ITT: what got you interested in science

I played Half-Life when I was younger and now I study physics :D

The first time I saw light refracted, leaving a brighter spot on the carpet when I was 3 or 4.
I was amazed by how it was different, and looked at the warps in the window glass [older house; older warped glass].
After that I tried experimenting with all sorts of things; glass, chemicals, pendulums, etc.
I really got into it when I started receiving National Geo and Pop Sci magazines.
I never found out who got me the subscription, but I know for a fact it wasn't my parents [very, very anti-science and would try to throw them out].
I'm pretty sure it was my grandmother, but I didn't figure that out until after she died.
:(

Oh, I started receiving the magazines in the 6th grade, BTW... not when I was 3 or 4.
Also, COSI Museum FTW.

When I first mixed baking soda and white vinegar. One thing I am truly thankful to my parents for is that when I made a giant mess with baking soda and vinegar all over the backyard they'd just tell me to clean up without yelling at me about wasting stuff. We were pretty poor but I remember spending hours just trying different amounts of each thing and seeing how they reacted differently. I loved filling bottles and sealing them to make tiny bombs.

It got stronger as I aged and got access to more powerful reagents. I spent a whole summer figuring out how to cut glass with fire.

OP how old are you?
Portal came out like... yesterday.

Just kept trying stupid shit in high/middle school. At first had a real shit time of science in middle school. Teachers that focused all on biology (nothing wrong with it, just not interesting to me) and were shit. So I wrote that off. Tried debate and junior law club to see if I'd like that, did but got boring. Tried some medical future doctors thing where I learned to stitch and deliver babies but nah. Followed business leader in the area under another club and nah. Theater got into the tech stuff and had fun but not for a career. Junior/Senior summer I took a physics/robot college camp thing just to get out of taking high school physics (because I still thought I hated science) and loved it. Just turned shit around for me. Plus senior year physics teacher was sweet and I ended up skipping my basic health class just to hang out there and learn more.

>I wanted to work in a lab like Aperture
Um...

>be me
>13
>always been a fucking nerd, and it was my first year of a science competition called Science Olympiad
>I sign my ass up for anatomy and physiology, disease detectives, and some random event
>get 2nd place in anatomy
>found that I love it and how complicated the body was
>set on becoming a surgeon
>now attending med school

These threads are motivational as fuck man

also
>work for Aperture
mfw

Graduated high school and did 2 mediocre years in community college, then I spent a year trying to get a computer science degree because lol video games but dropped out. Parents wouldn't take me back so I was homeless or couch surfing. Eventually got a place and a crappy job working with retarded adults. Read some Nietzsche and realized I wanted to accomplish great things so I paid for another two years of community college to repair my GPA, and tried a bunch of subjects and asked around to see what I would like. I realized I've always loved math and I got a taste of what upper div math is like and went for it, now I'm at a UC doing great, will be applying next year to grad schools and professor think I have a chance at top 10 schools.

So basically it was reading philosophy and asking myself "are you gonna be a sick Kunt m8, or r u gonna be a sad kunt?"

Who doesn't want to bio engineer flamable fruit?

>When Portal first came out I was fucking obsessed with it.
I never really understood the craze with that game. It just never appealed to me.

I gained an interesting in Mathematics and Physics after experimenting with gravity.

As sad as it may be, what really sealed the deal for me was Steins;Gate.
I had always had an interest in Science, ranging from astronomy as a kid, to physics in High school. I would watch old episodes of NOVA, and such, but after playing through Steins;Gate I started to really delve into it.
If I was convinced that a Physics degree could land me a nice, and entertaining job I would go for it.

pretty sure it's been like a decade since the first portal

stories like this are always more inspiring; normally people just think it's too late to change

it's not like you were old or missed all your chances or anything but people here seem to think if you aren't a college grad at 18 ur life is shit u might as well kill urself despite the fact that u still have a solid 60+ years of life left

when I was young I got my hands on a computer and realised the potential of it. I made a couple of games and got into programming then I discovered calculus and went pretty hardcore into math (even had an offer to study at a top college at 16).

worked for a couple of years instead and then went into EE

never paid attention in school because I was always possessed by the belief that I was better than everyone else and I've learned pretty much everything I know myself.

