Short people have long faces and
Long people have short faces.
Big people have little humor
And little people have no humor at all!
And in the words of that immortal buddy
Samuel J. Snodgrass, as he was about to be lead
To the guillotine:
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh? (From “Singing in the Rain”)
It’s really hard to pick a fav song from “Singing in the Rain”, so I won’t even try. But for the purposes of this post, I quoted the first bit of “Make ’em laugh”, you know, that song where Donald O’Connor hyperactively sings and tap dances and slapsticks and runs back and forth on (and through) the set. If you ever feel down, and don’t have the time to watch the full movie, watch that scene. It might not make you “lol” but it will bring a smile to your face. Or at least it always brings one to mine.
That wasn’t going to be my point actually. I wanted to talk about how suddenly science is becoming the subject of comedy.
I guess for me it probably started by watching reruns of QI with Stephen Fry. British panel shows are a strange thing, usually disguised as a quiz but no one really cares about winning, it’s just about getting famous people, mostly comedians, together to talk and joke about certain topics, and in this case that includes anything that Stephen finds quite interesting. Quite. I like Stephen Fry. I like random interesting facts, and this was a show where I felt like I was learning things – quite useless bits of knowledge – and being entertained at the same time. Years later in Belgium a similar show originated, Scheire en de Schepping, random science facts and cool little experiments (walking on water was one wonderful example) and to top it all, the “totally arbitrary winner designation round”. Just to point out that it was not about the quiz aspect at all.
In any case, science and nerdism is the new cool, and a new source of endless jokes. Just think about The Big Bang Theory, or at least the first few seasons if it pains you to think about it now; laughing at and with physicists and engineers has become very popular.
Another example, this year at the Edinburg Fringe Festival (a ridiculously elaborate comedy festival that is held in Edinburgh every August, for almost a whole month), I was astonished about how many shows were describable as “nerdy”. Mathematics, physics, biology, computing, geekery, … They have all become the subject for the next generation of comedians.
I have played my own little part, by participating in a Bright Club event. Bright Club is an initiative run by Steve Cross, that has spread out over multiple cities in the UK – and one in Brussels as well, actually – that allows academics to climb up on a stage to deliver an eight-minute set of stand-up comedy inspired by their own studies or work. It’s incredibly scary and fun to do, and it’s amazing to hear how “boring” academics, the ones you image spending their whole day behind a computer or in a laboratory, can be extremely funny.
That’s the thing; scientists are people too. They come in all flavours and colours and some of them are quite humorous. Moreover, they have an infinite range of subjects they can talk about, and they will never run out.
“Research is never going to stop, so you’ve always got new material. The universe is an interesting place – and it’s always going to be.” (Simon Watt)
So don’t be afraid to approach a scientist once in a while. Have a chat. They might be shy at first, but who knows, they might turn out to be extremely funny once you give them the chance. Don’t we all just love to laugh?
Forgive me. In my excitement of being able to make a Harry Potter reference, I did not adequately research the previous post.
It all became clear yesterday. It was a lovely day, a Sunday deserving its name. I was out for a walk, had just explored the Dundee Botanical Gardens, and was now heading towards Tesco Riverside to stock up for the upcoming week (Thanksgiving, hurray!). On my way, I passed aforementioned McGonagall’s walk.
Turns out, that in my previous post, I had quoted the wrong poem! Mr. William McGonagall had written another poem about the bridge, some time before the Tay Bridge Disaster. Nevertheless, I think the jest of my post still rings true: this poet was an absolute disaster.
The full poem will be at the end of this post, as to not force you read through the whole thing, but I will quote one verse here. It seems Mr. McGonagall was a bit of a fortune teller. Sadly:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
I hope that God will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident will befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
For that would be most awful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.
Before I leave you alone with the full poem (feel free to not read it), I’ll leave you with some pictures from my Sunday walk. Better use of your time to look at those, I’d say.
