Poetry for Physicists

Meetings

1. 9/26. Welcome to the class. What is a syllabus? What is science communication? Getting to know me and each other. Homework: write an "explainer" article; submit through Google classroom.

2. 10/01. Exploring different kinds of science writing. In class we looked at the following:

   • Adrian Cho's Science article on a recent measurement of the neutrino mass.

   • The KIT press release announcing the experimental result

   • A Symmetry article about subatomic particles in our lives

   • Some xkcd comics related to Randall Munroe's book Thing Explainer

     • You may also enjoy the site explainxkcd.com

   • Selections from 99 variations on a Proof by P. Ording.

   • We read and discussed "quantum distributions for Sarah Baartman" by Lena Blackmon

   • Homework: listen to Part I of "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang, as narrated by LeVar Burton. You may also listen to Part II.

3. 10/03. Crafting a story.

   • Discussion of "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"

   • Telestrations

   • The Antila 2 Story

     • You are welcome to attend the physics and astronomy colloquium today in Winston Chung Hall, room 138 from 3:30 - 4:40 if you'd like to see a scientific talk about this story. (If you'd like to see what a talk to a specific research community, here's a recent conference talk.)

     • RIT press release

     • Astronomy.com article by Jake Parks

     • ScienceNews article and accompanying "for students" version by Lisa Grossman

     • Vice Motherboard article by Becky Ferreira

     • Snippit from the AAS Nova blog by Susanna Kohler

     • Snippit from the Cosmic Reflections blog

     • The academic research paper.

4. 10/8. explainer presentations

• 1. Presentation of "explainer" homework. Each student reads and critiques another student's homework and presents the explainer to the class.

  2. Discussion: final thoughts on "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"

  3. Discussion: of the Antila 2 story

  4. Note: Arrival is now available on digital loan on iLearn. Also three episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

  5. Bonus: last week we talked a bit about Braid, the video game. This is an example of teaching the rules of a fictional universe by sequential examples, along the lines of "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate."

     • GQ: "Revisiting Braid, the Indie Video Game That Set the Industry Ablaze," S. Meslow

     • YouTube: "How Jonathan Blow Designs a Puzzle," Game Maker's Toolkit

5. 10/10. Open discussion on narratives

• 1. Storytelling: share a story with the class

  2. Video game narratives: Braid, Portal, Bit Trip Runner, Super Meat Boy. Communication through action.

  3. Discussion: "Electron Band Structure in Germanium, My Ass," Lucas Kovar

6. 10/15. Discussion of Arrival

• 1. "A lingustically-inclined cognitive scientist’s take on Arrival," Rose Hendricks

  2. "Here's The Physics That Got Left Out Of 'Arrival," Chad Orzel

  3. "‘Story Of Your Life’ Is Not A Time-Travel Story," Gwern

  4. "The science of Arrival: what the film got right (and (wrong)," Jonathan O'Callaghan

7. 10/17. Discussion of story choices

• 1. We discussed a few puzzles. These drew from one of my favorite books, How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg, and a book that I'm still undecided on, The Doomsday Calculation, by William Poundstone.

     1. "Abraham Wald and the Missing Bullet Holes," Jordan Ellenberg

     2. "A math equation that predicts the end of humanity," William Poundstone

        • By the way, I find the title of this article completely asinine. Calling something a "math equation" is like saying you're going to listen to a "music song."

     3. "Sleeping Beauty Problem," Wikipedia

  2. We're now transitioning to the workshop portion of our course. Your first major task will be to find appropriate references for your explainer articles.

• • • Find sources that are appropriate for the level of technical detail that we need. You may want to understand the underlying scientific concept with a little more depth than you'll ultimately present in your explainer articles, however, you probably want to avoid graduate-level textbooks.

    • There are several excellent science periodicals that may have articles that are at the right level. I encourage you to check out sources like Quanta and Scientific American. I encourage you to use the UCR Library website; you can access articles behind a paywall through UCR if we have a subscription to the journal.

