What got you interested in THE SCIENCE in the first place?

[Agent86]

When I was a kid, I had two very important influences. A smart dad with a lot of books, and a fear of the dark. Now the deal was, bedtime was 8pm, lights out was 8:30. The only exception to this, is if I was reading. My dad would let me stay up late on the condition that I was in bed, and reading a book. Not drawing or listening to the radio, or sleeping with the light on. I had to read.

My parents never bought me kids books. I never read "go dog go", or "the very hungry caterpillar", or comic books, so I had to choose from the bible, dads carpentry and woodworking books, a very long series of science encyclopedia magazines (kind of like popular science meets nat geo, I don't remember what they were called, world factopedia atlas, and the ultimate visual dictionary.

I started with the bible, and that was a bad choice for 8 year old me, because I opened it up to a random page in the beginning (my parents are both atheist and never read the bible to me) and the first entry I read was the eye for an eye bit, where some guy (Jesus?) says, if a hand should sin, then cut off that hand, if an eye should sin, gouge it out, for it is better to be blinded than to live with sin. I'm paraphrasing there. It frightened the crap out me, and I didn't open a bible again until I was 27.

So the carpentry books, atlas, dictionary, and science magazines were the library I had to choose from, and I read them all, cover to cover, several times over during my childhood. I had mad skills with geography and flags and stuff, even politics of far away countries (outdated as it was) and I could spell pretty much any word I recognized. I wasn't given plastic toys or video games, because we were a bit poor, but my dad made me jigsaw puzzles and building blocks (because he's a carpenter) and when I was about 11, they bought a computer that ran MS-DOS. They explained that, beyond word processing, they didn't know how to use it, so I took up the 500 page DOS manual and learned it, then I taught them.

Pretty much ever since, I've read just about everything I could get my hands on, and my sci-fi books outnumber regular fiction 3-1. When I discovered wikipedia, I probably almost died of starvation, just linking page after page after page of chemical formulas and quarks and scram cannons and Z-machines and alan turing and teller-ulam warheads and difference engines, and so on...

Now here I am. How about you?

[AmpsterMan]

Wow... You sound like a pretty well rounded man! Thank your father for that, not many parents are like that. I too had problems understanding the bible at a young age because neither of my parents explained the metaphors and similes to me either so I was frightened as well.

My experience with science came from the fact that my father is a bit of an everything type of guy so he, through osmosis, instilled that in me. I an not like most around these parts because I am not as sciency as others but I have a healthy interest in everything.

I guess I have enough knowledge and interest in most topics to not be completely lost, but not enough to carry meaningful conversation with experts

[Monkeh]

Good question and I don't think I could answer it really. My dad was a chemist and he'd occasionally talk to us about some aspect of chemistry or explain a reaction if we asked about rust or whatever but I think I first started being really interested when I found about atoms, evolution, electron energy levels and the animal cell.

Those things really started me thinking about how much I had absolutely no clue about. After I finished my formal education, I graduated in a biological science, I started to get more interested in the big questions like what is time? Where did this universe come from? And why are we all here anyway?

I had decided from a very young age that the concept of the Christian God was laughable, (no problems if you don't agree, it's just like, my opinion man), so I wanted to find out more to explain things to me. I started with some Richard Dawkins as I felt understanding evolution would be the first step in understanding a whole lot more. 'The Selfish Gene' and 'The Blind Watchmaker' opened my eyes and really fired home the concepts of evolution for me. Then I read Brian Greene's book called 'The Elegant Universe' which is basically a history of the development of Superstring theory. Mind was blown. He manages to explain relativity pretty well in it as well as the concepts behind string theory and why it's just so damn elegant.

From there I've done my best to absorb science documentaries, magazines, articles and whatever else I could find because to me, science is my religion. I have faith that science will eventually answer practically all of our questions and provide near immortality in the form of regeneration tech or simple mind-downloading-into-computer tech. Yeah, I said simple, one day it will be.

[Scotius]

Well, my mom was a librarian, so i've never suffered from the lack of printed awesomeness to devour And one day she gave me a 'glue-it-yourself' model of Soyuz spaceship. It was enormous (for a kid at least), very detailed and best of all - it contained two miniature models of cosmonauts that could be placed inside the capsule. Wow. I was speechless. Of course it's long gone now, but to this day i remember hom much joy my brother and i had 'flying' our rocketship around our house. So, thanks again Mom

[Klingon Admiral]

What got me into science? Dinosaurs being infinitely cool. Sadly this was before the second (third?) dinosaur revolution in the early-mid 2000's, so all the dinosaurs were naked. =/

[Moon Goddess]

I was always curious about how things worked, and my family encouraged that, and then in 4th grade I had a teacher who stood up for me when other kids made fun of me, she was really excited about science herself and that was something I looked up to.