Some snapshots from the Botanical Gardens
“The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay”
——————————————————
The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay – by William McGonagall
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array And your central girders, which seem to the eye To be almost towering to the sky. The greatest wonder of the day, And a great beautification to the River Tay, Most beautiful to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! That has caused the Emperor of Brazil to leave His home far away, incognito in his dress, And view thee ere he passed along en route to Inverness. Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! The longest of the present day That has ever crossed o’er a tidal river stream, Most gigantic to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay ! Which will cause great rejoicing on the opening day And hundreds of people will come from far away, Also the Queen, most gorgeous to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! And prosperity to Provost Cox, who has given Thirty thousand pounds and upwards away In helping to erect the Bridge of the Tay, Most handsome to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! I hope that God will protect all passengers By night and by day, And that no accident will befall them while crossing The Bridge of the Silvery Tay, For that would be most awful to be seen Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! And prosperity to Messrs Bouche and Grothe, The famous engineers of the present day, Who have succeeded in erecting The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay, Which stands unequalled to be seen Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.
More than a century ago, a tragic accident occurred in Dundee: during a violent storm, the bridge crossing the Tay river collapsed while a train was passing over it. All passengers were killed. The architect who had designed the bridge had his reputation ruined; his design for the rail bridge over the Firth of Forth (near Edinburgh) was never used. A poet wrote a poem.
Along the river Tay, there is a walkway. A small bit of this walkway, close to the new railway bridge, has been named “McGonagall’s walk”. The first time I came across it, I have to admit, my mind jumped to the strict but fair, animagous Hogwarts teacher Professor McGonagall. Yes, I’m from the Harry Potter generation, how did you guess?
McGonagall’s walk is engraved with a poem by a certain William McGonagall – hence the name -, The Tay Bridge Disaster :
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
I felt slightly guilty, that first time I walked over McGonagall’s walk and read the poem, for finding it absolutely hilarious. Things like these do not call for comedy. Fortunately (for my soul), I am not alone: while his poem is considered to be the most famous poem about the Tay Bridge disaster, it is also thought to be of very low quality and borderline comical. Some more reading tells me that William McGonagall is known as the worst poet in British history. So it was okay for me to be humoured by the poem. (Hurray, I’m not a heartless person.)
Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall
Quite by accident, I was reading about Professor McGonagall yesterday. It turns out her surname was indeed inspired by Mr. William “disaster of a poet” McGonagall, because J.K. seemed to love the irony of naming her after such a ridiculous man, especially because McGonagall (the professor one) is absolutely brilliant and bad-ass. Luckily, she was blessed with the name Minerva, the Roman Athena, the goddess of wisdom, a name worth living up to.
In any case, that tiny link between my current city of residence and those books that took up so much of my teens, just made my day.
Lets just skip over the (slightly depressing) fact that we seem to have skipped over summer this year. I’m not really sure there was even a proper spring, though in Scotland’s defence, I wasn’t in the country for most of it, so maybe I just skipped over it personally. But I think it’s official now, the clocks have been turned back, petty colds have made their introduction, people have started to quote Game of Thrones and the trees have started painting a colourful palette. Autumn is here.
You might have noticed I said autumn and not fall. I may sound very American (not that you can hear that by reading this), but let’s be fair, autumn is simply a much nicer word.
Let’s dig in a bit deeper. Until the 16th century, autumn was referred to as Harvest, from the Old Norse word haust meaning “to gather or pluck.” In those days, a lot of people were dependent on farming, and this was the time to harvest crops, so it makes sense. But as more people went to go live in towns and cities, the word wasn’t as relevant anymore. Two new words came into use then: Fall, which was probably short for “fall of the leaf” and Autumn from the Latin automnus. There were both used, as far as I understand, but at a certain point of time the colonies stuck to the word fall (maybe because it’s easier to spell?), while fall fell into disuse in the UK. It’t quite interesting how US english and UK english started to evolve differently, and this season’s name is just one example.
