Aparna S in Lower 5 has been shortlisted for the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory School Science Prize. The final will be held on 17 December 2019 – good luck Aparna!
Aparna’s prize entry, an essay on ‘Why I Love Science’, is reproduced below.
I was always a curious child. I always wanted to know why and how things happened, how they worked. To the extent that my parents wouldn’t be able to answer me back. In fact, they would get quite annoyed at me for asking so many questions. But that didn’t stop me from asking.
In primary school, we had one science lesson every week and I always looked forward to them. I would finally get to learn about what I was curious about. Even now, science lessons are what keep me sane through the swirling mists of secondary school. It’s the practicals, the analysis, the graphs and the conclusions that make science so enjoyable for me. Many would be bored by the countless experiments and conclusions but an experiment isn’t complete without the evaluation or the analysis.
It’s the fact that I learn something new from nearly every science lesson, that I learn something about how the world works that I didn’t know before that makes it so amazing. I think that its important that everyone is educated about how the world works, since science is the base of the world and the universe; astronomy that studies celestial objects like the planets in our solar system, forces such as the gravitational pull that keep the earth rotating around the sun, the elements which are what make up the earth and the cells that are made up of atoms but also make up every living thing. All three sciences, chemistry, biology and physics, link back to each other in one way or another, they are interconnected.
In science, many things haven’t been explained yet, and that’s what’s fun about it. Every day there are new discoveries arising which gives me the hope that maybe I will discover something new about science in the future. I am almost certain that I want to be a scientist in the future, most likely a biologist. There have been many discoveries already but there are still so many things that can still be discovered. Who knows, I might discover a new species or find a cure for cancer in the future.
Science has endless possibilities, unlike maths there is no fixed answer or explanation. I love that about science. I love a challenge and planning experiments are one of my favourite things to do. It puts my prior knowledge and logic to use. But the moment I enjoy the most, is the satisfaction that I finally know how things work. And that’s why I love science.