I'm not op but portal 1 wasn't all that inspiring but if you played portal 2 all the way through maybe you'd understand

I got interested in physics through all the lies people told me throughout my early life; i was just curious and I found out a lot of the things people told me were bullshit I guess

though it's not all that; I mean video games and whatnot; just changing my way of thinking; first few episodes of the old cosmos, etc I mean I never actually finished cosmos but I remember the part verbatim where Carl says "the suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion, or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge. and there is no place for it in the endeavors of science"

sprinkle in some vague philosophy and there you have me

going to do applied physics and either get a masters in engineering (nuke perhaps) or med school depending on my future self

the only guarantee is that I'm going to want to study physics in the future, as I have for almost the past decade

bro do engineering for the undergrad and physics for the masters instead

fuck u every single time I'm convinced of what I want to do u come along and cuck me

which engineering and why? the school I'm going to basically offers electrical engineering and that's it (ucsc) and I can't imagine that will be anywhere near as interesting as the applied physics major is

I'm convinced on uc Santa Cruz because I don't have the money to go out of state and I like rain

undergrad engineering is useful and you don't start doing proper physics until grad school anyway

a masters in engineering after a bachelors in something else is not the same because you can't get accreditation

its a lot harder to do it this though

you mean masters aren't accredited? I'm not sure how I never knew that; thank you. what'd you major in; have you posted elsewhere in this thread?
electrical engineering sounds dull in comparison

i used to play with a circuit program which would let you arrange logic gates on a board and let you activate things and thats how i became an electrical engineer

When I started college I didn't know what I wanted to do so I just took a bunch of basic ed classes. I got 118% in my intro to geology class so I went into geology.

i went to shit tier ucsd
do ee and minor in physics if you want

EE actually is one of the most physics dense engineerings, because it's actually oriented towards signals and radio. Here's a bunch of stuff I've covered so far:
>digital logic and embedded programming
>fucking three-dimensional electromagnetic propagation and influence IN ONE GODDAMN SEMESTER WHILE THE PHYSICS MAJORS GET TWO
>one class in power transmission so far (not terribly interesting, but it's neat)
>two semesters on how to make an op-amp basically, but also gives you the basic physical understanding of how digital circuits are working
I've got a year left, and a bunch of it is signal analysis (extracting data from signals and stuff) and more programming (hardware logic).

To be honest, EE is probably the only engineering you can use outside of the classroom/industry. A MechE could build something, but really, in practice you go for overengineering. They're unlikely to have access to 1000 machines and industrial scale processes/software projects. A Computer Engineer could put together computer hardware stuff and program very effectively for it, not real problem there, except they'd lack a lot of understanding of how stuff would go wrong on the hardware side (not as much embedded programming). Civil, Chemical, Environmental, Aerospace, they're not going to be doing hobbyist stuff.

With EE, I can understand why running a microphone amp from a 5V source instead of 9V caused it to completely fail and I can do hobbyist circuit stuff in general. I can get into programming games (we had to program Pac-Man for our final embedded project on the Landtiger LPC 1768). Programming hardware logic (VHDL) isn't really interesting to me, but, rigorous logic is applicable to any practical application. Three-phase power awareness isn't that useful, but knowing why I should turn off breakers and wear gloves, on the physical level, keeps you in line with reality.

You obviously stil have to have an interest and motivation in all the stuff, but I enjoy it even if I suck

that what you did? any other tips? is it really that bad? does it rain a lot?

thank you; if you didn't inspire me to happily major in ee you at least inspired me to try to swallow the pill unless Veeky Forums tries to pull it back out of my throat like it always does

and is it possible to get a degree in engineering while sucking at it, I can't imagine you're too bad

Im facinated by animals, dinosaurs and fossils. Secondly I enjoy being skeptic of stupid shit like phycic mediums and alternative medicine. Im kind of messed up like that