Etymology aside, what I have noticed most, is that here in Dundee, in the autumn, it’s like living in a cloud. No, I’m not being particularly dreamy, or aspire myself to be in the virtual datacloud. It’s literally in a cloud. It gets really really foggy, or misty, or hazy, and this results in feeling like your stuck in a The Gothic Archies song.
Okay, turns out foggy is the best word. In ye olden days, it would have been hazy, but language has evolved since then (yes, were talking about the words again). In general, mist and fog both consist of tiny water droplets, a low hanging cloud if you will, and their difference is quite vague and depends a lot on who you ask. Let’s just say fog is thicker than mist and is what caused my plane yesterday to be cancelled, and the next one to be delayed (because they waited until it got foggy again!), causing me to finish 2,5 books over the whole day. Haze is used to refer to a particularly thick fog, but now means “a rather thin fog and other causes of reduced visibility”, for example heat haze, something that I have not seen occur here yet.
Just imagine a night out drinking: you might be hazy after a few beers, misty after a few more, and foggy would be the last step before a complete black out. Not that I would know.
There another mist/fog-phenomena occurs here quite often: haar. This is cold sea fog that occurs when warm air passes over the cold North Sea, causing it to condense locally. This haar seeps in over the Tay (the local river) and in some cases just stays confined right there. It feels a bit like a scene in where cursed pirates would use a cloak of mist to creep up on their victims, in this case the city of Dundee.
Well, I guess autumn in Dundee is not that bad. It’s occasionally eerie. But in the moments when there is no fog, the sunrises are absolutely stunning, and there is nothing better to wake you up than a morning stroll in the cold. Bring along a pocket microscope and have a blast.
Not always white views… The bottom left depicts why I have occasional urges to break into “Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba“. An example of haar can be seen on the right.Just some more PDMS drip lens images, taken during a autumn stroll.
Two days ago, I was called a physicist.
Not that I find that an insult, quite the contrary. I have been called a physicist before, just not by another physicist. My working environment consists almost solely of biologists, of all sorts and kinds, and on occasion when I walk in a room or join a table, a conversation much like this one would start:
“You’re a physicist, right?”
“Not really, well sort of, I guess.”
“So, is it better wrap food with the shiny part of aluminium foil on the inside.” Or another physicky question I don’t actually know the answer to.
But the thing is, I would never describe myself as a physicist. And I always had the impression that even if biologists would describe me as a physicist, physicist would rather describe me as a biologist. I don’t consider myself a biologist either.
So when two days ago a physicist said to me: “I see you as a physicist,” I got catapulted into an existential crisis. Who am I? is a philosophical question and difficult enough. Now I was asking myself asking: What am I?
Yeah, human. A bunch of cells organised into tissues and organs and a body. A set of connections and bioelectrical signals making up a consciousness. But I don’t think that will qualify as a good answer at, say, a future job interview.
I have recently described myself – during my debut as a stand-up comedian(*) – as an inbetweener (no, not one of these). My research lies on the interface between biology/life science and physics/engineering. The whole point of the project I’m in, is to create a new cohort of interdisciplinary scientists that are able to talk to both biologists or clinicians, and physicists, essentially bridging the gap between both worlds. If you’re wondering why interdisciplinary research is even worth pursuing, a recent Nature special does a pretty good job describing the advantages (and current issues). Note that one of the ways to promote interdisciplinary research is: “Invest in interdisciplinary PhD cohorts, co-supervised by academics from diverse departments or faculties.” Exactly.
But my point is that, most of the time, people undertaking interdisciplinary research have a solid background in one particular field. You might have heard of physicists merging into biology or biologists dabbling in physics. Most of the people in my program fall in this category, they are either physicists or biologists and doing research on the interface.
But not me. I started out interdisciplinary. I usually describe myself as a bio-engineer, even though that’s not really what my MSc diploma says (but no matter what I say -“nanotechnologist, “bionanotechnologist” or “bio-engineer” – it almost always merits further explanation and I feel the latter describes me best). Unfortunately, a test linked to that recent Nature special tells me that “I am not truly an interdisciplinary scientist, I am able to talk about different subject but to not have the core understanding of all of them.” If this is correct – assuming online tests have some fraction of truth – shouldn’t I then have a core understanding in one field? What would that field even be?
