Author: jonwoodscience

What inspires you or enthuses you about your work, and / or about STEM?

For my own STEM activities, I gain inspiration from a number of sources. Never underestimate experiencing how other ambassadors go about their craft; seeing how they breakdown and demonstrate the fundamental and often complex aspects of our universe. Other inspiration comes to me from the vast history we have available to draw on. I love how simple the early forays into experimentation were conducted, often from the romantic period and that of the enlightenment. It often makes me wonder why it took us so long to grasp these elegant and beautiful fundamental principles as I demonstrate their simplicity. Continue reading “The STEMNET Case Study – Part 3”

Question 2: What pathway did you follow to get to where you are? What courses of study, or qualifications did you need?

As the first year to take GCSEs, I took the maximum eight and got all grades, ‘B’s and ‘C’s. But from there, my path is not a usual one. I eschewed taking A-levels to work for two years, but it meant I had a car before my peers had gone back to start their AS levels. However, science still beckoned and I began work as a Medical Laboratory Assistant in the Microbiology department of the Manor Hospital in Walsall. Continue reading “The STEMNET case study (part 2)”

Question 1: How did you first become interested in STEM as a career? Was there a moment or intervention at school that prompted your career choice?  E.g. an experience of work, an inspirational teacher, family member etc

From the first time I tried to remove all the iron filings from the garden with a magnet I found, I knew that science was my future. It was days before my parents found me at the end of the garden with a jam jar of iron rubbish. I then heard these funny grains of material were bits of meteorite and I was unstoppable. The perennially ‘cool’ space and astronomy was living in my garden. My father showed me how to make an electromagnet using a battery, wire and a nail. To this day, my mother’s cutlery still comes out of the drawer en masse. What I would later learn to be ‘physics’ was my new cool tool for interesting stuff. Continue reading “The STEMNET case study (part 1)”