Curiosity: Part 2

A while ago I posted about being curious, and I talked about a spreadsheet of terms I had put together so I could do well in my studies. Now that I have been working in my new field of study for a while I don't find myself looking up quite as many terms as I did then, but I haven't given it up completely. I think I added some to my spreadsheet just last week, but as I said, it isn't quite as much the life line it was when I started. Despite this, I think I am still curious. This week I worked on a Dinosaur Train (aka I talked to little kids and their parents about dinosaurs while they went on a train ride. There was a fair amount of down time and I found myself asking the conductor and the other train workers about their jobs and how the train worked. I asked one of the teenagers that worked on the train something about one of the procedures. She had no idea (I'm not sure she had even noticed). So I guess I still count as curious. :)
Another thing I have noticed though, is sometimes I use curiosity as a coping mechanism. Occasionally when I am stressed or decidedly uncomfortable (especially in a new environment) I will start studying the mechanisms around me, trying to figure them out so I don't think too much about whatever I'm stressing out about. So, if I ever become excessively engineer minded it might be because I'm stressed out.
On another note, I find that my curiosity sometimes heads in a different direction then most peoples. On the train perhaps the two most questions about dinosaurs was "What was the biggest dinosaur?"^ and "How big was a T-rex?"* But I don't really care about "the biggest," "the fastest," "the smallest." I guess I'm just more about the stories then the stats. (You can google the stats if you need them for some reason). So, when I wasn't answering stats questions I tried to tell people things that they wouldn't be able to find out with a quick google search... well they could, but only if they knew what to ask, which--granted--would be the hard part, especially when doing it off the top of their heads. However, I am sympathetic. Good questions are sometimes hard to think of, especially when you are asked kind of out of the blue, so I guess I was even more grateful when people asked good questions.


^The Argentinosaurus, a long neck that was 130 ft long and about 90 tons (roughly the weight of two passenger train cars). And yes, it was found in Argentina.
*About 15-20 feet tall.