Good points. I agree that being passionate and creative about the subject goes a long way, at least in subjects like experimental sciences with hands-on lab work and fancy demonstrations.

However, there's the whole side of education/upbringing about working with kids/teenagers in general that is hard to gauge when you're applying for a degree in teaching. You have these 19-year olds fresh out of high school who say they love to work with kids, with no idea about the real challenges of the career, and it's hard to pick out those with the right kind of potential. Frankly, it's the same with a lot of professions, and naturally people will end up changing their jobs/studies later.

Personally, I first got a research-oriented Master's and ended up working as a teacher for a couple of years, and finally completed the teacher training. Some of the material was a joke for anyone with real experience - for example, a prominent professor of education says he's worked one full day as a school teacher.

Consequently, we have a lot of geeky straight-A's teachers (mostly female) who are unable to handle the rougher kids.

Disclaimer: I'm a Finnish teacher, having taken a longer, more hands-on route into the career, but I still find myself a bit too geeky for the worst cases.

It's OK, you can say "penis", we're all adults here. I think.

For heavier computations, scientists generally have access to supercomputers, clusters and the like, so the CPU/GPU capability should not be an issue. Also, it's obvious that the laptop should be able to run Linux, there's really no question about it. For example, you'll want to develop your code locally before booking supercomputer time, and once you get there, it's nice to X11 there directly.

It might be a good idea to get a proper AMD/Nvidia GPU, both for 3D visualizations and GPU computing -- of course, it won't be hugely powerful, but it's the same point about local development before farming out.

Yup, I bet it does if you're used to something like Python or Matlab for your data munging.

Just don't use Python.

Screwing around with micro-usb is a lot more practical when you don't have to worry about a wet environment. Of course, there are also waterproof and otherwise more rugged phones, so inductive charging makes more sense for them.

Also, in such a comparison, you need to consider how many lives are actually saved by _easier_ charging -- somehow most people manage to keep their phones charged with old-fashioned connectors, and only a tiny fraction of all phone usage is related to saving lives. Of course you'll get a non-zero number; now compare that to infections, heart disease etc. caused by not keeping your teeth healthy.

On a more general note, I think charging should be as simple as possible, not just for the user, but on a technical level to keep things more reliable (hence saving more lives). A lot of phones manage to screw up this idea even with wired connections: for example, you cannot run a phone off a charger alone, without a battery.

I imagine wireless charging hardware is not just a dumb induction loop, and some device identification/negotiation needs to take place first. For example, leaving metallic objects on the charging pad might be hilarious without such considerations. This IMHO is needlessly complicated for something that should be simple and reliable. At least, the extra comms takes up some power, making the efficiency even worse.

Moleculers! Moleculers! Moleculers! Moleculers!

Then don't look at the phones. Close your eyes and feel the lack of thickness.

Real Nerds know that you need AC for wireless charging, DC just won't cut it.

Seriously though, my opinion as a physicist/engineer is that wireless charging is a little dumb. It wastes a lot of power in an age where energy conservation is paramount, for what exactly? It's not like you can charge your phone from a distance. Inductive charging is a sensible tradeoff in things like dil^Welectric toothbrushes -- just because it can be done, doesn't mean it's great for everything.