I sometimes *jokingly* say that as a bio-engineer, I know a bit about a lot of different things, but never a lot about one thing. I then *jokingly* say that this is *very useful*. This sarcasm is quite often true; I’m constantly reminded of gaps in my knowledge. Fortunately, I am occasionally reminded of the advantages of my background. I know of a lot of things. I’m capable of absorbing a lot of information in relatively short amounts of time because I have a basic understanding of the lingo and concepts in all these various fields. I have a certain way of approaching a problem. As I have pointed out in a previous post, I am an engineer, trust me, and that comes with a certain mindset and way of thinking, and probably the type of mind that has difficulty asking for help and is socially awkward. Hmm, *very useful*.
Which leads to another existential question: Did I study engineering because I have an engineering-type mind, or did studying engineering develop my engineery mind? It’s the nature-nurture debate. And the answer is probably also: most likely a combination of both.
Maybe all interdisciplinary scientists go through existential crises sometimes, because they’re never really sure where they fit in best. Luckily not fitting in isn’t always a bad thing.
I’m not sure if I made any progress on answering the question What am I?, but I’m thinking about myself and I guess that’s part of a PhD as well; it’s not only about science, it’s also a path of self-discovery.
In other news, I seem to have had an overdose of Mars in the past few weeks: I finished reading Brian Cox’s Human Universe, where he states that space exploration and sending humans to Mars is basically a must (if you consider how much advancement moon exploration has helped our advance), they have discovered evidence of water on mars (Dont’t drink the water. Don’t even touch it. Not one drop.), I saw The Martian the day before NASA published a document outlining their strategy to send people up there. It makes me wish I never gave up on my dream to become an astronaut (when I was about 8, and realised that there’s no way someone scared of dogs could be a vet).
(*) I have no real plans of becoming a stand-up comedian, it was just a really awesome and scary thing I tried recently.
Some time ago, on my usually waste-of-time website, I found a post about the first female engineer. As a female engineer – let’s not go into whether that’s self-proclaimed or not – , I naturally wanted to find out more.
First, it seemed necessary to find a definition for “engineering”.
As so many other words, engineering is derived from Latin. It can have originated from either – or perhaps both – ingenium or – and – ingeniare. As the word ingenious might hint, the first means something in the lines of cleverness, though I’ve also seen it translated as talent; the latter means to devise (according to wikipedia, I had more trouble finding the word through other sources). The stem of the word seems to resemble ingenerare (to implant) and ingenere (to instill by birth). Therefore it seems that the word initially meant something along the lines of having a natural talent for something but slowly evolved to coming up with clever tricks or solutions to solve a certain problem.
Nowadays, the current official definition of “engineering” is (according to Engineers’ Council for Professional Development):
The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilising them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognisance of their design; or to forecast their behaviour under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation or safety to life and property.
Hmmm, that’s one of those sentences that I still haven’t completely grasped after reading it three times and then I usually just give up. Let’s give that definition another try then. According to my understanding (and self-proclaimed experience), engineers aim to design (or invent, or optimize, or improve) something by the application of scientific and mathematical principles. This something can range from materials, instruments, software, living systems, you name it; basically anything that you can imagine inventing or improving on.
It differs from science mostly due to the fact that sciences aim to build on knowledge starting from predictions and hypotheses about the universe (or, anything).
If this not making much sense… Well, probably this comic by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal does a better job on describing the essence of engineering:
So, I guess you can say that engineers are more interested in applying scientific knowledge to whatever they are working, while scientists are more aimed at acquiring said knowledge. In my opinion (and again, “experience”) the distinction between the two is not always very straight cut, and a lot of people are more somewhere in between, say applied scientist, or scientific engineers, or engineering scientist (though that last one sounds more like someone trying to create a race of super-scientists through genetic engineering). I also think it’s quite obvious that both (or all people on that spectrum) need each other to achieve progress.
