Not really an idea, but I guess something of an epiphany: We were doing a basic physics class at school at maybe 12 or 13 years old. We were learning about New

Not really an idea, but I guess something of an epiphany: We were doing a basic physics class at school at maybe 12 or 13 years old. We were learning about Newton's laws of motion etc. One day we had a test and there was a question about why playgrounds often have rubber matting or tiles around the climbing frames or swings etc. Cue a load of waffly nonsense answers about "cushioning impact" or being "soft so it doesn't hurt" etc from everyone in the class. The teacher berated us: Force = mass X acceleration - reduce the acceleration and the force goes down too. A lightbulb went off in my head - suddenly science actually meant something in the real world rather than just being something your learnt at school. This was how the world worked. The fact that this moment still sticks out in my mind suggests that it was probably quite a formative moment for me and I guess changed my outlook on the world quite significantly. (... but then there was also a sort of philosophical existential thought about the "tyranny of equations" we end up living our lives by if we like it or not!)