a blog by the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology
Science communication takes a lot of different forms, including improvisation. In this episode, we interview Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology graduate student Paige Kinsley and alum Liz Laudadio. The episode dives deep into the life skills you can learn from doing improv, how it can make you a better listener, and how it relates to science …
How do you photograph the unphotographable? In this podcast episode we interview MIT research scientist Felice Frankel, who specializes in visualizing science, using pictures to draw audiences in and help scientists more deeply examine their own work, including nanoscale materials that are smaller than wavelengths of light! We also have a mini-interview with graduate student …
Continue reading "Podcast Ep 35. Photographing the Unphotographable"
Have you ever had to read a paragraph or a sentence several times to understand it? I know I have. I often take 3-4 passes to understand particularly complex sentences, and it goes like this: the first pass, I just power through to see if I can get the overall gist of it. The second …
Continue reading "Entertaining and Informing: The Art of Fun Science Abbreviations"
Happy 2018! Itās hard to believe, but our very first Sustainable Nano blog post, Why are Nanomaterials So Special and What is the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology?, was published five years ago, on January 29, 2013! Weāve come a long way ā 262 published posts, including 22 episodes of the podcast since its launch in …
Continue reading "2017: Sustainable Nano Year in Review"
Scientific writing is notoriously full of jargon. Jargon includes technical terms that are specific to a certain discipline, or sometimes it can be everyday words that mean something different in science than they do in normal life. Jargon has its place -- it can help scientists be very precise when communicating with each other. But …
Continue reading "De-Jargonification of Scientific Explications (AKA How to Say Stuff More Simply)"
Dr. Hope Jahren is a geobiologist who studies fossil organisms and the global environment, and is also the New York Times-bestelling author of the memoir Lab Girl. In this episode of the podcast, we interview Dr. Jahren about communicating science with the public, the joys and challenges of writing academic articles, and her thoughts on …
Continue reading "Podcast Ep 13. Communicating About Science with ‘Lab Girl’ Author Hope Jahren"
Every year the Nobel Prizes bring some extra attention to science in the award categories of medicine, physics, and chemistry. This is a great opportunity for the general public to hear about science, but it can pose some communication challenges. How do you explain, for example, "theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases …
Continue reading "How to Understand Nobel Science? Food!"
I am a TED enthusiast. TED is an organization that describes itself as a ānonpartisan nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerfulĀ talks.ā Chances are youāve seen a TED talk at some point ā maybe Meg Jay's advice for 20-somethingsĀ or Bryan StevensonāsĀ talk about the issues in our criminal justice system? They …
Continue reading "Letās Talk About Responsible Science Communication…"
It's Recommended Reading DayĀ hereĀ at Sustainable Nano!Ā Ā There's soĀ much great stuff out there on the internet that it's impossible to catch it all, so we thought we'd offer you a little sampling of 10 coolĀ things weĀ sharedĀ on Twitter and Facebook over the last couple weeks. Undark: Deborah BlumĀ (director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT andĀ most recently …
Continue reading "Recommended Reading: Spring Break Edition"
There was a time when book stores and libraries were the places where you met others. Like in today's universities, in which librarians can't get rid of books fast enough, students still go to libraries to study in their carrels. Unfortunately, the flattening of the printed word through electronic delivery is decreasing the need or …
Continue reading "Chemistry’s Community Spaces"
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