    • What about blogs, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc.? Use them. For sources that are of questionable reputability (anything that doesn't have an obvious editorial review), be sure to read with skepticism.

• 3. We spent some time talking about some ideas relevant to young academics. Our goal was to give words to these ideas. The links below are just starting points, there's a lot to be said (and even debated) about these ideas.

     1. Impostor Syndrome.

        • https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2008/02/no-youre-not-impostor

     2. Privilege

        • https://msw.usc.edu/mswusc-blog/diversity-workshop-guide-to-discussing-identity-power-and-privilege/

        • We discussed one recent cultural flash point about privilege: (I don't share these links because I necessarily agree or disagree with any of them, only to give some context to the event we discussed in class.)

          • https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/what-the-origin-of-check-your-privilege-tells-us-about-todays-privilege-debates/370795/

          • https://time.com/85933/why-ill-never-apologize-for-my-white-male-privilege/

          • https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/07/princeton-white-privilege-tal-fortgang-idiot

        • My personal opinion: a useful definition of privilege is something beneficial that not everybody has, but that is not something one should apologize for. One can have some privileges while not having others. The privileges that we have or that we lack can be visible or invisible. The value of acknowledging privilege is primarily to contextualize others who come from different experiences from us.

          • ... and this is relevant for science communication, where the first rule is know your audience.

     3. Dunning-Kruger

        • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

8. 10/22. Workshop: breaking down our stories, thinking about the science

   • Puzzles as a way to communicate ideas

   • Round Robin: break up in to groups by short story, take turns making 5 minute pitches for why your short story was fun and what science was included.

9. 10/24. What goes into a blog post?

   • Requirements of your blog post:

     • Connects your Ted Chiang story to

     • ... your science topic

     • ... in one page

   • Audience: who are they? What do they know? What do they like? What do you have in common?

     • How does the audience shape the language, tone, content of your communication?

     • What will they do after reading your writing? (How will your communication change them?)

   • Images (this will be a future assignment! be ready!)

   • Attention: you have one page, prioritize the main point. Write like a journalist rather than as an essayist.

10. 10/29. Library day, thank you Michael Yonezawa!

    • https://library.ucr.edu/

      • Search: Science Communication, go to the LibGuide for Science Communication

        • This was originally written for a graduate course in psychology

        • Collection of highlighted "how to communicate science" resources

        • Internet resources: some highlights

          • JSTOR Daily: daily news/blog (this site is pretty cool)

          • Library Databases: this is the "meat and potatoes"

            • You can search for articles, which may be more useful than searching for books

            • e.g. Search AcademicSearchComplete for "wormholes"

              • Gives zillions of results: we want to narrow it down!

              • "Choose Databases" link will let you search over even more databases

                • e.g. MasterFILE Premier: database across all disciplines but geared towards public library audience (avoids academic journals)

                • Can also select all (and we get more results)

              • Use filters

                • Can restrict to magazines, news, trade publications---exclude the academic stuff!

            • Access World News: even searches blogs!

              • e.g. search for "wormholes" and use filter on the left to limit to blog posts

            • Nexis Uni: also does blogs

      • Local Library: [Local Library resources] if you have a local library card (you don't even have to be a resident), you can use e.g. rb digital to access magazines. This allows you to read magazines they way they were meant to be: with images. Sometimes the databases only give the text without the pictures. This gives access to magazines and newspapers that are outside of our academic databases.

        • The nearest local library to campus: Duran Eastside Library

        • Includes access to resources like NYTimes for free access via digital access code

      • Anything that we need help on?

        • e.g. accessing a New Scientist article

          • "This item may not be available online. Check for a copy, or Request it from another library"

          • Can also do inter-library loan for a physical copy (for magazines, the host institution will scan and e-mail you the article!)

        • How do you do all of this off campus?

          • Using the library resources requires that you're logged into the campus network. When you're off campus, you need to use a VPN.

