CAR WASH COMING SOON

sense that there’s a message in here of “you can do this, too.”

Absolutely. I work with a lot of kids at the high-school level over here in Seattle—particularly some in the city and the central district, who couldn’t imagine that they could do this sort of thing. It’s so intimidating from the outside, because you’re only seeing the highest level of the output.

I always tell them, 90 percent of science is just learning the language. There’s not a single concept that I work on that I can’t explain to anybody pretty quickly—even the really detailed stuff. It’s just that there’s a lot of words that you haven’t heard before. It’s a language unique to itself that’s really the big barrier. And, of course, well-taught science should work you through that.

Almost everything I’ve learned I can explain in terms of analogies with everyday things. There’s no concept with regards to protein structure, function, or mechanism that’s really all that complicated.

The basic rules of chemistry that a kid hopefully learns when they take sophomore chemistry apply to these really complicated molecules that I study. They’re exactly the same rules. It’s just the language is complicated, and if you don’t know the language then of course when you hear people using it, it just sounds like gibberish. But actually what we do is simple. Most science at its core isn’t as complicated as it sounds.

If I could end up doing this, anyone can, if that’s what they’re interested in.

The book “Baikonour Man” is available through local bookstores or online.