{"id":9910,"date":"2011-05-05T22:48:29","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T21:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=9910"},"modified":"2011-09-06T17:16:49","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T16:16:49","slug":"science-communication-over-the-garden-fence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2011\/05\/05\/science-communication-over-the-garden-fence\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Communication – Over the Garden Fence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"science<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week’s Public Attitudes to Science report<\/a> from Ipsos MORI and BIS says a lot about how the\u00a0 public feel about and engage with science.<\/p>\n

The Summary is worth five minutes of anyone’s time.<\/p>\n

But what came unbidden to my mind, as I pondered how informed or uninformed people are about science, was a visit from a neighbour last week, and a reminder that we don’t need to appear on the telly or be called Brian Cox to do our own bit for science communication.<\/p>\n

Basically, the guy spots me over the fence messing around with my telescopes, and invites himself over for a look-see.\u00a0 And, yes, he has been ‘Wonderised’ by Brian.<\/p>\n

So I drop plans to photograph the ISS – I’ve got enough of those anyhow – and instead show him Saturn through the little ETX-90.\u00a0 For a first view through a telescope we could hardly do better.<\/p>\n

We talk about the earth’s rotation and why the telescope’s axis points at the pole – watching Saturn scoot across the view with the drive turned off.\u00a0\u00a0 We talk about the cost of kit, magnification, aperture, and what can be achieved with a pair of binoculars.<\/p>\n

The forgotten ISS appears.\u00a0 Ultra-bright.\u00a0 Fantastic stuff.<\/p>\n

The truth is that astronomy could have been designed for engagement, with other areas of science and engineering not lending themselves to a hands-on demo in quite the same way.\u00a0 I’ve worked with everything from fluid mechanics, to ultrasonics, to high-power lasers and the thermodynamics of steelmaking slags.\u00a0 It’s all fascinating stuff\u00a0 (believe me :-P); and while earthbound, still somehow less accessible than the stars.<\/p>\n

This is where good science writing steps in; but TO MY POINT: if you know something cool – don’t wait for an invite to the Royal Society or the BBC to share it.\u00a0\u00a0 And have a peep over your neighbours fence; you might see something interesting.\u00a0 (But don’t get arrested either.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s Public Attitudes to Science report from Ipsos MORI and BIS says a lot about how the\u00a0 public feel about and engage with science. The Summary is worth five minutes of anyone’s time. But what came unbidden to my mind, as I pondered how informed or uninformed people are about science, was a visit … Continue reading Science Communication – Over the Garden Fence<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[638,911,406],"tags":[1421,1163,1416],"class_list":["post-9910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-engineering-2","category-science-communication","tag-astronomy","tag-citizen-science","tag-science-communication"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-2zQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9910"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9972,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910\/revisions\/9972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}