          • VPN Guide: Can use on computers and mobile devices

          • Follow up questions: members of this class should feel free to contact Michael Yonezawa! (Thank you, Michael!)

11. 10 /31. Blog post draft feedback. We broke up into groups and gave each other peer feedback about our blog posts.

12. 11 /5. Pictionary day! Visual communication: principles and practice. Goals:

• 1. Think about your audience when communicating visually.

  2. Meet them where they are.

  3. Your visual communication is not subservient to your text, it is often the primary aspect that your audience latches on to. If you only get to draw a picture ("Pictionary"), can you communicate your technical idea?

13. 11/7. Examples of visual communication from:

• 1. Drawing Physics

  2. Quirky Quarks

  3. Jen Christiansen

     • Video recording (Guild of Natural Science Illustrators via Facebook)

  4. The Dialogues

  5. Design for an Audience

  6. Do Memes Matter? (Vox)

  7. "Memes as speech acts," Grundlingh

  8. "Gamegate comes to the classroom," Farokmanesh

     • This story came up in our discussion.

14. 11/12. Twitter and Pop Talk Examples

• 1. Twitter

     1. "How to Win Followers and Influence People: A Scientist’s Guide to Twitter"

     2. PLOS Twitter guide

     3. "Scientific networks on Twitter: Analyzing scientists’ interactions in the climate change debate," Stefanie Walter, Ines Lörcher, Michael Brüggemann

     4. "Peer review: Trial by Twitter." Mandavilli

  2. Some cool tweets

     1. https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/1194261281521520640

     2. https://twitter.com/johncarlosbaez/status/1185951537836642305

     3. https://twitter.com/FirstGenUCR/status/1192880783704412163

     4. https://twitter.com/FlipTanedo/status/1080251897506816000

     5. https://twitter.com/FlipTanedo/status/1089029440045109249

  3. Brevity: one sentence stories

     1. https://www.scoopwhoop.com/inothernews/one-line-stories/

     2. No longer online: http://www.onesentence.org

     3. https://quotecatalog.com/u/kirstenocorley/2016/08/beautiful-single-sentence-stories/

  4. Pop Talks examples: ComSciCon 15

     1. Laura Vican: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3fCZ20YC5k

     2. Mohit Kumar Jolly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NUS3IJds0Q

     3. Rose Hendricks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QzLwFSnlB8

  5. Science Charades: https://quizlet.com/38421960/flashcards

15. 11/14: Improv Day! We welcome Prof. Annika Speer.

• 1. Suggested reading ahead of the event: "Tina Fey’s Rules of Improvisation," https://kicp-workshops.uchicago.edu/eo2014/pdf/Tina-Feys-rules-of-improv.pdf

  2. Motivation from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science [video]

     • My favorite Alan Alda science communication anecdote [video]

• • Exercises

    • Warm up: choose a partner, face each other, close your eyes, take a deep breath, open your eyes and stare at each other in silence for a moment. (It's supposed to feel awkward!)

    • Your body is your instrument, loosen it up!

      • Rubber chicken! Wiggle your right hand 10 times, left hand 10 times, right foot 10 times, left foot 10 times. Count out loud. Repeat by wiggling each part 9 times. Then 8 times. Continue until you wiggle just once per part. At the end, jump up and shout rubber chicken!

      • Focus on a point above you. Reach out to that point on your tip toes, reach out your arms and fingers. While till stretching, allow your feet to fall flat. While still stretching, allow your fingers to go limp. While still stretching, allow your forearms to fall (pointing with your elbows!). Then let your arms fall, still pointing with your shoulders. Then let your shoulders fall, and project your focus internally.

      • Tongue twisters. Work on enunciation, opening and stretching your mouth. Say out loud twice.

        1. A big baby buggy with rubber buggy bumpers.

        2. She sells seashells by the seashore.

        3. Double bubble gum bubbles double.

        4. Each sixth chick sat on a stick.

        5. Of all the saws I ever saw, I never saw a saw saw like that saw saws.

        6. Does your shirt shop stock socks with spots?

        7. Six slim slick slender saplings.

        8. Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.

