01 May 2004

The Development of a Scientist

Donald Sieber (dseeber@rmci.net)
Retiree
Society for Amateur Scientists, Member

I would like to explain my feelings about the values of an informal science background and the evolution of those feelings into a lifelong interest.

In my youth I was not a particularly good student, mostly because I was impatient and argumentative. One day I noticed a rather large telescope prominently displayed through a neighbors picture window. My curiosity grew and I soon gained the courage to ring the doorbell and meet the telescope’s owner. The gentleman was happy to explain the workings of this mysterious device and invited me to look at the stars. This meeting instigated an interest in astronomy that I carry to this day, some 60 years later.

The Buhl planetarium in Pittsburgh was a huge and wondrous place with star shows, science fairs, exhibits, and everything to ignite the imagination of a young boy. Astronomy was my reason for starting regular visits to the planetarium. They had amateur astronomer meetings, shops to grind your own telescope mirrors, and lots of knowledgeable and helpful people.

I soon found that the science of astronomy was not the only science in the world. After all, the planetarium also had beautiful exhibits in a number of physical and life sciences. I soon found myself wanting to learn all of it. Perhaps my reason at the time was more selfish. I wanted to know more than my school chums about these complicated devices and ideas. I embarked on a regimen of self study which gave me a spotty but gradually expanding mastery of math and general science. The self study habit has never left me and when I graduated from high school, the first jobs I held were in radio-TV service and at the Allegheny observatory as a computer.

Through my working years my accumulated knowledge of electronics, science and math continued to open doors to technical jobs even though I had no formal college training. Eventually, with the help of military schooling I began teaching electronics to others. This launched my teaching career. I taught electronics in the military, then private tech schools, and finally in college level vocational-technical programs.

I’m retired now with a circle of friends that include a chemist, a physicist, an AV design engineer, and an electrical engineer, all retired and working in planetarium-like places on a volunteer basis. We all love to get together and share thoughts and ideas on anything of a scientific or technological bent. We are all aging now and our families are beginning to bog down with age related medical problems, but as long as we can talk and do science, we’re all young again. Our passion for science and technology is like a flame - small and searing when young, warm and comfortable in age.

I found I enjoy seeing the spark of interest and understanding spread across the faces of young people just as it must have shown on my own. I began going to grade schools in the capacity of the government directed AMERICA READS program. My job was to help the kids learn to read better. I soon found that by analyzing their stories, they became more interested. As an incentive, I would make or buy some device, usually from a science supply house like Edmund Scientific. The kids were thrilled to see these demos in static electricity, microchemistry, rocket balloons, optical illusions, all the things I remembered getting excited about years ago. Soon the teachers wanted me to give the demos to entire classes, which brings me to the present. I now have a complete set of science demos for 4^th to 6^th grade kids and although the expense of acquiring these demos was considerable, it also fits in with my own lifestyle. Even us old-timers love to see old science with a new twist.