ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by scientists.

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What's a physicist's favorite food?

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Fission chips.

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Haha.

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That's a Manhattan Project joke. They really, uh...

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laughed about it back then as they were building the atom bomb.

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Okay, we done skimming?

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Royal Commission...

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Fish and chips.

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British thing. Yeah.

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Gotta put it a little bit of salt on it.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right. Which of the following best describes the theme of the passage?

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Theme.

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And here are the potential answers.

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All right, do we see a theme in there?

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All right, well,

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when we're trying to figure out the main theme of any passage,

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we've gotta take everything into account. We ask ourselves,

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"What's the big picture here?"

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If we stare too hard at the details, we'll miss the point.

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And, well, we'll also strain our eyes.

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Option A doesn't cut it.

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Our author doesn't say anything about a well-rounded education being important.

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As far as we can tell, he's an all science all the time kind of guy.

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Hate to see his grades in history. [ clears throat ]

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Choice B thinks the author is trying to show us

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the poetry in scientific research.

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Well, the part about seeing the reflection of the stars in mud

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puddles and all that? That might be poetic.

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But to the author, science is about more than poetry.

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Answer C tries to convince us that the author's main point

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is that the scientists are mainly philosophers.

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Well, we can see where this option is coming from.

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Some of the quotes do sound philosophical.

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But all in all, this article is about science for science's sake.

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The author isn't using it as a launchpad to hurtle us

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into new dimensions of thought.

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And we're glad. We just ate, and all that hurtling

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into new dimensions makes us queasy.

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Choice D is getting warmer, but the passage

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doesn't specifically connect science with any other subject.

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Option E is the one that finally gets it right.

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The author isn't focused on how science helps us

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with other subjects. He's zeroed in on how the subject of

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science helps us win at the game of life.

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Right. We'd love more cheats.

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