Nevertheless, my post was going to be about the first female engineer. Because whichever way you look at it, women are still underrepresented in these fields, even if the situation is already much more balanced than it used to be. It also strongly depends on the type of engineering. For example, while there are about 50% of women studying bio-engineering or architectural engineering at my formal school, only 15% of engineering (that later splits into mechanical, civil, chemical, biomedical, computer, and mathematical engineering) consists of female students. Perhaps “us girls” just need some role models?
The first candidate-rolemodel, and the “first female engineer” according to that post I mentioned, is Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu.
Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu
Elisa was born in 1887 in Romania, in a quite engineery – yes that is a word, stop it red squiggly line – family. Her grandfather, on her mother’s side, was an engineer and so was her older brother Dimitrie. I imagine her as a child inventor, a bit like Violet Baudelaire, who did not give up after being rejected from engineering school (School of Bridges and Roads in Bucharest). No, she just applied to other schools, and in 1909, she was accepted at the Royal Academy of Technology Berlin. Three years later, she graduated, and started her career in geology laboratories back in Romania. She passed the war years (World War I) in the Red Cross, around which time she met her husband, Constantin Zamfirescu, a chemist. She spent her engineering career leading several geology labs in the Geological Institute in Romania and teaching physics and chemistry. Her contributions include her role in identifying new resources of coal, natural gas and copper. She worked until she was 75, and died in 1973.
Despite her contributions to the world of engineering, Elisa was not technically the first engineer. Alice Jacqueline Perry, an Irish cailín born in 1885, graduated a few years before. Her family sounds very well educated; her father was co-founder of the Galway Electric Light Company as well as county surveyor for the County Council and her uncle invented the navigational gyroscope (two of her sisters also continued into higher education, by the way), Alice was quite a mathlete, or would have been if they had those in the 1900s.
Alice Jacqueline Perry
She received a scholarship to study at the Queen’s College in Galway in 1902, where she pursued a degree in engineering. She graduated in 1906, with first class honours. Alice was the first female engineering graduate in Ireland, the UK, and in my understanding, the world. A month after her graduation, her father’s death caused her to take up his position temporarily for County Council, making her the only woman to have been a County Surveyor – basically a Council Engineer – in Ireland. She moved to London in 1908, starting a job as a Lady Factory Inspector. She moved to Glasgow in 1915 (and seemed to have continued an inspector job there as well). In 1921 she grew bored of engineering, and started writing poetry (eventually publishing seven books of poetry). She was heavily involved in the Christian Science movement, and moved to Boston headquarters in 1923, where she worked until her death in 1969, about a month after the moon landing.
These may seem like quite ordinary lives, but I can only imagine the challenges Elisa and Alice might have faced as female engineers in those days, just as female scientists or female doctors had a whole stream of male criticism and prejudice to swim up against.
I assume that there were some female engineers before 1900, though perhaps not with an official engineering degree; after all, inventors have been around forever and it is no great leap of imagination that some of those inventors were women. And you might argue that we don’t really know any famous female engineers because they haven’t contributed anything major, but I will argue back that a lot of progress happens in little bits and every little contribution has been necessary to get to those major leaps. (Come to think of it, I don’t think I can name any great engineers off the top of my head.)
As there are quite some great female scientists, there are some great female engineers, and naming the first ones is only the start of a long list, that I am positive will grow longer in the future. Perhaps one day, I’ll find my name on that list. (I doubt it, but it can’t hurt to be ambitious, eh.)
We live in exciting times. Technology that novelists and script writers could only dream of, now exists without us being amazed about it every single day. We have computers, that make immensely complicated calculations and simulations for us all the time. We send people into space and leave them there for months. We can talk to someone on the other side of the world with a simple click on a green phone logo, we can even see them if we want. We use the touch of our finger on a screen to control our devices. We ask our phone questions and it talk backs to give us the answers. We are able to step into virtual reality without getting nauseous. We send out cars that can drive themselves to map our streets. We are able to manipulate single genes, single molecules, single atoms.
