I submitted something that probably didn't conform to the rules. Although I don't even know if I submitted it correctly anyways as I never received a rejection either. Ultimately I'm posting it here though:
The other morning, delirious from waking up at 4:30 to catch a bus to the Dresden airport after attending a wonderful conference, I sat in the terminal waiting for my plane to start boarding. As I sat there, the sun started to slowly rise beyond the horizon lighting the sky into a golden hue. And like a movie moment, I watched the Boeing (or maybe it was Airbus) 767 illuminate from those golden rays.
In that movie moment, I thought to myself, "wow."
I sat there dumbstruck and amazed by what we, humankind, have created. Commercial jetliners capable of carrying people across countries, continents, and oceans. The years of trial and error by the Wright Brothers just to develop the first flying machine. The years of research and development to be where we are at now. It's taken physicists and aerospace engineers who study flight and aerodynamics. Mechanical engineers who understanding loading and cabin pressure. And then my favorite, because I am one myself, the materials scientist and engineers who have developed the right turbine alloys, landing gears, and a wide assortment of other materials to send essentially these gigantic pieces of metal into the air.
How far have we come along in technology?
A little later I was in the Frankfurt airport for my layover. Still delirious of course as I hadn't found a source of coffee yet. But I saw a little girl with her mother. The mother stepped onto the moving walkway completely fine, like the rest of us would. But the little girl looked in terror at the moving platform, as if the wrong step would end her life. One second passed, then two, and three as she kept watching the floor move beneath her feet. She was waiting for the perfect moment, a pause maybe, to get on, but it never seem to came. Then she bravely put one foot forward and panicked as she became stretched out by her moving foot to her planted foot. She grabbed on the arm-rail, which of course was also moving. And finally in the last moments of desperation, she lifted off the planted foot onto the moving walkway and everything was alright again.
Newtonian mechanics, general relatively, whatever you want to call it.
Of course when I was a child, I didn't know that was what it was called. I was simply confused, scared, curious as to what was happening. That curiosity drove me to look for answers, sometimes in the classroom and sometimes at home (I was very fortunate to have an encyclopedia set). For me, and probably many of us, it was enthralling to learn how and why things worked they way the did. I believe this is a natural trait given the curiosity we have as children with developing minds. But for me personally, I don't think there was ever a turning point where I said, "Wow, now I love science." For some inexplicable reason at the time, I have always loved it, that somehow there existed answers for the questions I had.
As an adult now, I've become so hardwired to either accept the certain laws, like gravity, or certain technologies, like transistors, have always been around. I've become dull, numb, and fail to appreciate the efforts of scientists, researchers, and engineers before us. And unfortunately once I was finally awake, I failed to notice anymore more spectacular events during my trip departing Germany.
Every once in a while we have our own "Eureka" or "Aha" moments in our own research that continues to satisfy that curiosity. But the fruits of our work have only come about by those before us. This is often far too overlooked on my part, but when I make these realizations, there's something really special about these moments. Science is the progress of a collective, community, process that represents one of the epitomes of humankind. Of course that was something I could not see as a child, but inherently I was doing what I just mentioned.
The two stories I just told you earlier are just one of the many moments that remind me of that. The knowledge I have, the technologies I enjoy, are only because others have taken the same path I am taking now. That is why I love science.
