The art of science

[25 October 2006 - Telegraph (UK)] ... So catastrophic has been the decline in numbers of pupils taking physics and chemistry that Britain now faces a manpower crisis in scientific research and engineering that will have to be remedied by importing expertise from abroad. ... Brighter pupils can too often gain the impression (especially in the early years of study) that scientific subjects offer no scope for imagination or creativity: that they are simply closed bodies of facts to be memorised and predictable "experiments" to be replicated in the classroom. There is little sense of a wider context, or any exploratory dimension, even to a subject such as physics, which should offer endlessly fascinating insights into the order of the universe. More