• Question: What sciences did you study in the later years of your education?

    Asked by samandaashishlgs to Carys, Chris, Simone on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Christopher Phillips

      Christopher Phillips answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Alot of them! hehe 🙂 During my time studying for my degree with the Open Univeristy I have covered a ton of different sciences. The reason for this is that astronomy covers so many different subjects not just physics!
      To have a good understanding of how everything in astronomy fits together you need to know a little bit of everything; Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Engineering, Math, Geology, Vulcanology, I.T, Ecology, Oceanography, Meteorology.. all the ‘ologies! Even Philosophy and Anthropology! 🙂
      You don’t have to be an expert on all of these but it helps if you know a little bit about each one.
      Why? Well if you have a well rounded idea of how everything in the world works you have a better idea about how it all fits together in the BIG picture 🙂

      If you are going to understand the universe, you must first understand yourself and your world. 🙂

      Plus, the chicks dig it cos it makes you look well clever 😉

    • Photo: Carys Cook

      Carys Cook answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      So, in college I went for AS and A Levels in biology, chemistry, geography, environmental science and fine art, which was a really good range of subjects that gave me an idea about what I wanted to study in uni – I chose my favourite in the end……As I was studying an ‘Earth Science’ degree in uni, we had to touch on a lot of topics, most of them geology based like plate tectonics and mantle processes, and the history of life. To provide a more rounded education that taught me more about the Earth as a system I also studied oceanography and atmospherics. I also opted for astrobiology, which was about the philosophy of alien life, and comparative planetology, which was about the other planets in our solar system. I really had no idea at the start of my degree how complicated studying the Earth and our solar system really is, it could take a lifetime to learn it all!

    • Photo: Simone Bijvoet

      Simone Bijvoet answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      At school I got all the main science topics, biology, physics, chemistry etc. At university I mainly focussed on Psychology, but I did do some extra courses in astronomy, just because I liked it so much and was intrigued by stars and stuff. 🙂

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