Poetry for Physicists

How do we communicate technical information to a non-technical audience? 

Fiction in books, blogs, films, and social media all convey the rules of their respective realities. These stories contextualize our place in the universe—perhaps in ways that are similar to your chemistry textbook. We study examples from science fiction and popular science to examine how we share scientific information. 

Our goal is to use fiction, short-form non-fiction, videos (and video games), conversations, and presentations to learn how to be effective science communicators. This year's thematic focus is time-travel. No prior science background is necessary.

Instructor: Prof. Flip Tanedo (he/him; PHYS 3054, flip.tanedo@ucr.edu)

Link to syllabus. (Syllabus may be revised as needed.)

Meeting Times

TR 03:30 PM - 04:50 PM
Skye Hall, Room 381M

Exceptions to our usual meetings (also repeated on our agenda page)

• Thursday, Oct 10: Meeting  Winston Chung Hall (Room 138) to attend Prof. Eve Vavagiakis' (Duke) physics colloquium talk. 

• Thursday, Oct  17: no class.

• Tuesday Nov 26: Recordings [to be confirmed]

• Thursday, Nov 28: no class, Thanksgiving

• Tuesday Ded 3: Recordings [to be confirmed]

• Thursday, Dec 5: no class.

Course Materials

Course materials are distributed in two ways:

• On our Canvas page (for Arrival)

• On our shared Google Drive

• On this webpage

  • Assignments: see Meetings & HW Page

No additional course materials are required at the start of the course. 

Additional course materials

• You are responsible for picking up a copy of the short story (see below) that you will use for your course projects. These selections are available in the Ted Chiang short story collections Stories of Your Life and Exhalation. Many of them are also published in magazines and other anthologies that can be accessed digitally and/or physically through our library.
  
  If you are interested in doing more popular science reading, Cellar Door Books is our nearest independent bookstore.

• From our Thursday, Week 1 discussion: please play the video game Braid (or Braid: Anniversary Edition) by Jonathan Blow. The anniversary edition is available on several (but not all) platforms. Get through the first few levels. If you are unable to play this, you can watch gameplay videos (here's a good one).  I encourage you to check out the commentary as well. 

Assessment

Guidelines for assessment are on our syllabus.  Assignments are posted on Google classroom, the classroom code was presented in class.

Short Stories

In this course we will develop "Science of Ted Chiang" explainers in many forms. Each student should select one Ted Chiang short story to base their explainers on. Sample explainer articles on the relevant scientific topics are attached; students are expected to do their own additional research. See the stories page.