• Question: The origin story: How did you come & what got you interested? ( Shelly Fan)

    Asked by anon-252499 on 1 May 2020.
    • Photo: Alex Leide

      Alex Leide answered on 1 May 2020:

      I’ve always liked understanding how things work, like engines, planes, nuclear power stations… and I kept hearing that “it would work better if we had better materials”, so I studied materials science. That’s still why I am interested in what I do. Basically the job goes from: something breaks/doesn’t work well enough, we do some experiments to understand why, then try to design a better material by adjusting what it is made of.
      We can add different atoms to a material, then mix and heat it at different temperatures to change its strength in different ways. Kind of like adding different ingredients to a cake, mixing it differently or cooking it at different temperatures. Eventually you can create a really good recipe.

    • Photo: James Smallcombe

      James Smallcombe answered on 1 May 2020:

      I grew up in Abingdon, Oxfordfordshire which happens to be where a lot of scientists from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (one of our big national laboratories) live. Being surrounded by friends and neighbours I was inspired to study science and with the encouragement of a good A level teacher to go for a Physics degree. I studied at the University of Birmingham where I did practical lab courses using radiation detectors and got to do a projected using their own cyclotron participle accelerator, I found I was quite good at (and interested in) nuclear physics and then everything carried on from there.

    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 1 May 2020:

      I think at the very beginning, I was interested in physics because I wanted to know why some galaxies had spirals and others didn’t. I didn’t understand how something so big could have a spiral shape like that, and why didn’t the stars leave the spiral if they’re travelling at different speeds?

      I first read about spiral galaxies from a popular science magazine my dad used to get and it was a question he couldn’t answer (because scientists still have multiple ideas of how they might form even now). The more I read into astrophysics the more questions I found where the answer hadn’t been found.

      I also got a chance to do an astronomy GCSE which I really enjoyed. I was also interested in computing (CGI mainly) at this point so when I started my A-levels I was torn between doing computing at university of Astrophysics. Well it turned out I was terrible at coding so I went with physics 😀 (it turned out that physics also uses coding so I got good at it anyway eventually) which turned out to be the better choice for me.

      I applied for a PhD after my Masters course and got one working with exoplanets and dead stars called white dwarfs which is where I am now. I’ve moved on from that initial interest in spiral galaxies into studying white dwarfs (which have many unanswered questions for me to try and answer!).

      Really I got in my area because I was interested in questions which didn’t have answers, but if my dad had got a biology or archeology magazine instead of science I might have ended up in a completely different field!

    • Photo: Paula Koelemeijer

      Paula Koelemeijer answered on 1 May 2020:

      I was always interested in maths and science at school, but also in languages and theatre. However, when I was 15, I was looking through a textbook of a friend who took geography and read about plate tectonics, earthquakes, etc, and I got hooked. The more I learned about Earth Sciences as a subject, the more I enjoyed it as it combined the different sciences I was interested in (maths, physics, chemistry) in an applied way, which meant I didn’t have to choose between these!
      During my degree, I did then become more interested in the physics side of Earth Sciences (geophysics), where we apply physics to learn about different processes in the Earth (convection in the mantle, cooling of the Earth, seismic waves travelling after earthquakes). I still really enjoy that, particularly seismology, and have continued to study and research this.

    • Photo: Giorgio Bindoni

      Giorgio Bindoni answered on 1 May 2020:

      For me it was very straight forward. I always wanted to be a pilot. This goes back to my first recollection of my early years. I Never thought I was going to do anything else.
      And I have to say, I was lucky that physically and mentally I passed all the hurdles before me to become a pilot.

    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 1 May 2020:

      My origin story isn’t too interesting.
      –
      When I was in highschool, my teachers told me I wasn’t good enough to do A-levels, let alone go to university. (My grades weren’t the best).
      –
      While I was doing my A-levels, I really enjoyed physics, especially the theory components. I decided to apply for university just to see if I could get in and I did!
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      While I was there, my passion for understanding the world and the academic environment helped me figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The new found enthusiasm, and support from friends and lecturers helped me do much better in uni than I ever did in school.
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      I guess the moral is, don’t worry too much about doing perfectly in school, science is more about working hard and being passionate.
      –
      Great question,

      Ry

    • Photo: Marios Kalomenopoulos

      Marios Kalomenopoulos answered on 1 May 2020: last edited 1 May 2020 8:02 pm

      At the beginning I didn’t really want to become a physicist. Due to my familly influences (my dad, cousins) I was thinking of following engineering (or something more applied in general).
      _
      Things changed at my 4rth year at High School (this would be around 16-17 years old), when we had at school a great physics teacher. Generally, I liked the science courses and mainly physics & maths, but nothing more than a vague interest.
      _
      But in this course, which was a first more quantitative take on Newtonian mechanics and its applications, I was excited. Our teacher was deriving things and explaining physical phenomena from simple principles that govern nature! I was trully amased!
      _
      From that moment, I became more and more interested in physics and finally chose to do a physics degree! The rest, just followed, I suppose…

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