CONVERSATION
YOUR OPINIONS ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND BBC SCIENCE FOCUS
LETTER OF THE MONTH
Women and physics
After reading your article on women and physics (June issue), I kept thinking about my own experience. My physics teacher was a woman, and she inspired me to study physics at Nottingham University. After becoming an engineer, I began to realise I was working in a man’s world. The only other women I met at work were secretaries, or worked in the typing pool. Once my younger child was in junior school, I retrained as a teacher and started working at a local comprehensive, where I hoped to inspire my pupils to study physics. For the 12 years I worked there, I was the only female physics teacher. I was promoted to head of science and longed to appoint another female physics teacher, but it was difficult to find any candidates (male or female), so much of physics had to be taught by non-specialists. I think that if we want to encourage more pupils, especially girls, to study physics, then we need to encourage more physics graduates, especially girls, to become teachers. There is a general feeling that physics is a difficult subject, usually studied by boffins. If physics is taught by enthusiastic, specialist physicists, more pupils might choose to study the subject and this, in turn, would help to stop this fear of physics being ‘hard’.
Perhaps the answer is to allow more subjects to be studied at A-Level. More pupils might decide to ‘give physics a go’, while still studying ‘safer’ subjects, so they are more confident of achieving the points required for further study.
WRITE IN AND WIN!
The writer of next issue’s Letter Of The Month wins a bundle of sci-fi and fantasy books from Pan Macmillan. The prize includes A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Shards Of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Rabbits by Terry Miles. panmacmillan.com
On the metaverse
[The metaverse could cause] another mental illness, self-inflicted, that will eventually consume enormous resources in an attempt to mitigate or cure it. I have spent most of my 89 years striving to separate hallucinations from reality and I don’t intend to give up that effort now. I do not think I will be around when the consequences of this latest folly become painfully realised, but I think they will be profound and dire!
Inflating evolution
Your article on real-life balloon animals (April issue) got me thinking about how evolution works. Does it act in small steps, or larger leaps?
If it’s in small steps, do these steps (such as a slightly larger vocal sac) offer enough of an evolutionary advantage to get selected?
It’s a good question. For this kind of adaptation, I’d argue it’s small steps all the way. As larger vocal sacs propel sounds further, any population where individuals show variation (even if only a mere matter of millimetres) in the sizes of vocal sacs would see winners and losers, genetically speaking, given enough time. Like cogs grinding in a machine, natural selection sets to work on populations until, theoretically, opposing factors (such as energy budgets) begin to kick in.
Making mountains
My previous readings suggested that the asteroid that hit 65 million years ago had a maximum diameter of around 50 miles, or more likely around nine miles, or was that kilometres? Prof Steve Brusatte (June issue) states that the asteroid was the size of Mount Everest. Are we looking at the height of Mount Everest from sea level? Also, what are the boundaries that decide which part of the Himalayas constitute Mount Everest?
Recent studies on the Chicxulub Crater left behind by the asteroid indicate that it was approximately six miles in diameter, or around 10 kilometres. This is roughly the size of Mount Everest. The comparison is not meant to be exact, but a ballpark estimate to put the general size of the asteroid into context.
Reference list?
I’m a long-time fan of the magazine and always look forward to it landing on my doorstep every month. BBC Science Focus does an excellent job of making study results digestible to people lacking expertise in the relevant area.
When you discuss a study in an article, would it be possible to provide a reference or URL for the original paper, for those nerdy few of us who want to explore the subject in more depth?
I appreciate they’re often paywalled, but not always, and even being able to look up the abstract would allow those so inclined to take a deeper dive into the research. This could be in print, or even a monthly reference list published on your website for each issue.