Inside the Mind of a Scientist

It's hard to explain to someone not of a particularly scientific bent how an analytical mind works, but I found myself trying to explain the other day to my wife, who is definitely more artistic...

What if, I explained, when you looked at your iron supplement pills in the morning, the first thing that went through your head was "I wonder if they contain ferrous sulfate because if they contained ferrous oxide they would just turn to rust?"...

Or if when you heard an interview with Ron Wood in which he said that any two of the Rolling Stones could have formed a band equally as good you immediately think "ok, so how many potential bands is that? Let's see, 4 factorial, but no because Jagger and Richards is the same band as Richards and Jagger", but then you hear the rest of the interview and he says only if he was one of them, so that removes the last factor, and then when you pose the question to your 15-year old son he wants to know how many of them are dead before he answers, and you think "good point".... anyway it's about 5 days before you really think about what a band composed of only Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts would actually sound like ...

Or you almost step on a stinkbug on the sidewalk and the first thing you think is, "What possible evolutionary advantage could there be to be shaped like an irregular polygon?"...

Now, who wants to be inside MY head?