you done need to know that in your every day life, and you'd be right. But we don't 'need ' to know that much, but life is so much more amazingly richer of you do.

For example it is an astonishingly boring fact that in a water molecule part becomes a little bit negative and part becomes a little bit positive.....because some atoms are more 'greedy' for electrons. You can love you life without ever knowing this fact. However if this didn't happen, no life could exsist. Without this difference protiens would just be long chains of amino acide, there could be no enzymes, no building blocks for cells, no cells, and no living things. I taught that to my sixth form not that long ago and it totaly blew their minds. WE only exsis because of a sub microscopic shift in electrons. Amazing. Not essention to know, but essential to happen and mind blowing to understand.

everything is physics. You don't have to understandit, but it is so much more fun if you do.

no, I think you have a point about moving too fast. Part of my job involves (or used to involve until recently ) monitoring groundbreaking technologies, and how people use them. People can adapt incredibly fast to new ideas, and put them to age-old uses. For example, the SMS revolution. Did you know that SMSs were created purely as a tool for the network to tell your phone if you missed a call? Then someone had the bright idea of letting users create and send their own SMSs. The operators had to run promotions at first to get people to use SMSs. (I was involved, and am possibly the first person in the world to come up with the idea of SMS voting!)

Another recent example is Bluetooth. This is the wireless connection between a mobile phone and those little headpiece thingys. If you see someone walking down the street apparently wearing a hearing aid and talking to themselves, chances are that they've got a bluetooth phone in their pocket and are making a call. Well, bluetooth is a technology where any bluetooth transmitter can contact any other bluetooth appliance as long as its receiving. So, in universities in Arab countries, where men can't easily approach female students openly... apparently the guys are making bluetooth contacts to the girls' phones to chat them up!

you know, we are living in history ourselves. I bet the early Victorians felt as overwhelmed then as we do now.

"air interface" is just a little bit of jargon - sorry! but doesn't it sound romantic to you? the breaking edge of a new dawn? because it is! but then I used to sit in chemistry lessons totally transfixed by the romance of the periodic table.

did you catch the stuff on radio 4 last week?

I know we are all bundles of electrons, neutrons and the other one (!) and that the miracle of life revolves around tiny coincidences blah blah, but if that was all there was to it, life would be rather dull IMO. I am sorry, but it doesn't float my boat. Perhaps I need an ispirational teacher to bring that magic alive for me, but I suspect that even if someone could do that for me, my prime interest would always lie in something beyond the physical.

NN, will you belive this I wonder? I am degree educated and know my IQ is substantially higher than most (won't disclose it though) and yet I have never ever heard of SMS or bluetooth!

Am I living in a time capsule I wonder?

NIghtynight, I was going to post to say how romantic I found your description of the base station and mobile talking to each other and looking for the right response!

HMB, sorry, called you by your old name but I did know it was you. Have we been at all helpful?

sms is text short messages.
Open up the little envelope icon, and you can type a message of 162 characters and send it to someone else's phone. Worth doing just to feel like a modern teenager!!

bluetooth is a way of doing wireless communication over short distances. eg if you want to download the contents of your laptop or phone onto a pc.

go on lonelymum - jump in! historians of the future will be studying this, you know. Be a child of your times!!

edam, it has been facinating, and very helpful in terms of my work!

Lonelymum, you are clearly not an early adopter of new technology. Which is fine, you don't have to worry about it!

Nightynight, as a technology queen, may I seek your advice? Am thinking of getting dh an MP3 player for Christmas. Ipod Shuffle or Nano, which is best?

thank you edam.
When I first realised how telecommucations works, I knew I was hooked - it is fascinating!

I've found it fascinating too HMB/MB. Thanks for the thread, has really made me think! I do hope ds enjoys the sciences and has teachers who bring the subject to life and make it clear that it is creative. (Should I confess I failed physics o-level...? Got chemistry and biology though.)

So SMS is texting? I have done that (a couple of times recently to dh). Not going to start doing it all the time though!

sorry edam, x posted.

I dont have either an ipod or a nano, Im afraid. Several of my colleagues have ipods though, and they seem to like them (they are engineers, so that must count for something!)

do you want something that you can use as a slide show for your photos as well as being an mp3 palyer? I believe that the latest ipods do that as well.

You can also get mp3s in phones now, so could consider buying a posh phone.

Also, does the ipod use standard mp3 format or do you have to buy music from the apple shop?

Not sure but I know that Apples can deal with MS and Mac whereas other Ipods can only deal with MS (and we've got a Mac; I have this romantic attachment to them even though they are now a big corporation too).

lonelymum - yes SMS = short message service.

I knew about SMS but have only just discovered that nerdy types call digital radio DAB. Still haven't worked out how to use the pause button on mine even though the idea of pausing a broadcast and putting it back on when you feel like it seems quite cool. Maybe if I'd done science a-levels I'd find it easier to use technology?

edam is that really right? any mp3 player should be able to connect to either a mac or a pc with the right driver, surely?
but I am probably not the person to ask, I spent about 7 hours this week setting up my pc to be able to download photos from my handy

Apparently; I'm editing a consumer report on this at the moment (with lab results and everything - luckily the researcher interprets them so I don't have to worry my arts grad head about them).

As an interesting aside, ds1 (very scientific-minded) has just had a complete paddy as I have helped him with his English homework on main and subordinate clauses. He started crying and throwing a wobbly because I "made it too complicated for him". I have just shown him this thread and told him how the conversation has left me behind because I really struggle with scientific concepts, whereas he was really interested in SMS and bluetooth. Also, he has just shown me how to scroll down to the bottom of the page using the central mouse button. I never knew you could do that! Some of us are destined to be fascinated and at home with modern technology, and some of us are destined to have a complete grasp of main and subordinate clauses!

edam - misunderstanding I think. all ipods are from Apple and therefore ought to connect to Macs as well as PCs.
If buying another MP3 player, and you know that you need to connect to a MAC, I personally would google first with something like "

mb - another idea about science in schools. Is it that children cant see what sort of careers they might end up with by pursuing science?
maybe the girls would be more interested if they knew about fields like human computer interaction and user interface design, which are a mixture of technology and psychology.

We have a high pick up of students wanting to do sciences in the sixth form, and lots of girls as well. In part tis is because we have lots of women in the dept, in positions of responsibility. I teach this year's top 3 sets in year 11. Half of them have said they have an interest in taking at least one science at A level.....the pick up is so marked that other departments have accused us of pressuring them!

Yup, all Ipods are from Apple, that's why I'm looking at them not other MP3s because we have a Mac. But can't decide between a shuffle and the other ones - shuffle has this cool shuffle function but no screen. Hmmmmm.

edam - you want a screen if you can afford it check this one out!

mb - how funny. I remember that from my own school days, the arts/sciences battle for the upper fifths! In my year, so many people went for sciences, the arts teacher were left open mouthed because they had lost most of their top sets as well!