science

Uncommon Sense

Uncommon Sense is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Uncommon Sense rather than just read about it. In short: "Uncommon Sense" is a 1945 science fiction short story by American writer Hal Clement. In 1996, it was retrospectively awarded the 1946 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Key takeaways

Uncommon Sense belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Uncommon Sense to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Uncommon Sense from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

"Uncommon Sense" is a 1945 science fiction short story by American writer Hal Clement. In 1996, it was retrospectively awarded the 1946 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Publication history "Uncommon Sense" was first published in the September 1945 edition of Astounding Science Fiction and included in Clement's 1969 collection Small Changes. Subsequently, it was published in Nebula Awards Showcase 2000. The story was the first of Hal Clement's "Laird Cunningham" series, followed by "The Logical Life" in 1974, "Stuck With It" in 1976 and "Status Symbol" in 1987. In February 2000, all four stories were re-published in The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres.

Plot Laird Cunningham is a rich man who enjoys travelling to distant worlds in search of bizarre life forms. On the trip told in this story, Cunningham overhears the plotting of his two assistants to loot the ship. To avoid this, he forces a crash landing on an unnamed planet, sabotages the ship and escapes, leaving his assistants in the ship. Cunningham goes exploring and finds that the planet is very strange and orbits one of the fiercest suns in the galaxy (Deneb). The planet itself is quite similar to Earth's Moon, being airless and of a similar size, but due to the daily heating by its sun, the terrain is very different and appears strangely windswept. Cunningham also investigates the local life forms which include plants, herbivores, and carnivores. He dissects a few of the animals and finds that they have liquid metal for blood and that their eyes are more like noses, in that their eyes function as pinhole cameras with respect to the local gas molecules, which in the near vacuum travel in essentially straight lines like light rays. Cunningham realises that the animals navigate mostly by smell, since the extremely bright, undiffused sunlight would hamper an optical sense. Taking refuge in a cave, Cunningham watches his ship and his assistants as they attempt to repair it, welding up cracks in the ship's hull. However, they only work during the day and return to the inside of the ship at night. By night, Cunningham kills animals and collects their blood in grooves in the cave floor. The blood freezes in the cold of the night and he attaches the resulting small bars of metal to the remaining cracks in his ship's hull. The next morning, his assistants emerge to continue welding, which melts the bars of blood. The smell attracts many local predators, and Cunningham makes his way onto the ship in the commotion. Although the assistants easily fight off the alien animals, Cunningham locks them in the airlock as they attempt to return to the ship. He then sends out a distress call and sits back, as rescue will arrive in several hours.

Reception The SF Site described "Uncommon Sense" as a classic hard science fiction work, in which the story is predicated "on the protagonist's ability to solve a scientific puzzle in the context of the conditions of an alien world."

References

External links "Uncommon Sense" title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database "Uncommon Sense" at the Internet Archive

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Uncommon Sense

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Uncommon Sense claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Uncommon Sense before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Uncommon Sense ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Uncommon Sense

In research: Uncommon Sense appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Uncommon Sense in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Uncommon Sense is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1945 short stories, Fiction set around Deneb, Hugo Award for Best Short Story–winning works, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Uncommon Sense outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Uncommon Sense in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Uncommon Sense means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Uncommon Sense out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Uncommon Sense in simple terms?

"Uncommon Sense" is a 1945 science fiction short story by American writer Hal Clement. In 1996, it was retrospectively awarded the 1946 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Why does Uncommon Sense matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Uncommon Sense?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Uncommon Sense.