>Little kid in elementary school
>Library day
>Bored AF of reading fiction books
>Head to non-fiction section
>Glorious material
>Check out book about ancient Rome and another about general human anatomy
>This continues with me alternating between history, cosmology, and biology books
>Start spending my free time studying said material

College
>Get there
>Working on degree in bio
>Bored out of my fucking mind
>Physics requires calc 4 and math can suck my white dick despite me being generally ok at it
>Start work in anthropology department as a biological anthropologist
Ayy lmao

I'm pretty good at it, just under 3.5 GPA and I'm severely ADHD and Depressed. EE is one of THE FUCKING BEST because of how little homework we have. This semester I had two labs with partners, both of which were able to complement me, so we got work done relatively quickly and reliably. The last Pacman game took the most time and patience, but I knew some programming styles which reduced a lot of the clutter. Otherwise, we really didn't read out of the book (except for the op-amp class) and there was very little homework. Meanwhile, everytime I saw the Math major she was doing theory shit, the Mechanical and Aerospace always had some project they were behind on, the Civil had his books to read, etc. To put it this way, EE is more applying concepts properly and accurately, and less about learning a trillion things.

I went to a CC before I went to uni. My uni experience has been exceptionally poor, but I've been told I had an incredibly good CC. It definitely feels like a lot of uni culture is to destroy your will to learn and think independently. Very rote for a lot of stuff, which is why Achmed, Chang, and Pajeet will be at the top of the class. Not by much though, because as I said, it's not about learning a trillion things, but about applying a hard set of skills reliably. The biggest one being fucking patience I swear to god. Even mathematically, a lot of EE is pretty straight forward, normal operations, some matrices here and there, more as you go up. The physics needed a little bit of Calculus, but not spectacularly difficult.

If you go to a uni, expect to be completely responsible for your own learning. Most TAs won't give a fuck about your learning, and teachers can be real shits. Wherever you go, if it's a decent size, they'll have tutoring for math, and maybe people you can find for science. At my CC they let the math tutors tutor sciences if they knew them and there were no conflicts, but at uni it's strictly math, and even less of a range ofit

going to a cc rn; how many years did you do at cc? 2? seems like a lot of people end up doing more, my lab partner who was actually chill and intelligent was on his 4th year at cc going to be an ee major

sorry for brief responses; I appreciate the replies and characterization of ee I just am in a social setting atm

Something I didn't have room to mention (or remembered lol) was job prospects. An Electrical Engineer has GREAT job prospects. Currently there are over 315k positions in the USA, and even with EE "stagnant" and ME rising "quickly", in ten years, there will STILL be fewer ME jobs than EE. With ME, you could go into maintenance or design I guess, for big machines and some industries, but with EE, I feel there's just so much more out there, with the aspect of understanding hardware AND (basic) software. I could go into some radio or power system bullshit, I could go into troubleshooting hardware, I could focus in software and contribute to some project. With embedded systems, I could do some stupid bullshit like write drivers for internet of shit devices, besides making them and programming them in general.

With most of the other Es, there's far fewer jobs, or you need to go further. Basically EE, ME, and CE can get you a job right off the bat, and any E can get you almost anywhere you have interest. I've considered going to school to study perovskite in use for solar cells, or some such thing. Literally it would be one of the perfect applications for an EE to research, and would likely require classes for physics, which I too have an insatiable lust for.

Here was my situation:
>NEET for a few years, mentally ill for most of my life
>poor parents, neither have a degree even though they're 50+
>came from just barely a city
So I went to CC for my Engineering and Applied Science AS, and then went to uni for EE, to have a job in something that sounded FUCKING GREAT. I would've liked to have done something in EE and ME, but they're hyper Jews and won't let you do so easily. Engineering is a pretty reliable way to get a job, EE is probably going to be the most robust going forward. One, it's involved in power generation. Two, EE is meticulous, one wrong resistor and you're fucked, safer from lying immigrants. Third, internet of things and programming

>how many
Uh, it was a mess, I even started at Calc II and Physics with Calc I because of AP credit. I am a Mensan too, as is most of my family lol.
My semesters, in terms of -time:
>full
>full
>full
>full
>part
>part
>summer
In total I withdrew from four and failed four. Three were speaking courses (anxiety), four were English 101 (I'd lock up during writing) and one was pre-Civil-Qar US history (literally my most hated subject ever, I was a retard for trying to take it). I got the Speaking requirement replaced with Interpersonal Relations (doctors note) and I passed the fifth English 101.

