SCIENCE IN EVERYDAY LIFE

We often forget just how much society has changed. The consumer culture's emphasis on the new tends to keep us futon focusing on the impact of change-just how these new devices or ideas have fundamentally changed out lives. Consider the following ten products or services, in common use today, that had a most profound effect upon American society and have resulted in a society of greater individual choice and mobility without many of history's wants and discomforts.

CONSIDER THIS LIST

• Digital Video Display (DVD): modern television surely changed politics, consumer choice, international events, expanded national culture
  
  
• Jet travel: has shrunk the world
  
  
• Air conditioning: made the Sun Belt possible
  
  
• Automatic washers and dryers: revolutionized housework
  
  
• Antibiotics: drastically reduced the threat to life from commonplace injuries and infections
  
  
• Nuclear energy: changed both peace and war
  
  
• Computers: have put the world at everyone's fingertips; revolutionized work and entertainment; and facilitated scientific discovery
  
  
• Genetic engineering: has the potential for correcting human physical imperfections
  
  
• Laser surgery: has revolutionized certain medical procedures once considered dangerous or difficult
  [Teacher or student generated, item]