David’s most
well used source for what it meant to do science was The Golden Book of Chemistry of Experiments. While decades outdated and full of
potentially dangerous experiments it did not fail to provide David with the
instruction in how to do science. The Golden Book also provided David with his first image of
what it means to be a scientist. The
book painted a romantic picture of the Curies working day in and day out to
find answers to the questions which perplexed them. David grew up imagining the scientist as an
entrepreneur of knowledge. He wished to
see himself in tomes of history next to the Curies, Otto Hahn, and Van Brahn.
The adults
around David rarely recognized him or his attempts at science. Therefore he was mostly ignored except for
those rare occasions where his experiments were so distracting to someone else
or the authorities were required. He
generally gathered his ideas of what it meant to do science or be a scientist
from books, magazines, and television.
Specifically he would sit and watch The
Simpsons with his step-mother regularly. Of course The
Simpsons does have a high amount of science related content; it is however
usually a bit simplistic or even sometimes completely misleading. His science teacher would portray limited
knowledge of science itself, chocking David’s attempts up to merely a
mischievous youngster. David pictured
science as an exciting and alluring passion: something he could use to make a
name for himself (which it of course eventually did, just not in the way he had
hoped). Anything or anyone which could
have made David doubt this side of science just simply did not permeate David’s
conscious.
David’s
scientific interests allowed him to forge deeper relationships with few and cut
him off from most. For most, even
family, rarely saw David. He spent the
majority of his available hours locked away in his shed or down in the basement
working. His only friends were other
loners, whom he only saw on occasion. He
would make visits when he was in need of something, such as sodium from the lab
at the local community college, or when he wished to show off his progress,
such as the regular trips in his younger days to the woods to play with
explosives. Probably the people which he
communicated with the most and forge the deepest relationships with were the
ones who were furthest away and knew him the least. He was like 007 is to M or Q or Moneypenny in
the way that he is so very cordial and kind with them and they all think they
know him so very well but he is not at all the person which he portrays himself
to be and merely uses them for assignments, inventions, and sexual favors
respectively, and of course the gossip that is inevitably between any coterie
of co-workers. David befriended people
throughout the atomic energy and chemical industries as “Professor Hahn” for
the sole purpose of furthering his research.
These pen pals probably actually knew David even better than his own
parents did since his parents paid him such little attention unless he invaded
their tv time or were required to answer to the police. The relationships he made taught him how to
lie and that lying was usually the easiest answer to a problem.
David
Hahn loved the idea of a nuclear powered world.
A world where the cars fly, a trip from Panama to the North Pole takes
only minutes, families make weekend trips to the moon and back for a short
vacation, and the world has a big enough surplus of power to last hundreds of
years. The radioactive have magical
powers to David. They hold the secrets
to the future of civilization to him. To
David the radioactive are the key to his escape from the monotonous life he
sees his dad lead. With David’s want for
knowledge and experimentation and his savvy for chemistry had his interest
intersected with education there is a good possibility his name would be
plastered on plaques in pasted into papers instead of filling the
quasi-non-fiction section of Borders and appearing on the village idiot section
of the local news. David’s school
teachers had a limited knowledge of the things which he was working on and they
ignored the warning signs of a kid that was getting in to some pretty nasty areas. If pre-collegiate educators were actually
required to have knowledge outside of the textbook from which they teach its
entirely possible that David’s potential would have been recognized and he
would not be getting arrested at the age of 31 for grand larceny and attempting
to acquire large amounts of americium.
This article originally written April 3rd, 2008 for OU HSCI 1133 - Science and Popular Culture.
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