Scientific Study as a Child's Game

 

Scientific Study as a Child's Game

The chemistry lab in the Batcave held a mystical fascination for me – and I don’t know why. Maybe it was the thought of discovering some unexpected substance that would have enormous potential, or just the excitement of trying various chemical combinations to see what would result. In any case, I think that I admired Batman not so much for his physical abilities as for the esoteric knowledge that enabled him to conduct meaningful experiments. For me, that was what set him apart and above other men. It was this captivating aura about Batman’s lab that somehow engendered in me a fascination with science and led me to request a Gilbert chemistry set for Christmas when I was about seven years old. That modest set contained only about twenty chemicals, a Bunsen burner, tripod, mortar and pestle, and a few other supplies; but it included an amazing manual that described hundreds of experiments that could be performed with those few chemicals together with common household chemicals, such as washing soda, baking soda, vinegar, bleach, glycerin, hydrogen peroxide, etc. For years, I spent many happy hours at my tiny lab, which consisted of a small table situated beneath the south-facing window in a corner of my bedroom. In time I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of not one but two boys who had similar interests. They were both about my age, which by now was about ten. One of them had in his backyard an abandoned chicken shed, which became our lab and clubhouse. We augmented my modest supply of chemistry equipment with some chemicals that could be purchased at the local drug store and with some equipment that we mail-ordered from Fisher Scientific Company.

Do you think that it might have occurred to my parents that this interest would lead to my one day becoming a scientist? The answer is, “Unquestionably, no!” That idea was so far out of the line of thinking of my family - a family that stemmed from a long line of farmers - that it had no chance of entering into it. My mother thought that it was odd, and slightly amusing, that my interests were so different from those of an average boy; but she was glad that those interests kept me happy and occupied, and for the most part (but not entirely) out of trouble. Therefore, both of my parents saw it to their advantage to fulfill my Christmas and birthday present requests, which were mostly books and scientific paraphernalia, to the extent that it was possible within their modest financial means.

One of my earliest pieces of scientific equipment came from an unexpected source: my paternal grandmother. On one of her rare trips away from the farm she bought me a toy microscope. It probably cost less than a dollar at a five-and-dime store. It had a single focus lens of small magnification, which was adjusted by sliding the ocular piece up and down the lens tube. Nevertheless, the magnification was sufficient for me to observe microscopic plants and animals in drops of water that I collected from the ponds and brooks on the farm. Again, her purpose in providing me with this delightful toy was not to encourage my scientific interests. That thought would never have occurred to her, whose life and livelihood was centered about the physical labor of keeping the farm operating profitably. It was just an example of a grandmother spoiling her grandson.

Sometime later I acquired, as a Christmas or birthday present, a more professional microscope, with an illuminated slide stage and several eyepieces for various levels of magnification. My first experience with it was to set it up to observe the critters in a drop of pond water. I was happily watching their movements, but after a short while those movements slowed and gradually stopped altogether. I removed the slide to study the problem, and immediately saw what should have been obvious – the heat of the illuminating lamp had dried up the water. I simply needed to keep replenishing the water.

I remembered that episode because it represented an example of a principle that was to become important in my later life. That principle: If you want to find out the truth about anything, you have to study it on its own terms. Scientific journals as a rule reject data that is not readily reproducible under strictly controlled laboratory conditions. However, many studies cannot be adapted to meet those restrictions. Wild animals aren’t necessarily going to behave the same way in a restricted environment as they do in the wild. Stars (other than our sun) will always be studied only by the analysis of a point of light that reaches our telescopes. The lesson is that if we limit ourselves to the study only of those phenomena that can be studied under conditions that we can control, we may neglect whole worlds of knowledge.

Once we reached a certain grade level in elementary school, each of us was automatically subscribed to a Weekly Reader newspaper, and we were assigned to read and report to class on one article in the paper. One of these papers contained an advertisement for Nature magazine. This, of course, was not the British scientific journal, but a children’s magazine intended to whet a child’s interest in learning about our natural environment. At my request, my mother ordered a subscription; but she firmly rejected my carrying out the biology experiments indoors. I was assigned a small space on the open air back porch for my projects. I would, for example, capture a Monarch butterfly caterpillar, feed it milkweed leaves, watch it form a pupa, a chrysalis, and finally emerge as a colorful adult, flex its wings until they became firm, and then flutter away.

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