Seriously, how are we not amazed every single day?
With all that has been achieved up to now, I can’t help but wonder: “What’s next?” Which crazy science fiction technology will we turn into reality tomorrow? Will humans soon be inhabiting another planet? Will some one create a working lightsaber?
Will we ever be able to travel through time?
I’ve dreamed about this. Not literally – though maybe I have, I just never remember my dreams so there’s no way to tell – but conceptually. I love reading about it. I love watching movies about it. I love having discussions about the paradoxes it could create. But in the same way that I know the dinosaurs in Jurassic park aren’t realistic, I know it cannot and probably never will be real.
See how I said probably? Did you notice that spark of hope?
To start with, there’s the way my friend (oh wow, his last post is also about SciFi!) states that he’s travelling through time and space at a constant forwards speed, as we all are. So in that sense, we’re all travelling through time, slowly. More interestingly, by travelling through space at a high speed, one would be passing through time at a different speed than others, because the space traveller would have aged less than anyone who had stayed on earth. This idea is called the twin paradox (recently used to explain how Luke ends up being younger than Leia, even though they’re twins) and is due to time dilation, an aspect of special relativity where time slows down when moving at near light-speed speeds. (If you ever have the chance to ask Lieven Scheire to explain special relativity to you, don’t miss it, it’s genius.) So we are able to travel through time at different speeds, and essentially travelling little bits into the future, and renders me hopeful that more sophisticated time travel could be possible.
How would this work? It’s amazing to think that when we look into space, we’re actually looking back in time. Could it ever be possible to travel back in time as well? (I would think that if we’d like send people to travel through space beyond our solar system, travelling through time could be a prerequisite, that is if we want to actually have the same people coming back to tell us what they’ve seen.) Extrapolating from time dilation, we could imagine that travelling at a speed faster than light would allow time reversal. Unfortunately, we don’t even have the technology to travel as speeds close to the speed of light. And that’s not even mentioning that “faster than the speed of light” is not really a thing. (For now? <– See that spark of hope again?)
Another option would be travelling through wormholes, which is a connection between two different points in space time. Unfortunately, we’re not really sure those things exist, so that’s not really a possibility either.
Or perhaps we could build an infinite improbability drive, or a ship that moves time and space around us while remaining stationary. Or have a space ship that’s actually a living creature that propels us through the wibbly wobbly timey wimey thing. Or, I don’t know, a time travelling car?
But if it was up to me, I would tackle time travel differently. I would use a bath tub to travel through time, and incidentally space. (And a friend and myself came up with this idea before that movie about the hot tub time machine came out!)
See? Proof!
I guess for now I’ll just have to stick to fiction and keep on dreaming…
… and all it takes is for someone to show it to the world.
Pursuing a career in research involves more than working in a lab or sitting behind a computer all day, it also involves disseminating results and promoting the research. Within the scientific community, communicating research happens through the publication of papers and participation at conferences, but it is equally important to engage to the general public through outreach activities. Part of my PhD project includes participating in outreach, and I have to say I’ve quite enjoyed the projects I’ve been involved in so far (even though I’ve actually not done any outreach yet, just preparation of). Therefore, a bit of internet ramble on outreach. 1. What is outreach?
In this context, I guess outreach can be defined as raising awareness on a certain topic, such as science or academic research. It involves disseminating information about that topic to the general public and people outside the field to increase understanding and interest. Additionally, it could help engage children to the field. Outreach tools would include advertisement leaflets, newsletters, stalls or exhibitions in community centres, university open days, and the organisation of lectures and workshops at schools. Just to give a few examples. 2. Why even do research?