My CC was part of the SUNY school system, so the classes transferred to my uni. There was a single semester of catch-up, because the general Engineering and Applied Science contained some mechanical classes and they wanted more gen. eds.

The CC was actually free as well, basic state and federal grants 100% covered my education, and gave me $500-$1k back per semester. I lived with my parents and they bought food. Took the bus.

I had an ADHD/Autistic urge to understand the inside of things. I broke a lot of shit, but I never took apart any animals. I'm the EE that's been posting. When I was young my stepdad got me into some computer games and navigating the system(everything was three shades, black, blue, and blue. I was 3-5 when my brother got his Nintendo, and I had my Gameboy. I think earlier video games, and I mean real ones with difficulty and forethought, really train someone in filtering shit from reality. I had a perpetual urge to figure out what was the truth and what wasn't. Around 13 I specifically bought The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics and tried to read it over the course of a few summers. Before that I was understanding binary (and extension, trinary) to figure out cheating at video games i.e. why FF was 255, FFFF 65535, etc. In my early teens I did some light modding, my brother did more so I tried to follow but couldn't. Tried to understand shit the best I could but too ADHD for it. I followed the SICP video series, and read The Games People Play. Really helped me structure myself in a way which made future learning easier, and more importantly, got me coping with myself better. Still took a while for me to adapt, but the philosophies and stuff are still something I practice in learning and application.

so 3 years and a summer? literally exactly what I'm going to have to do; and I take the bus and cc is free for me + some sweet sweet taxpayer money in my pockets

though for UC schools you don't have to take communications classes so I dodged a bullet there. going on the summer after my second year and I've been stressing out about what I'm going to do. ee seems more and more likely now; I've taken a lot of autistic classes and am done with all gen eds after this summer but I'm so behind in math that I have to stay another year anyway

my credits transfer as well (also damn dude you do have adhd, I don't think ive ever had a convo like this on sci before)

>pretty sure it's been like a decade since the first portal
Exactly my point.
It's only been about a decade.
Please don't tell me you're a teenager or college student on a Veeky Forums debate board.

wat? Pretty sure that's most of us, buddy.

>Pretty sure
Citation needed

>If I'm debating a bunch of younglings with no experience or complete education then that actually explains a lot.

not that guy but ur literally browsing an anonymous Tibetan shrimp farming forum and you just assume everybody has "experience or a complete education" ?

I was an idiot coming out of highschool. I did math up till pre calc and realized once I got out I didn't learn jack shit. So started at a branch campus and relearned everything starting from basic algebra. Now I'm in calc 2 and going for computer science. At first it was a "dude video games" type deal but now I just get legitimate joy out of building programs. I also had great first year professors who gave us interesting programs to write.

While it'll be a while, I certainly wouldn't mind trying to go into more research oriented work for computer science.

and your point was that it came out "like yesterday"; even if I was 35 it came out when I was like 26, I wouldn't consider that yesterday

You want me to provide a citation for the demographics of Veeky Forums/sci/? That's going to take some original research.

Ok.

I'm in my 30s.
My 20s felt like yesterday.
It's cliche, but you'll understand when you get there.
10 years doesn't seem like that much after you've become an adult.
I call it "progression relativism"; most of society doesn't change, but the things that do don't change much.

Then don't make statements when you don't have the data to back it up.
#fallacies

It's the truth tho.. rigor? I don't no steenking reegor.

This is science not psychology.
OUT.

>tfw 19 and waiting on my mech eng
>tfw I see my friends in the good schools, could've been with them but coasted senior year
>tfw I feel like a failure already

I honestly regret coasting my final year of high school. Here I am posting on a tibetan arc welding forum while my friends are doing great. Instead of sitting on my ass tho I've been going ahead and proceeding with self study for mechanical and trying to find a job in the meantime so I'm not just mooching off my parents completely. First thing that inspired me was a photo of Ed White (astronaut) doing an EVA that I saw on a magazine that my grandfather had. Learned that they needed rockets to get there and 5 year old me was like well shit I wanna help these people get to space somehow.