        9. I bought a box of biscuits, a box of mixed biscuits, and biscuits-mixed.

        10. Eat fresh fried fish free at the fish fry.

        11. Theophilus, the thistle sifter, while sifting a sifter full of thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thickness of his thumb.

        12. Three gray geese in the green grass grazing; gray were the geese and green was the grazing.

        13. The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.

        14. The sixth sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

        15. She stood on the balcony, inexplicably mimicking him hiccuping, and welcoming him in.

        16. Sixty-six sick chicks.

        17. Truly rual.

        18. Strange strategic statistics.

        19. Tie twine to the tree twigs.

        20. Lemon liniment.

        21. Which wily wizard wished wicked wishes for Willy?

    • Improv Exercises

      • A-B-A: Pair up. Partner A speaks (setting the scene), partner B responds, then partner A.

      • A-B-A: same as above, but partner B has to use a word from person A's initial statement.

      • A-B-A: same as above, but partner B has to express emotion.

      • May I join you? In a circle, one person starts by miming an activity (e.g. mowing the lawn). Second person jumps in and asks, "what are you doing?" The first person says a different activity (e.g. climbing a ladder). The second person asks, "may I join you?" The first person says yes, and leaves the circle. The second person must now perform the activity that was said (climbing a ladder). Repeat.

      • Machine: first person performs a repetitive motion. Next person steps in and joins with a different motion. continue one by one until everyone is part of the machine. Then one by one the machine falls apart in reverse order (last person in is the first person out).

      • Machine with sound: same as above, but your repetitive motion must now come with a repeating sound.

      • Tableau: create a dramatic scene frozen in time. The director places each person individually into a frozen scene. Make sure everyone is positioned dramatically.

      • Switch chairs. Like A-B-A but in chairs. The goal is to switch chairs. The first person sets the scene by saying something to the second person. Create a plausible situation that the two should switch chairs. Person B can be coy and initially refuse to switch chairs.

  • Debrief: why did we do this?

    • Science communication is about not only knowing your audience, but reacting to your audience. When you write, blog, tweet, talk, ask, or explain, you need to do so in a way that acknowledges where your audience is coming from and to collaborate with them to communicate.

16. 11/19: Prep for Videos, Recommendations

    • Video rules: 3 mins, using Learning Glass

      • We'll use the same rules as the Science Ambassador Scholarship

      • I suggest that you connect to your blog post and Ted Chiang story

      • Feel free to bring whatever props may help

    • What are letters of recommendation, how to ask for one

      • What it's like on the recommender's side via The Professor is In

        • Intro: who the letter is for, and what it's for

        • How you know the recommendee: in what capacity, how long.

        • How are you judging the recommendee?

        • Briefly place the recommendee's work in context

        • Briefly place the recomendee in context

        • Some number of "body paragraphs" justifying the recommendation. Ideally these would include personal anecdotes that would not show up in a resume or CV, but illuminate other items on the CV.

        • A concluding paragraph telling the audience how they should feel (and what they should do) after reading your letter.

17. 11/21: Workshop: 3 minute presentation pitch

    • Writing a letter of recommendation

    • Rapid workshopping of 3 minute presentations.

18. 11/26: Practice presentations

    • Assignments for letter of recommendation (via random number generator):

      • Jackie will recommend Lauren

      • Sean will recommend Kayvon

      • Alan will recommend Ema

      • Kayvon will recommend Alan

      • David will recommend Jen

      • Lauren will recommend Sean

      • Ema will recommend David

      • Hannah will recommend Jackie

      • Jen will recommend Hannah

19. 12/3: Presentations round 1

    • Clothing: dark neutral colors, avoid logos

20. 12/5: Presentations round 2

    • Many thanks to Siddiq for all of his help with Learning Glass!