I’ve always loved science.

One of the earliest books I remember having is one of those oversized astronomy books with beautiful color pictures of each of the planets in the solar system. It must have been given to me as a present when I was six or seven, probably by my aunt Irene, I would guess. I wish I still had that book, but it’s one that fell by the wayside during one of our moves, I suppose.

Later on I had a chemistry set when we lived in the house on the hill on West Main Street in Richland. I could only work with it in the basement, of course, where there was a concrete floor, and I had to be careful not to light the alcohol fueled flame anywhere near any flammable objects. 

Imagine! A ten year old with a chemistry set with real chemicals, some of them even a bit dangerous (phenolphthalein, for example. I used to like the odor), and test tubes and the ability to heat them up and do actual experiments. (Years later when I bought a chemistry set for my young nephew, the “chemicals” were in tiny little minuscule vials and there was no way provided to light a flame; progress, I suppose, and presumably much safer, but it seemed to take all the fun out of it somehow.)

My uncle Reed (three years older than I was) also had a chemistry set. I’m not sure if he got his first and then mine followed suit, but I don’t recall him having any particular interest in science or chemistry, nor do I remember him having a chemistry set before I did, so I think it may have been a case, just this once, of him seeing something that I had and having to have it as well.

Alas, where my grandparents lived, their basement was unfinished. I mean really unfinished. The floor wasn’t even concrete. Just ground. You know, soil. Hey, they only got plumbing in their bathroom a few years earlier than this (but that’s another story), so they weren’t complaining. 

Thus, the basement wasn’t deemed suitable for Reed or anyone to play. Not even to use the chemistry set. So when Reed dragged it out, which I think he only did when I was there, we worked with the chemistry set in the middle room of their house, or if the house was too crowded at the time, we’d go to the attic. That’s right. Nothing especially flammable up there.

(Note: those photos are not of my chemistry set but of the nearest that I could find on the web. Not exactly as I recall.)

I used to enjoy TV shows like Mr. Wizard, which was broadcast on Saturdays. Mr. Wizard was the friendly neighborhood chemist and every week a teen or two would drop in to see what he was up to, and he would amaze them and the home audience with the simple experiments one could do with ordinary household objects. Well, sometimes not so ordinary.

Here’s a YouTube playlist of complete episodes from when Nickelodeon revived the series years later. Mr. Wizard (aka Don Herbert) was a bit past his sell-by date by then.

When I was old enough, I was reading popular science books by George Gamow and Isaac Asimov. Although Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy was the first science fiction of his that I ever read, I’m pretty sure that I found some of his science books in either the school or the Richland library before that.

I always did well in science courses in school. 

So why didn’t I pursue a career of some sort in one of the sciences?

Probably for two main reasons.

One, I’m sort of a generalist. Yes, I love science. But I love them all to a greater or lessor extent, and I also learned that the extent of my love is mostly skin deep. In any given field of science it doesn’t extend much further than what can be covered in an introductory overview course or two. Once you start getting into the real nitty-gritty details, my eyes start to glaze over.

For example, I’m fine with learning about the subatomic particles of electrons, protons, and neutrons, but when you tell me that those are actually composed of dozens of other, smaller subatomic particles like neutrinos and baryons and mesons and this-ons and that-ons, well, there’s a limit to what this beautiful mind can absorb.

Second, and perhaps more important, I hate labs. Oh, chemistry sets were fun when I was a kid, and I could muddle my way through labs and lab reports in high school when there were lab partners and the stakes weren’t very high, but really, my lab “technique” is non-existent. I just hate labs. The couple times I had to go to labs in college I did not do well at all.

So, no career in science for me.

But I’ve always maintained my interest.

Sadly, without putting science knowledge to use, it tends to atrophy.

Oh, I can recall the real basics when I have to, of course.

A few years ago, I was doing tech support for a learning management system, and one of the perks of that job was being able to take any of the tests that the instructors offered to their students. On a whim, I decided to take a final exam in an astronomy overview course. The instructor had made it an “open book” exam and students had up to three hours to complete it. I finished it in 30 minutes (even with an interruption of a support call), didn’t look up anything, and managed to get 80%.

So I still know something.

Yet I forget a lot as well.

Which makes it fun to rediscover some of the things I’ve forgotten. Like right now I’m re-reading Asimov’s guide to science. He wrote it in four different editions, each a thorough revision of the previous one, the last occurring in the early 1980s. But they are still worth reading, because he took the historical approach to science, and one can always supplement any of the books by simply checking to see what advances have occurred in any given field since that edition came out.

Actually, I’m having a little bit of fun with it myself. I own copies of two editions (having, alas, parted with the original edition many years ago), so I just bought used copies of the two earliest editions from Abe Books, and I want to do a little spot checking to see how he revised it over the years. Just for my own amusement.