>be 3
>started making drugs to pay off my dads gambling debts
>learned how from a time traveling priest named Mojito Jones
>we defeated anti-science ninjas in bangkok
>saved banksy from a cult of anti-science gangbangers in london
>all started when I learned that drinking water didn't instantly kill you
>unless there are alien particles it in, but that's a story for another time

You all don't know science until your staring down the barrel of a splatmatic samurai sword and the only way to disarm your opponent is with an intimate knowledge of what happened when you add balgorian baking soda to translorian vinigar
>volcano overload

I don't think I've ever heard of child seeing an astronaut and deciding to help, rather everybody focuses on the fantasy of being one; interesting thought process

I was there.

I got a book on black holes when I was 5, and then we just bought more and more physics books.

Nathan?

jesus christ

Always been interested in science.
Read Dune, and realized the Tleilaxu were fucking awesome.
Now I study biochem.

I was really young, in like 7th grade, and one of my family members asked me about the Higgs Boson. I went on the wikipedia article, and at the time it was extremely technical. I backed off for like a year then came back in 8th grade and investigated around and saw shit about Lie Groups, then I became determined to learn what they were. Now, I intend on studying algebra when I get to college.

>algebra?
>I learned that in high school!

???
By that I mean as in the field of abstract algebra. Specifically commutative and universal algebra.

i think you missed the message user

>be 11 years old
>living under a staircase
>fat hairy guy abducts me from my adoptive family
>takes me to a school for special children
>get told im the chosen one
>get forced into learning alchemy, potions, etc.
>now I work for the government in a criminal science related job

My man!

saaaaaaaaaame

>be 17
>at starbucks or some outdoor shopping area
>see lambo drive by, see guy has two hot girls in the car with him
>decide i want to do engineering for money
>graduate
>get job 75k starting
>feel like im awesome
>life is just as depressing as before
>tell people about my time in school and my new job
>no one really wants to listen
>ask a few girls i know out
>they all reject me
>happened again today with a longtime friend that worked at a grocery store, know she's single
>rejected

well shit i need to get ready for bed since i got to be at the office at 8am.

Don't ask out girls who you've known for a while. Find someone you don't know. And ask her out. Quit preying on your friends.

Minecraft Redstone for me interested in computer engineering, computer engineering got me interested in physics, physics got me interested in pure mathematics

no, my name is nathan

yes?

Harry Potter?

>It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere
>I'm all alone, more or less
>Stuck in space with a holographic autist, a sexually deviant furry and a robotic autist
>Have to survive in the future by learning all sorts of sciencey things

My uncle worked at NASA

I listened to a speaker talk about how she worked with positronium. I though that was the coolest shit ever. I was a freshman engineering major and quickly changed to physics.

sign me up nigga!
I am also generally studying biotechnology, even though I enjoy all fields of science...I just have a certain attraction to all things related to chemistry and biology so thats what Im studying...

I used to want to be a mathematician. Middle school I made the decision.

However, throughout the years I learned more and more what mathematicians did. And started playing more and more video games, mostly puzzle. Started reading sherlock and watching house.

I liked the logic, and philosophy behind math. I did not enjoy the rigor or application though. Calculus is terrible. Discrete though? Baby proofs? Fun.

Now I study "Psychologic Sciences". Specifically interested in cognition/learning/behavior. Minor in math for what it's worth.

I collect riddle books. My steam library consists mostly of puzzle games like The Talos Principle or The Witness.

I'm just a sherlock wanna be.
Maybe I'll be a game designer or something. Or get an MBA in marketing.

