Great Scot - The Scotch Family Magazine - Issue 149 December 2016 Great Scot - The Scotch Family magazine issue 149 | Page 6

Principal

Mr Tom Batty – School Principal

MR TOM BATTY
SCHOOL PRINCIPAL

Building something better
for those who will follow
ABOVE: DETAIL OF THE PETER HENDERSON FOYER AND ATRIUM

It could be argued, that, for each one of us,
our exposure to the world of science starts with
that first twinkle in our parents’ eyes and only ends
when our earthly frame can contribute nothing
more of use or interest. In between, we watch,
listen, feel, taste and smell our way in trying to
make sense of all around us, our part in it all and
what it might be made to become.
We all start out as budding scientists seeking
answers to that which we observe through our
senses:
• Why, when I bleed, does it stop?
• Why does the noise of a train change as it
passes down beyond the platform?
• What creates the breeze on my cheek?
• Why does a spoonful of sugar help the
medicine go down?
• Why does standing by the lavender bush
remind me of grandma?
Our journey soon becomes more personal,
and more reliant on the types of responses we
receive, as we move from observations and
questions to considered attempts to describe the
world we inhabit. It is here that formal education
joins the party, attempting (hopefully) to capture
youthful curiosity, marry it with considered thought

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and some rigour, and propel it forward in the
purposeful quest of scientific advancement:
• From observing frozen milk bottles popping
their foil lids to an appreciation that all motion
ceases at –273.15 degrees Celsius.
• From picking a favourite colour to paint with
to grappling with the particle wave duality of light.
• From being taken to a chickenpox party to
understanding that predilection to illness can be
inherent.
• From making model Spitfires to calculating
the lift that draws them upwards into the air.
• From revving a Scalextric car motor to
practising Fleming’s left-hand-rule.
• From an inherent inability to adapt to a
swinging Dukes cricket ball to a detailed study of
flow dynamics.
My first formal science lesson came aged 11,
when we were marched up to the local secondary
school, seated in a laboratory and given a bag of
mercury to play with. With a degree of provocation
my bag split and I was soon separating big
globules of mercury into smaller ones and pushing
these across the bench surface so they collided
and amalgamated back into the one initial mass

(barring a few drops on the floor, in my pocket, in
my mate’s hair, . . .).
My first experiment soon followed. Equipped
with Bunsen burner, tripod, asbestos gauze,
beaker and more mercury, this time in the form of
a thermometer, we were to investigate the boiling
point of water. The water duly boiled with the
thermometer reading 98 degrees centigrade. This
wasn’t right. There were facts about such things
and I was concerned enough to note in my lab
book conclusion that there was ‘something wrong
with the thermometer’.
With these tentative first steps, I learnt a fair bit
about this new world of science:
• That the world was made up of unusual
elements; some (perhaps all) were not necessarily
solid or liquid or a gas; that they could change
state with temperature and pressure.
• That science involved observation
and measurement and for this one needed
instruments, and their accuracy was crucial and
couldn’t necessarily be relied upon.
• That conclusions required care and
consideration of all underlying factors.
As childhood turned to adolescence, I recall,
in a physics class, what was for me arguably my
defining scientific realisation: that science doesn’t

ABOVE: MR TOM BATTY ADDRESSES GUESTS AT THE OPENING OF THE SIR ZELMAN COWEN CENTRE FOR SCIENCE.

pretend to prove anything (that being left to the
beautiful axiomatic patt