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Today in my library I was helping students choose science fair projects. One student wanted to do a science project to prove that evolution was wrong because, she said, if we had evolved from monkeys, then we should keep getting bigger all the time, and that isn’t happening. I didn’t refute that because I thought I’d have to start farther back than I had time to do in a casual encounter. I asked her what her hypothesis would be and how she’d set up an experiment, and when I swung by later, she’d written down three different ideas, leaving out the evolution vs. creation one. Her ignorance was a demonstration of why science education is critically important.

Later, she asked me about Carbon-14 dating. I explained to her that Willard Libby, the guy who invented it, was born in this town and later won the Nobel Prize. I celebrate his birthday each year (December 17th) by passing out candy to greedy high school kids. I gave her a rough explanation of dating processes, throwing in tree-ring dating for the heck of it.

Last week, I wore my glow-in-the-dark Periodic Table of the Elements t-shirt. One student asked, “Why are you wearing that?” I replied, “Because I like science.” She said, “But you’re a librarian!” Sheesh, I didn’t know that in the unpublished rule book it says that librarians can’t like science.