Assignment 2: Scientific Interests

Share any 3 resources that would reveal to me a scientific idea that you find interesting, inspiring, or intriguing. It could be a quote, an image, a video, a scientific principle, a working scientist, a historical scientist — anything with a location on the internet that I could follow up on. The resources can be united by a theme or be quirky and disjointed. In general, they should be something that makes you say, "I wanna do something like that". For each resource, include the following 4 items…

1. A link that I can click on to take me to the resource. It has to be something with a fixed location on the internet and no weird symbols like ?, &, #, =, +. Sometimes students give me links that are search queries. I don't know why they do that.
2. A description of the resource that is something like a bibliographic entry, but not so formal. If you would like to practice doing bibliographic entries for this assignment, then go right ahead. You will have to learn it eventually. I recommend Citation Machine with APA formatting as a useful tool. Please note that just because something is on the World Wide Web doesn't mean it's a webpage. For example, a YouTube video is not a webpage, it's a video. An article at nytimes.com is not a webpage, it's a newspaper article.
3. A summary of what you want me to focus on. You have to do this because I don't want to read a 500 page PDF or watch a 3 hour video in its entirety.
4. Tell me how you could see yourself doing something related to the scientific idea in this resource you found. How do you think you could participate, replicate, imitate, etc.?

You will do this assignment twice.

1. The first time you do this assignment the resources can be united by a theme or be quirky and disjointed. In general, they should be something that makes you say, "I wanna do something like that". This is meant to be a brainstorming activity, so there is no way you can do it wrong. That does not mean you should not take it seriously.
2. The second time you do this assignment it should be focused on a single field in science, and preferably on a single concept. In general it should be something that makes you say, "I think I can make this into a project I could work on for the rest of my junior year, and maybe even into senior year". You will not be forced to stick with anything you propose for this assignment. (Flexibility is a virtue.) But you should consider getting focused as soon as possible. (Procrastination is not a virtue.)