I was speaking with my mother-in-law the other day and an interesting question came up. First of all, she has had a few strokes and is generally pretty angry & anti government. She was mad at NASA for sending people up just to play around. I explained, to the best of my ability, that the science package kept every shuttle mission very busy.
The Question: What are some scientific advances that the everyday Joe could relate to that have come as a direct result of experiments that had to be performed aboard the shuttle?