What is science to you?:
To me the essence of science is curiosity: the desire to look beyond an ordinary thing to wonder what it is, how it works, where it came from. Scientific research is often concerned with answering questions like these, but we can't find answers if we aren't first inspired to ask the questions.
I would invent:
Oh, all kinds of things. Mass transit that let us fly over the city in ski-lift-style chairs, but that would just be for fun because I'd also invent teleportation. A device that orchids could use to tell me what they need: More fertilizer? Less water? A sunnier windowsill? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, YOU CRAZY ORCHIDS?
Technology I love:
Communications: the internet, e-mail, cell phones. It's really a miracle that we can talk in real time to someone thousands of miles away, or send a picture or a piece of writing that someone else can see almost instantly.
How do you use math in your daily life?:
I'm the kind of person who tends to be late for things if I'm not careful, so I'm constantly adding up the time it takes for me to gather my things, put my coat on, walk to work, and so on so that I can arrive on time. For fun I do two- and three-dimensional paper sculptures, which takes a lot of geometry and spatial reasoning. And a lot of my grocery shopping decisions involve simple calculations, like figuring out whether the regular or family-sized box of Cheez-Its gives me the best Cheez-It to dollar ratio, for example.
