They entered the first science room. ‘When you’ve seen one science lab, you’ve seen them all’, grumbled Dad C-W, impatient to get on. Some pupils were gathered around a computer with their teacher. All eyes were on the screen. Dad moved towards the door: the Headteacher had gone on ‘far, far too long’ in his welcoming speech. ‘Wait, Dad’, said Mum and Mel in unison,
‘Come and see this!’ On the screen was a painting by the eighteenth century artist, Joseph Wright of Derby, which showed an experiment on a bird in an air pump. A pupil was clicking to zoom in so that they could all see the details more clearly. The group of people in the picture looked on as the scientist operated a pump to suck the air out of the glass bowl which contained the bird. They displayed differing reactions to what is happening, as did the pupils looking at the picture. The teacher asked them, "Is it wrong for a scientist to have this much power? Is he playing God? Does that matter?" An animated discussion broke out among the pupils. Mel listened with her Mum and Dad and they found themselves imagining what it would be like if they were in the room in the picture, watching the scientist … and the little bird.

After some minutes, Dad drew away. "Come on", he said, "We have more to see". And he muttered, "Science was never like this in my day!", as they moved into the next lab. "Ah, this is more like it!’, exclaimed Dad. Pupils were tending plants in large jars, others were cleaning and recycling water, and others were checking solar cells producing electricity. A number were studying worksheets entitled ‘DIY Earth’ which showed a picture and diagram of Biosphere 2. As Mum, Dad and Mel looked over the shoulders of a couple of the pupils, the worksheet text told them that Biosphere 2 was a large structure set up in the Arizona Desert to try to produce a miniature copy of the earth (Biosphere1). One of the tasks set required the pupils to think of three items in their homes that use energy and to describe how they take in energy and change it into another type of energy. "Now this is what I call science!" said Dad with evident approval. That lasted until he noticed that the pupils at the next desk had moved on to a different task which read, "Biosphere 2 needed various rules in order to help to establish the community living there. What rules would you make if you were in charge? Give reasons for them." Dad moved again towards the door, Mum and Mel lingered in thought.

One lab to go. What were the pupils doing here? It seemed more like mathematics than science! They were working on the sequence of numbers which begins 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …, a sequence which was apparently discovered by Leonardo Fibonacci in Pisa in the thirteenth century. The pupils were looking closely at a picture of a sunflower seedhead and carefully counting the number of clockwise and anti-clockwise spirals in the patterns formed by the seeds. The quicker ones had discovered that the numbers of spirals were two adjacent numbers in Fibonacci’s sequence. Mel looked at a worksheet on the top of a set on the teacher’s desk. She drew her parents’ attention to how it said that Fibonacci numbers occurred very frequently in the natural world and how it went on to ask about the number of wings on a fly, legs on an octopus, seeds in an apple, arms on a starfish, … "I wonder why that is", said Mel. "It makes you think", said her Mum.
What was the world coming to? Dad was ill at ease and anxious to go. Art in a science lesson? Ethical issues? Spiritual questions? Open-ended discussion? Pauses for reflection? It was never like that in Dad’s day. We stuck to the facts, the evidences and proofs. "Never like this in my day!", muttered Dad again as they left the science block. "What a pity it wasn’t!", said Mel and her Mum in heartfelt unison.
"If this is science", thought Mel as she fastened her seat belt in the back of the car, "then I DO want to be a scientist! I do! I do!".