Science is a great career path! Because scientists are so important, there are many programs to help kids get started. Your teacher may know about some of these. Your local museums, zoo, library, or youth group might have science programs too. If you visit your local library, they will be happy to help you find web sites, videos, and books about science.

Scientists spend their time asking questions and trying to find out why things happen. To practice being a scientist now, the most important thing to do is wonder. Keep asking yourself things like, why are the trees different her than they are over there? Why does holding your nose mean you can’t taste things? Why does that thing sink when that thing floats?

Your school or public librarian can help you find books and web sites that have safe experiments for you to try. Here’s one:

That's a great question! I think to become a scientist, there's a few key things you can do:

1) Keep being curious about how things work in nature.
2) Read a lot of science books in areas that you find interesting. Science shows are also great to learn things from.
3) Take your science courses and if you're able to, participate in science programs during the summers.
4) Visit museums, zoos, and parks if you can. They can have lots of good information too.

In order to become a scientist, you have to start doing things in your life. Find books at your level in all of the areas yourare interested in and READ, READ, READ all the time every day.

If you start doing this the level of difficulty of the books will increase and you will become EDUCATED. THERE ARE NO SHORT CUTS, you MUST read every day as much as you possibly can. Sometimes you must read the same book several times to absorb the content. This is not only o.k. but it is actually THE WAY to absorb the knowledge of any book. After a while the material in the book will be transferred to your brain and you will know it as well as your address and phone number. This is the goal.

Start to read with something you are truly VERY interested in and begin there. If you follow these instructions you will soon be pursuing knowledge across a wider and wider domain, all the time becoming more knowledgeable.

This is what you must do starting NOW. Good Luck!

There are so many different kinds of science and scientists that it is difficult to answer this question. Almost all of them require that you get a college degree in a science, however, and getting a college degree or deciding on a college major will help you decide what type of scientist you wish to become.

Universities hire all types of scientists, but other institutions are more limited; museums for example only hire scientists who study natural history in one form or another (biologists, geologists, paleontologists, astronomers, etc.), while medical research institutes hire scientists who develop new medical techniques and procedures. Without you telling me what kind of scientist you wish to become and/or what branch of science you want to study, I can't give you any more direct advice.

I'm glad to hear you are interested in becoming a scientist! Advances in science are imperative to the advancement of society in terms of technology, economy, and standards of living. It is unfortunate that more people do not see the value of science and scientists in society, and I think this is an on-going objective for people in the scientific community: figuring out how to better communicate to the public how important it is to develop science education and understanding.

If you want to become a scientist, I would suggest a few things:

1. Maintain a healthy curiosity and awe for the natural world as well as various new technologies that crop up with time. Question everything. Question how things work, why things are how they are. Be amazed by the world, find inspiration in it!

2. Acquire a well-rounded education. Make sure to study the arts, humanities, and social sciences in addition to math and science. Why? It's important to understand how people in general think and learn, it's important to have other perspectives that will help to feed your creativity. It is also important to understand how your role as a scientist fits into the "big picture," why you do the science you do, what general problems there are that need working on.

3. Make sure to take plenty of math, and possibly have some skills in basic programming. Technology and fields of study are changing very rapidly. Many areas of research are becoming much more quantitative and less observational, and a lot of cutting edge research is done at the interface of several traditional fields of science. For example, there are more and more people pursuing computational science. But even if you are not interested in computational biology, chemistry, or physics, the majority of scientists these days need to be able to analyze data efficiently and effectively. This means you have to have a solid foundation in analytical skills, and furthermore, it's nice to be able to automate things and let a computer do some of the grunt work for you.

4. Get involved in scientific outreach programs and activities. Join a science club, participate in science fairs, try your hand at a research project with a professor at a university (once you are in high school or college).

5. Learn to be methodical, thorough, careful, meticulous, and tenacious! These are useful attributes to have even if you don't become a scientist!

6. Never stop learning or wanting to learn.

Obviously your path to whatever career you end up pursuing is going to be unique, based on your personality, desires, and habits. But I think these are good general guidelines for living a full life, regardless of what you end up doing. I hope you found this helpful!