“Who are the people in your neighborhood?”

I met a nuclear engineer/physicist in the District 13 neighborhood and learned a great deal about the role of Physics in medicine, in technology, and in our future.  Antimatter and Pet Scans…I’ve heard of both.  I didn’t realize that one led to the other--a discovery in theoretical physics leads to life saving medical procedure. What else lies out there?  With South Dakota’s renewed emphasis on research, we are about to find out…if we prepare.

He commented that there will always be a few “bright sparks,” the Einsteins, who make great discoveries and give us the “flashes of insight,” but he cautioned that we need an “army of competent engineers and scientists who understand and can translate these into practical applications”  …sometimes many decades later.  To be ready for that future challenge, he noted that our students need a strong background in Math and Science from the earliest grades on. He also believed that the math and science community can be an important resource for our math and science teachers.