[PakledHostage]

I was the Ralph Wiggums of my neighborhood. I was late in learning to read and a lot of the other kids and even some of the teachers thought I was dumb. I am not sure what changed for me, but when I finally did learn to read, I read everything I could get my hands on. I remember regularly skipping class in grade 5 to go read in the library, and I'd sign out encyclopedia volumes to read on the school bus. I think I was just bored with school but I was fortunate to discover that I could teach myself interesting things. Through it all, I always gravitated towards math and science subjects. Maybe I'm just hard wired for it?

[SargeRho]

Innate curiosity. I don't remember there being an event, thing or person that got me intrested in science. As a kid, instead of playing with toys, I always disassembled them because I wanted to know how they work.

[tanuki_chau]

My grandfather. He worked as a chemist in the R&D lab of DuPont. So I grew up seeing, walking on, and wearing the fruits of his endeavors. That intimacy and his encouragement fostered in me the passion for science. He once bought me a chemistry set when I was 13 and was disappointed in the contents. So he ended up obtaining 'better' chemicals as he put it. He also taught me how to purify and extract higher concentrations of chemicals from the already provided ones. Granted I wasn't great at chemistry, however I did end up going into a STEM field (engineering). It's funny because now I also work in R&D. The difference is I don't have a shiny PhD like he does. Still, many people have movie stars, models, or athletes as role models. I have my grandfather.

[Skyler4856]

My brother loaned me a copy of "The Universe in A Nutshell" when I was nine. Needless to say I was instantly hooked.

[TheDarkStar]

I'm not sure, but when I was around five I often asked my parents to read books like "A Brief History of Time" and explain them. Later on, I would read non-fiction for fun (the more math, the better). I've always wanted to know how everything works.

[eurybaric]

I think it started with my uncle. He's a researcher and philosopher who deals with .. erm.. cosmology? well in any case, he believes that science can be deduced from logic (and don't we all believe that). But more so, he believes that even theories, be them mathematical, particle physics or otherwise, could be deduced from simple abstract logic. I agree. And I've seen it happen -- not only in the greek days mind you, but even now. Anyway, my talks with him got me really interested in how our universe works. Micro to macro. And , well , along with several books - classics such as newton's writings - or papers describing quantum mechanics during the earlyh 70's, you could say I got hooked. And then came wikipedia hehe. And then I discovered Orbiter. And, and, and.... damnit I just love the questions maybe even more than the answers!

Cheers to all from Lebanon

[Krevsin]

My obsession with space began very early. One of the first films I remember seeing on VHS was Star Wars: A New Hope and I loved the battle in space at the end. I also watched Star Trek: TNG on television. I didn't understand a thing, but I loved it all the same.

Then, When I was 9 (I think), I found a very nice little book entitled The Mischievous Nephews Of Donald Duck Volume 2, which was mostly about flight and spaceflight. I loved the part about spaceflight and I still have the book today.

When I was 12, I got my hands on a very neat little black book called "Rocket Engine: The Problem of Space Travel" by Herman Potocnik (a.k.a. Herman Noordung). It is a fully comprehensive spaceflight textbook with schematics, calculations, equations and engineering solutions to various problems of space travel, all written in a very simple and understandable language, with most unknown terms explained beforehand in a comprehensive manner. I fell in love with the book and it got me really interested in the entire science part of spaceflight and physics in general. Also, it contains the first sketches of a ring shaped space station in history. That is when something went 'click' in my brain, and I thought to myself: You know, i'd love to do something like this. Thus, the obsession interest that'd last a lifetime came into being.

Then, I finally got internet hooked up to my computer and I was amazed at all the things about space on it. After all the Wikipedia articles, I found the SpaceDaily website, Project RHO's Atomic Rockets, the Rocketpunk Manifesto, and (eventually) Kerbal Space Program.

[TheCardinal]

Science Fiction and Carl Sagan (Cosmos).

[NASAFanboy]

I don't know.

I just..out of nowhere, get a small affinity for space. So, I but KSP and watch 2001, which has turned my little affinity into a full-on almost fanatical obsession toward NASA and space.

[DeathFromBelow]

Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Some of my earliest memories are from watching that show with my dad when I was very young. I sort of 'rediscovered' it after I finished college and ended up buying the DVD set. What an amazing series, especially the episodes about Kepler (Harmony of the Worlds) and the Greek scientists (The Backbone of Night).

[3_bit]

Tough question for me....

It's really just the appeal of finding out the unknown. I prefer the robotics aspect and my Mom got me a VEX robotics system when I was nine. I never did do much with it, but it did teach me quite a bit. Not to mention computers, something I'm quite interested, specifically the vintage 70's-80's era ones. To understand how simple these complex machines we view the forums on here today is quite compelling, knowing that most people see it as some form of magic.