• Question: What if your good at both practical and theoretical science problems, you have an interest in it but you don't seem to do a lot about it in you daily life or free time as you see other people do?

    Asked by gate532bock75 on 6 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Nicole Barber

      Nicole Barber answered on 6 Nov 2025:

      That isn’t a problem, everyone enjoys subjects in different way. Some people might work all day on science related problems and then enjoy going home and continuing to read about science. Others might decided after working all day to go home and switch off and have other hobbies. You don’t need to be consumed by science to mean that you should have a career in it, you just need a good enough understanding and interest in it that if you were to follow a career in it then it would make you happy. I always go home and do other things like art or reading fictional books.

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 6 Nov 2025:

      You don’t have to focus on one or the other of experiment and theory. It is possible to combine the two. I consider myself an experimentalist and work closely with theoretical chemists to explore the experiments I do. However, I can also do the theory myself as in chemistry most of the theory is computationally based.

    • Photo: Niamh Topping

      Niamh Topping answered on 11 Nov 2025:

      In my work I do a lot of both, I do a lot of experiments on my samples but I also have to have a good understanding of all the theory to make sense of my results! I don’t really do it outside of work but I do generally have an interest in science, the good thing about geology is that it’s every where! Even though I’m not in the lab or reading theories directly, everything I’ve learnt so far about physics or rocks or minerals I still use when I’m out and about…unfortunately for my partner this means a lot of walking around mineral collections in museums!

Comments

  • Photo: Nazia

    Nazia commented on :

    This is a great question. I think both practical and theoretical science are both needed and there are lots of careers that use both. As well as taking samples of plants for the lab to test, i also carry out ‘field tests’ where we have testing kits in our pockets to check for various plant diseases. These look like covid test kits. And some very clever scientists are developing ‘lab genies’ which are miniature abs we can keep in the book for our cars for testing when we are out and about. And I am learning lots of plants and their pests and diseases which covers the science theory. A plant health and seed inspector covers both aspects of science.