There is a discrepancy between how science is communicated through media and the actual reality of the research. Increasing the understanding of the topics of research, how research is done and how results are generally interpreted can perhaps help solve this problem. Additionally, outreach towards primary and secondary school pupils can perhaps shed a light on how research works and open up prospects of future studies and jobs. Research isn’t at all like the science you learn in school, and it can help get a few nerds enthusiastic about pursuing a career in science by showing them what’s in store. 3. Does outreach actually have an effect?
Let’s hope so. I’m sure there’s numbers out there, but I don’t know how to find them. And as I haven’t actually participated in any events yet, I can’t draw on personal experience. But even if all outreach does is raise awareness, I think that’s already a worthy cause. And if I can get even one child enthusiastic about science, I would consider that an accomplishment. “Did you know you can actually walk on water, if only you add enough cornstarch and turn it into a non-Newtonian fluid, isn’t physics awesome?” 4. My favourite outreach project
I guess it all started when I was 17 and went to the university open days. I already knew what I wanted to study, it wasn’t a hard choice, but had never considered anything further than the 3 year bachelor. Something a master student told me that day just stuck. She was studying nanoscience and when we asked her why, her answer was something along these lines: “It’s just fascinating. You know how the universe is infinitely large, well the nanoworld is sort of the same, just infinitely small.” And I could never get that out of my head.
An extract of my motivation letter to do my own master in nanoscience:
“I have always been fascinated in the aspect of infinity: the infinity of the universe, the infinite amount of atoms inside it, and the infinite amount of even smaller particles we’re only just beginning to understand. I have read several books on astrophysics in my spare time, for example “The Universe in a Nutshell” by Stephen Hawking, and have come to understand that there is a great analogy between the infinity of the universe and the infinity of what happens on atomic scale. The study of the infinitely small is a field that is particularly intriguing to me.”
I got in and 3 years later I was asked to get involved in a project linking images from outer space to images of “inner space”, i.e. the world inside a cell. Think about it, haven’t you ever seen a picture of a cell and though that it looked like a far away galaxy? Or noticed that certain patterns and structures seem to reappear at every size dimension? It’s almost uncanny how images on such different size scales can look so alike. As an example, some time ago I came across the following image on my second favourite waste-of-time website:
The images on the left are representations of “the Flower of Life” as described in Sacred Geometry. The images in the middle are of structures in outer space, the images on the right depict multiple cell divisions.
I guess it suffices to say that I didn’t need much convincing to get into this project.
So, the Outer Space Inner Space (OSIS) project makes the link between the macroscopic world of outer space and the microscopic world as viewed through a microscope. We (a bunch of people from different schools within the University) are planning to convert the Mills Observatory seminar room into a platform for multimodal and immersive engagement. This will include a room-filling presentation screen to show images of the macro and micro cosmos, and space for workshops and exhibitions. It will also feature human-computing interfaces, ensuring that all audiences can experience and interact with the presentations. Within this framework, we also plan to organise activities within the International Year of Light. We have already started setting up an exhibition that aims to teach the general public about the principles of optics, and how this can be used to look at both things that are very far away as things that are very small. As my supervisor once pointed out: there’s not much difference between trying to look at something very small or trying to look at something very far away. A lot of principles in astronomy are being applied to microscopy as well, such as adaptive optics. And to throw in another quote, this one’s by Oliver Heaviside:
“There is no absolute scale of size in the Universe, for it is boundless towards the great and also boundless towards the small.”
I’m involved in a few other outreach projects as well, this blog might be considered as one of them I guess, though I’m not always – not to say hardly ever – talking about science or my life as a researcher. I’m involved in another project, in which we will try to organise a lecture series on the topic of “Science of Sci-Fi movies,” exploring the reality and feasibility of science and technology that appears in science fiction popular culture, and hopefully proving that some these nerd’s dreams have the potential to become reality. Finally, next month I will be participating in a “Bright Club” training, in my own small effort to prove that scientists can be funny too.
End of internet ramble.
