On Mar 25, 2015, MobilityBundle wrote:
Tommy, when I was an undergrad physics major, I took part in a summer research program with 10 or so other undergrads. At the end of the program, we all presented the results of our projects in a series of short talks. The audience included the undergrad researchers and their faculty advisors, and also a couple administrators, who were very clearly out of their element. At the end of one student's talk (I forget the topic, but let's say super-cooling a certain gas with lasers) one administrator asked, "why are you doing this?" Of course, there is always more than one answer. A perfectly legitimate answer at the time would have been, say, that laser cooling techniques can be used to make Bose-Einstein condensates (... whatever they are...).

There was a beat or two of stunned silence after the administrator's question, at which point both the student and his faculty advisor simultaneously gave an answer. And it was the answer I was thinking, along with probably at least half the other science types in the audience. It's also the answer to your question now.

"It's fun."