• Question: what do you find the most fascinating about your job?

    Asked by Jodie to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 17 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Charlotte.
    • Photo: Steven Thomson

      Steven Thomson answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      I’m a theoretical physicist, so my job is to try to figure out how things work using maths. What I find fascinating is that this approach works at all!

      If you want to know how something works, the obvious thing is to do an experiment of some kind to see what happens. I find it mindblowing that we can predict, understand and explain the world around us without doing experiments and instead just by writing equations on a piece of paper.

      With just a pen and paper, we can zoom into the hearts of atoms or zoom right out and try to figure out the structure and shape of the entire universe – all with maths! I’m fascinated that maths is such a powerful tool for explaining these things!

    • Photo: Lidunka Vocadlo

      Lidunka Vocadlo answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      @Jodie I find the most fascinating thing is that the more you understand something, the more there is to understand! As you delve deeper into an aspect of science it opens up to reveal a whole host of other things you never even heard of! And then you learn about those in awe and wonder, only to discover there’s more….. and more…..

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