Last month marked the 58th birthday of Star Trek and on that day, my Physics teacher, Ms Bell, was telling me about how it was watching Star Trek when she was younger that made her love science so much. So I decided to meet with Ms Bell to talk about why she would recommend people to choose science subjects and a bit about why Star Trek was so inspirational to her. Maybe through this article, we will inspire the next generation of scientists, or at least inspire a few people in the junior school to pick a science subject for next year.
The first thing I talked about with Ms Bell was why pupils in S2, S3 and S4 could benefit from picking a science subject. Obviously Ms Bell absolutely loves science and would definitely recommend anyone to take science subjects, but why, exactly, would she recommend this?
“Science is just such a fun subject,” she said. “I think that any child from when they’re really young, have got that quest to know what’s going on around them and why things happen and that’s what science answers. Science lets you build on your curiosity. The world around us is scientific. For example, if you look at what happened during Covid; everybody suddenly had to become experts in immunology, vaccines and statistics and if you’ve got that knowledge anyway, from science, you can start to take apart what’s in the news and understand what’s true and what’s not true. Another thing is, you can look up into the sky at night and you see the stars, science can now answer the questions about what they are. Science can answer questions that for thousands of years, humans didn’t have the answers to. I think we should all try to have a scientific knowledge as it’s a very important subject.”
It’s very clear that having even just a little knowledge about science can help us to understand so much more about the world around us and that it’s excellent at sparking our curiosity. But what sort of things will our pupils be doing in science? Ms Bell already said that it’s such a fun subject but what are the most fun or interesting things that pupils will learn and do in their science classes?
“One of the most fun things you’ll get to do in science is the Van De Graff Generator,” Ms Bell told me. “You put somebody on a Van De Graff Generator and their head looks like a dandelion because their hair’s standing on end and not only can we get them to do that, we can explain why. Also, the other day, I was doing an experiment with the S2s where I had a disappearing glass beaker. The way it works is you put vegetable oil or glycerol into a glass beaker and put it into another glass, then all of a sudden it disappears because the light’s behaving in a different way. So not only can you do these tricks but you can explain it because of science.”
While its amazing that science can teach us so much about the world we live in and also be a fun and interesting subject, Ms Bell also told me that there are so many jobs in life that are all about science. This is probably something that our S3 pupils may be interested in learning about as it won’t be long before they decide what National 5s they’ll be study and they’ll want to know where these subjects could take them. So what kind of jobs in science could pupils get after leaving school?
“There’s a huge variety,” Ms Bell explained. “Obviously, there’s engineering. An engineer is probably more the application of science as opposed to science itself but a lot of science degrees could take you down an engineering route. There’re all sorts of jobs that people don’t think of, such as being an optician. They’ve had a science degree, an optician needs ophthalmology which needs the science of light. You could also think of things like a meteorologist or weatherman which would definitely involve a lot of science. You’ve also got things like a sound engineer for a band, that’s a job with science in it because you’ll have needed to learn about the science and sound of acoustics. There’s of course, the obvious one, a rocket scientist. Why not reach for the stars? If you want to be a rocket scientist, you need to do Physics. There are so many jobs that people can get into through studying a science, whether it be Physics, Chemistry or Biology, science can take you wherever you want to go.”
It’s certainly clear that there are so many places of work that you can get into through science, even ones you wouldn’t expect.
At the start of this article I mentioned that Ms Bell’s interest in science sprouted form watching Star Trek and she isn’t the only person this has happened to. But what is it about this iconic television franchise that has inspired so many people over the years to get into science?
“I wouldn’t be here today, if it wasn’t for Mr Spock,” Ms Bell said. “When I was a kid, I saw Star Trek on the TV and you had this guy that when the captain or the crew couldn’t solve a problem, they turned to the science officer and he would give the information they needed. The show allowed you to see different roles and people weren’t stereotyped. So it wasn’t the case that the women had to be the nurses or the cooks, no, they had roles that were just the same as the men. For me, through the show, you sort of see what science is about and you can see that it can solve problems. It also shows you that there’s no limits. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you are, what the colour of your skin is, what your religion is, what gender you are, if you want to have a scientific career, science isn’t going to mind what you look like. Star Trek just says you can do whatever you want to do.”
Star Trek has often explored the ideas of new technology but has it ever predicted, or perhaps even inspired, the technology that we now take for granted?
“It’s a known fact that the person who first invented the mobile phone in the late 1960s said that Star Trek was his inspiration because of the idea that Captain Kirk could be down on a planet and communicate with Scotty on his spacecraft, that inspired him to come up with the mobile phone,” Ms Bell told me. “The mobile phone came from Star Trek. The Motorola flip phone was even inspired by the communicators on Star Trek. There’re other things too, for example the replicator. On Star Trek you could use these to immediately produce objects, now in real life, we have 3D printers. In Star Trek you had a Universal Translator where people from different languages and cultures could communicate freely, now look at what AI can do today. Science Fiction, if it’s done well, can teach us about what might be possible, and then people can take those ideas and make them into reality.”
I think Star Trek has probably influenced our lives today more than we realise, and it goes without saying that this has all happened because of science.
While it was Star Trek that inspired Ms Bell to have an interest in science, who knows what might make you become keen on the subject. I very much enjoyed the conversation I had with Ms Bell and, speaking as someone who is studying Advanced Higher Physics, I do find science very interesting and it’s very clear that the possibilities in science can be endless.
Article by Jack Ramsay, Head Boy
