Budding Scientist?

The other night at dinner we were treated to a very animated conversation about scientists at the dinner table. Apparently Parker's class talked about the idea of being a scientist and about several scientists and their inventions/discoveries.

Do you know who is famous for
1-winning the Nobel prize twice and discovering radium?
2-inventing rockets and rocket fuel?
3-inventing the lightning rod and the post office?
4-inventing the movie camera and the phonograph and lightbulb?
5-inventing the rabies vaccine and "cleaning up milk"?
6-discovered the speed of light/also a Nobel prize recipient?

Also he told us about the following types of scientists.....
7-what kind of scientist studies plants?
8-what kind of scientist studies food and health?
9-what kind of scientist studies power and energy?




So are you smarter than a second grader? Here's the answers:
1-Madame Marie Curie
2-Robert Goddard
3-Benjamin Franklin
4-Thomas Edison
5-Louis Pasteur
6-Albert Einstein

Bonus if you knew that Curie and Pasteur were both French, which Parker was excited to point out.

7-botanist
8-nutritionist
9-physicist

Bonus if you knew that Goddard and Einstein were both physicists because that was another one of Parker's fun facts at the table.


This sparked a lot of discussion around the table by the grownups. We informed Parker that Edison used to live in Fort Myers where Parker was born and that you could tour Edison's house and lab; his eyes lit up. We'll be down there on Christmas break for a family wedding and may just have to take him-Mommy visited there at about the same age and loved it!

The other thing that Daddy and Mommy remembered was a series of children's books with white hard covers and cartoonish figures on the front that were mini biographies of famous people-and we remembered two of the books were on Curie and Pasteur. After much googling around we discovered that they were called Value Tales. The one about Pasteur is "The Value of Believing in Yourself" and the one about Curie is called "The Value of Learning". There are a total of 45 books in the set and only 6 are available in our county library system (mostly out of print). So we're scouring Ebay for a great deal. Can't wait to get our hands on some of these and share this memory with our budding scientist.

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