Questions wish I had asked
It has become more and more clear as time passes… It is more important to ask questions, than to find answers.
Here is an non exhaustive list of questions (mostly science adjacent) which I had asked and/or If I had asked, asked another one. I will keep updating this list as I remember new ones. I feel sometimes in the school education process, science is taught as a bunch of facts… instead of what it is… An equal focus should be on how it developed and how it can change in the light of new evidence. Coming back to my rant on school, the school system that I went through rewards writing answers rather than asking questions… Asking questions means you did not understand what teacher taught and that is assumed as you being dumber than rest of your peers… But it is a flawed assumption and needs to change. Asking questions means you are trying to actively engange with the topic and should be encouraged.
As of June 2026, V0.1.0
- How do we know that Earth is a sphere?
- How did Kepler figure out it’s famous 3 laws based on planetary observations?
- How did someone figure out the Avagadro’s number - number of atoms/molecules in 1 mole = 6.023e+23?
- What is a geoid? Where is a geoid? Why is there a geoid?
- How did surveyors plot coastlines from ship?
- How did people figure out celestial navigation?
- How was time conceptulized by ancient civilizations?
- I still do not understand clearly eclipses and phases of the moon.
I will try to write a sort of detailed answers for each of these questions from time to time, as and when I rediscover these answers for myself from the endless ocean of Internet and books.
The inspiration to make this post came when I was watching the video by Grant Sanderson (3blue1brown) interviewing Terence Tao. Honestly, I am regreting not studying properly in my school… These are so many fundamental questions, I never thought about… just blindly memorizing answers.