Today I'm going to be talking about science and stereotypes.

And to start off, I have a question for you who is a scientist? . Now, when I ask this question, a common figure normally comes to mind, who looks a lot like this?

Now, if these figures are looking familiar, then you are not alone. A lot of kids would agree with you. In 2000 researchers at Firme Lab, a particle physics laboratory in Illinois asked seventh graders, what is your perception of this ubiquitous nerd over. What they found was that if you ask seventh graders to draw their response to who is a scientist, they will draw an old white guy who plays with chemicals indoors by himself.

So it doesn't really take an Einstein to see that. Science has a bit of an image problem in media. Science is not portrayed as a career or calling. It is portrayed as a person. You know him. His name is the Scientist and he occupies a starring role in movies, TV shows like The Big Bang Theory. He's the owner of a gloomy attitude and an imposing lab coat.

The awkward, but kind of adorable nerd. And based on these common themes of what we've seen so far, I think we can give it a go and synthesize our own stereotypical scientist using with I dub the Build a Brainiac. An equation which neatly summarizes some of the trends we've been seeing thus far. Social awkwardness plus unruly hair, plus lab coat yields.

The scientist sound familiar, but if you had asked five year old me who's a scientist, I would've drawn a very different picture. As the child of two scientists, I had actually a horrifyingly human peak into what a scientist can be like.  to me. Scientists didn't spend their days in the lab wearing a lab coat.

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