Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Middle and High School

Middle and High School

As I write this it's been close to 30 years since I graduated high school.  Again, I don't remember much from this time but these are the science related events I recall.

First, there was the right of passage known as the dissection of a frog.
I remember a girl in class held up the intestines and kissed them.






What had my interest and everyone else at the time was the Space Shuttle.  A reusable space craft blew our minds.  It was a space ship, but it looked sort of like a plane.








Back on Earth though, things were getting dark because people were getting sick and nobody knew why.  Science didn't have the answers and people panicked and then they labeled:

It was the gay disease that nobody was studying because it was the gay disease.

I remember this as a time for science because along with the activists it was the Doctors, the immunologists and the researchers who told us this was H.I.V. and it could affect anyone.  It was really the first time I got to see how important science was to the general public.  You could really see how panic, misinformation and bigotry can spread when people turn to unscientific answers.

The other big medical science story I recall was that of Barney Clark.


Because of this event and all the news coverage, I learned more about the heart on TV than in school!  It was on the magazine covers...
...and there were plenty of news broadcasts similar to this:



The last big science story I recall about that time was again, related to the space shuttle...
We all learned about what went wrong.  There were plenty of specials about heat shields and insulation and how they malfunctioned.  What I recall about that time was that it showed that science is about exploration and because of that it can be dangerous...but that doesn't mean you give up.

Now how about the college level?