Liquid nitrogen in a pool is “stimulating” and generates an interesting physical effect. However, the point here in relating it to science is that there is some science behind it that gets the attention from people.
My argument is: people are naturally fascinated by this, but they’re put away by the strict laws, mainly mathematical laws, put forward by this.
Not that mathematics isn’t interesting, but you won’t incentivize people to go to a spitting contest by saying how you spit correctly. People want to see the strongest spit.
I think that’s all there is to it. If you can incentivize people into partaking on this endeavour (understanding chemical effects, in this case), you can bring much more value to science and people that are interested in it. You can, for example, explain interesting effects to people even though they’re looking at a clear liquid (most acids).
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I’d agree that people are naturally interested in understanding the world, but the barriers to rigorous science you mention are present in every field that requires practice and dedication to master. Which is every field.
Most people just aren’t interested in doing the work to master anything, and that’s okay. You can still enjoy playing with a drum, doodling, or tossing a ball around without it being a gateway to the deeper mysteries of those fields.
The biggest difference is that science and science related content is much more capable of being hilariously impactful and dangerous.
As such, it’s easy for a moderately proficient person to do an experiment in their backyard that would have been cutting edge 300 years ago, and safely do things that we’ve all been properly taught are absolutely not safe.
People like novelty and mastery. People doing science video often convey a lot of expertise in addition to showing something new that’s also pretty, loud or just “bright colors”.
I’m pretty sure there could be a long muse about the intersection of the notion that babies are natural scientists, and calling someone an iPad baby.