I dont give a shit as long as I get to "solve muh puzzles". As cringey as that sounds.

science olympiad is for fags. i used to bully the nerds who did that

Back then in middle school I didn't used to give a flying fuck about school in general until I took my first chemistry class and realized that it was pretty interesting and thought that it wasn't as hard as many of my classmate were saying.
I applied myself and started studying beyond the classroom, I have never done that before and my teacher realized how much effort I was putting in the subject so she have me extra material and invited to some local contests in science.
After 2 years of going to some contests not only in chemistry but also in physics I was invited to a math contest, to be honest I dind't that well that first time but I realized that it was waaaaaaay more interesting that chem/phys and I swear that realizing that completely changed me.
Right now I am about to finish my math degree

Money

I wanted to be Elon Musk so I became his son

I was bored and apathetic all my life
Once I finished high school I didn't know what to do, so I decided to study chemistry.

Now I'm working on my PHD thesis.

I wanted humans to be able to one day build things like this.

I love ze ocean , animals = Marine Biologist give me mien $'s nue

lasers, electricity, magnets and all this shit. Also i read my older brothers schoolbooks and couldnt wait to catch up so i can use dem fancy words like "potential energy, intergral, exponent, conservation of momentum..."

I want to leave my name in History. I want to people know about me in the next thousand years. I don't want to be forgot, I don't want to be just one more human dead. Sadly, I wasn't born rich, nor was I born in a first country world. I had no luck in sports and I'm not smart. I'm way too average that I'm the definition of an average person.
I was unlucky for I'm not born in an age of conquering, so I can't be like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan. Neither was I born in an age of mythology, so I can't be like the heroes of Greek Mythology. I can't be a leader like Stalin or Hitler, I was born in the wrong age and family for this. In this age, the only field I can be remembered is in Science, like Einstein, who is known by every person. I don't care if I'll be remembered for creating a formula, discovering something important or just creating a virus that killed thousands of people. Be it the devil or angel, I just want people to know who I was. Wish I had a simple dream like getting rich or anything like that. I don't want to be famous or rich, I want to be remembered. No one will remember who was Will Smith in the next century, but everyone will still know who was Alexander the Great and Isaac Newton.

Similar

>Little kid in elementary school
>Library day
>Required to do a reading program where they test you on your reading recall ability
>All the books in this system are fiction based
>Hate fiction
>Go to science reading section
>See book on physics
>Read through the book the entire year
>Decide I will major in physics
>Read several physics books throughout the years
>Take intro to physics in college
>Get an A
>Take a more serious course in physics
>Terrible 1st year professor
>He was horrible at explaining anything
>Physics professor quit the university after that year
>Decided I hated his course
>Didn't take another physics course
>Found I liked the math behind physics more than physics
>Became a pure math major
>Graduated with pure math degree

I had cancer when I was a freshman in high school and had to go through chemotherapy. It wasn't terminal or anything, but I couldn't do anything except sit in a hospital bed for 6 months. Video games got boring so I started reading. Got interested in math and physics because problem solving distracted me from constantly being reminded that I had fucking cancer. Now I just graduated from 3rd year undergrad as a math, physics and astronomy major and I'm as healthy as any other college student. Only downside is that I have one testicle.

Look into everything smullyan has ever written. On mobile so hope I got his name right

do you have smaller cums with only one testicle? always been curious

Orgasms are the same but there's rarely any actual cum. When there is, it's a different color (orangish tint) and a different texture (almost like sticky jello) than normal cum. Same viscosity though. Cumming vs not cumming is random as far as I can tell.

guess it makes little difference then
Godspeed user

Might be a good place to ask this. I'm having trouble picking a major, sci.

>Chemistry
I think working in a lab would be sweet. I do chemistry as a hobby, but don't know how I'd like it professionally. I've always wanted to synthesize a particular illicit molecule and would definitely get the skills to do so by going into organic chem, not that that's a good reason to base a life decision on. Pretty cool specialization of physics though, mastering the building blocks of the universe sounds ok. Probably the least likely option out of the three because of the shit employment.

>EE
Really into CS and electronics, could make big money doing this compared to the other options. Would love some kind of FOSS start up, but don't know how possible that'd be. Very socially acceptable and stable major.

>Maths
I feel out of the three options, this one would never stop being interesting. I don't know if I'd rather self study and keep it as a hobby though, and the employment outlook isn't superb.