Tech Wars

Pause For Thought with the writer Adrian Plass

I hated school. Especially science related stuff. I generally missed the lesson where some crucial technique was taught.

Technical Drawing for instance. Now pay attention listeners, I’m only going to explain this once. When you draw box shapes you need two dots on the page to establish lines that give your construction accurate perspective.

WHY DIDN’T THEY TELL ME THAT? Why did I end up drawing misshapen boxes that looked as if they came from another universe where perspective doesn’t exist? I gave up.

Physics? Disastrous. Our teacher had zero control. Pupils would secretly fix clamps to his jacket as he sat at the front, then applaud when he arose, and the attached metalwork rose with him. Chaos. I gave up.

Chemistry was taught by a man we christened ‘Mole’ because of his size and shape. An excruciating memory from one of those lessons. I was twelve and a man came to talk to us.

‘Though young,’ he said, ‘you might observe something completely new.’

Exciting! I randomly dropped some bits of zinc into a bowl of sulphuric acid, hoping there might be something new to observe. To my inspired but totally ignorant eye, the fragments of zinc seemed to gather in a suggestive manner. I called ‘Mole’ and the visitor over to witness my unique discovery.

‘When you put zinc in sulphuric acid,’ I announced triumphantly, ‘the bits of zinc become magnetic and attract each other.’

This was, of course, complete nonsense, and I really wasn’t expecting the Nobel Prize for Science, but it wasn’t nice for the two men to fall about laughing. My cheeks flamed. Didn’t enjoy Chemistry after that.

So, bad start with science, but since becoming a writer and knowing a few scientists, I’m surprised to discover we do have something in common. We’re dreamers. We see something luminous and wonderful floating in the distance. It may seem unattainable, but our task, using the skills we’ve acquired, is to attain it, and make it available for others. I wish I’d learned this at school. Never mind. I know it now.