Reminds me of the story of Richard Feynman deciding that he was just going to have fun with physics. He observed somebody in a cafeteria throwing a plate into the air, and noticed an interesting relationship between the plate's wobble speed and spin speed. He dug into the physics behind it, which an acquaintance told him was a waste of time. He didn't give it up, and later that research led to a nobel prize.
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html