Pop Science on HN
Discussions center on a popular science article or video topping Hacker News, debating its relevance to the site's hacker audience while praising its role in making science exciting and accessible, especially for children.
Activity Over Time
Top Contributors
Keywords
Sample Comments
I have nothing against the video, and I am all for making science exciting for the broader audience. I just am not sure why it is at the top of HN.
It's a pop science article, and I'm sure the audience that's into pop science articles found it interesting and probably learned something. I'm not really sure what you expect.
Definitely. Good to see someone making science cool.
No, let's keep him interested in Science, his advances are better for everyone in this domain
One thing the other (very good) replies miss: Never underestimate the power of 'gee whiz' technology has on children. This is cool, exciting engineering. Even if the scientific results are "boring", that is to say we don't get any unexpected data, the act of pushing the boundaries of what humans have been able to do is inspirational. There are kids who will learn about this in school the next few days, and see it on the news, and hear grown ups talking about how neat it
Not really hacker stuff, but really cool science nonetheless.
I see what you're saying. I for one would like more science stories.
I honestly LOL'd at this, especially trying to imagine the discussion:"But honey, it's for science! Don't you want to make the world a better place!?"
"And they see this list."But why would they see this list in your proposed context? The list is not specifically intended for your theoretical audience, nor intended to contain your theoretical content, but you're railing against it like it is. If the article was entitled: "This article will inspire kids to do science", you might have a point. I will go further and argue that the type of youth reading Nature is actually probably going to be inspired by this article.<p
Sure, that's better. I dunno, feels like bikeshedding to worry about the best way of getting help. It's sad that it turned out to be relatively boring (equipment not set up right) instead of any actual scientific discovery, but I'd personally rather see more people having fun and learning to love the process of discovery even when it doesn't pan out. And most things don't pan out, I get that.This may well not pan out either, but lots of people with little floaty ro