Monday, June 24, 2024
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Don’t get me wrong, lemonade is a phenomenal drink. Its refreshing properties are unparalleled. I remember selling lemonade as a kid in my neighborhood, during the summertime. I swear, I spoke the language of money more fluently as a kid than I do as an adult- I had several successful business ventures. Nowadays, it’s all “science!” this and “civil rights!” that. When you’re a kid, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade; but then, sell it and make a profit. I understood this from a young age.
As you get older, you learn that you have more options with your lemons. 1) Lemons contain polyphenols which have been studied for their health benefits. One of those include possible anti-aging effects over prolonged intake (Shimizu, et. al, 2019). So, when life gives you lemons, build the fountain of youth! Use it for yourself, share it with friends, study it, write a book on it, hide its location and make a treasure map. 2) Gather some copper and zinc and stick them into your lemons. Connect these lemon cell electrodes with some alligator clips to something you want to power, and voila! You have a lemon battery. These lemon batteries generate low currents, but there is always potential (pun absolutely intended). You could spend the next decade, or so, optimizing the lemon battery for alternative power generation of small electronics. 3) Each lemon typically produces about 8 seeds. Having a fairly high germination rate, we could expect maybe 5+ of these seeds to sprout. If care is taken, we could expect maybe 3+ of these seeds to produce fruit bearing trees. Each tree has a life expectancy of several decades and can produce several tons of lemons in its lifetime. Once we begin growing lemons though, we can circle back around to the first option and cycle through, finding more and more uses for lemons. The catch is that these trees could take more than 5 years to produce fruit. The reward is clear, but it takes patience. So, we have a choice when life gives us lemons: use the fruit for our benefit now and be lemon-less until life feels generous again, or we can nurture the seeds as little packets of potential and self-sustain our lemon habits ourselves for a lifetime.
When life gives you lemons, you have options- you don’t have to make lemonade. Each lemon is an opportunity. As long as we do something with the lemons, there isn’t a “right” choice to make. Each one will bring some form of profit.
This week I’ve been given the lemon to join the team at the Niels Bohr Library and Archives (NBLA) of the American Institute of Physics. With more than 10,000 collections, 30,000 photographs, and 1,500 oral histories at the NBLA, it is difficult to choose my focus for a project. Given my interest in civil rights and a background in social sciences, it would be interesting to find intersections of these topics with physical sciences. However, my main agenda in my career is advocacy of some form in climate change and climate resiliency- whether that takes the form of research, technical innovation, or public policy. I’ve narrowed my interests to four possible topics:
- Immigrant scientists
- Scientists who’ve overcome poverty and low socioeconomics to achieve education and contribute successfully to their fields
- Lab notebooks and the creative process of highly achieved scientists, inventors, or engineers
- International scientific policy, stance, and global relations on climate change and the status of climate resilience for their people
Since we live in a democracy, I’ve created a Google form to get a vote for the topics that would interest people most! If you want clarification on these topics before choosing, or are interested in the results, you can connect with me!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piper-malczewski
Email: piper.mal586 [at] gmail.com
Check back next week to hear more about my decision!
Piper Malczewski