I'm a teary-eyed science geek.

Most people who know me well know that I am a cry baby and also that I am a science geek. I cry at movies, stories I read, even thoughts that I have. I love watching educational shows and enjoy cable TV just for the Discovery Channel, Discovery Health (although I think they have way too many baby shows) and National Geographic. As a matter of fact, I am watching NOVA right now. I even read science magazines at the library to relax when I get time. So most of my friends know that, but almost no one knows that I even cry at science. I know you just went, “Huh?”

A couple of years ago I was taking a biology class where we had been learning about the cells in our body and all of the microscopic organelles inside them, DNA, how proteins form, all that fun stuff. Toward the end of the semester, my professor played the following video for us so we could put all of the things we studied together. She turned off the lights (lucky for me) and played this on a screen. It’s an 3-minute computer-animated look at inside the cell. When I watched it, I saw all the things we’ve studied and that I’ve learned in other classes right in front of me and it was beautiful. Yes, I know it is computer animation and not completely accurate, but it is still beautiful and it doesn’t help me to have the great music with it. I sat in the dark with a few tears coming down my cheek. Our bodies are so amazing! We are all such masterpieces! It just astonishes me that we get to know so much about our bodies, even though what we know just scratches the surface.

My professor gave us the link so we could watch it at home, so I went home and showed my kids, explaining what was happening. Throughout my time in school, they had seen me studying and would ask questions about the things in the pictures in my textbook. They were especially interested in the motor proteins which transport things from one part of the cell to another. Then when they saw the motor protein in this video (the little “guy” who looks like he is walking, carrying a ball in the picture above), they were amazed. All three of them liked it. Sabrina asks me to play the video again every once in a while. She calls it the “walking dude video”. As much as I try to explain it, she just thinks there are little people inside of us moving things around.

So feel free to visit it and say, “She cried at this? I don’t get it!” There is something wrong with me. I know.

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html (Click on the Watch Video High or Low button on the left, below the big picture of the “walking dude” and a paragraph explaining the video.)

“Let us train our minds until we delight in that which is good, lovely and holy, seeking continually after that intelligence which will enable us effectually to build up Zion, … seeking to do the will of the Lord all the days of our lives, improving our minds in all scientific and mechanical knowledge, seeking diligently to understand the great design and plan of all created things, that we may know what to do with our lives and how to improve upon the facilities placed within our reach.” Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, 247