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This post is based on an article that I’ve written for the PHOQUS newsletter that will be published soon, I have therefore plagiarised myself and apologise for anyone who has or will read certain sentences and ideas twice. The quote in the title is attributed to Carl Sagan.
I feel like I haven’t emphasised the “bagpipe”* aspect of this blog a lot, so a short thought-train on Scotland, for a change:
I remember interviewing for the job here, and a professor that had lived his in California before moving to Dundee, told me that the Scottish weather is exactly how it’s always portrayed: dreary. However, a Dutch professor assured me that it wasn’t too bad. I concluded that it’s just a matter of what you’re used to and that I’d probably do just fine.
Additionally, I have been told over and over again that Dundee is the sunniest city in Scotland. I started to consider myself Dundonian enough to claim the same someone asks me about Scottish weather (maybe unsurprisingly, this is one of the first questions I’m asked after telling people that I live in Scotland). I usually say something along the lines of “Well, I live in the sunniest city of Scotland you know, though that maybe doesn’t mean that much,” and then proceed to the most recent analogy I have conceived; It’s like saying “the best american chocolate” (well, I guess if you consider Hershey’s chocolate…) or “the best glass of Heiniken I’ve ever had” (yeah, best glass of water you mean?). After that, I usually add: “But seriously, it’s really not that bad.”
So I just spent an extensive 5 minute web-based research trying to confirm that Dundee really is the sunniest city of Scotland.
There are claims that Glasgow is the sunniest city, I found another article saying Aberdeen has the most hours of sunshine. The ever trustworthy wikipedia indeed says that Dundee is the sunniest city in Scotland [citation needed], so that doesn’t help much either. Other sites make similar (unverified) claims. A weather site tells me that Dundee has 1426.3 hours of sunshine each year, which is 0.3 hours more than Edinburgh and about 200 more than Glasgow. However Aberdeen had an average of 1435.7 hours between 1981 and 2010, according to the same site. (I didn’t look any further.)
So have I been telling lies? Do I not live in the sunniest city in Scotland? It is clear that the East coast is the place to be, if you do happen to end up in Scotland for whatever reason, and it is also clear that you have to be prepared for every single type of weather (or season) within a day, so dressing in layers and having an umbrella on standby are musts.
In the end it doesn’t really matter. I took my refurbed bike for a first test drive the Sunday before last to Broughty Ferry. It was lovely weather for a 5 mile trip to a lovely beach. I encountered a Finnish cyclist, who had just embarked on a 4-week bike tour of Scotland, I think this was his day two. We both got lost at the same point (apparently the solution to opening to locked gate on our path was ringing the bell), and once we got back on track – national cycle route 1 -, we started chatting. As we split paths (mine led to locking up my bike and getting my feet icy cold wet), he said he was in heaven.
I’m sure that the fact that the sun was shining that day and that it was a pleasant 20-something degrees worked in favour of this sentiment, but I have to say that I was enjoying myself quite a lot as well. I’m definitely looking forward to my next bike outing. I probably wait for the next weekend that the sun is out, and cycle off into my own little bit of heaven.
Getting my feet wet at the beach of Broughty Ferry – check out my awesome bike (oh, it was abandoned and I gave it a clean and a new home, or shed), – view on the river Tay – and the HM Frigate Unicorn 1824 battleship I passed on my way back.
*The tagline used to be: Science, bagpipes, and hopefully a few “Eureka’s”
Working in a research environment definitely changes your perspective on the meaning of “cheap” and “expensive”. If paying £194 to go to a festival seems like a lot of money, then consider that you need to pay at least half more to buy an antibody. “Cheap” purchases include most things under, say, £200. And I don’t even want to think about how much money gets spent on consumables like pipets and petridishes. If you want to really do something, you need to buy equipment like microscopes or PCR meters and you can probably buy a car with the same amount of money. Or a jet. Needless to say then, that conducting scientific research is quite an expensive endeavour and it’s no bit surprise that a lot of time goes into applying for grants.
Does it really have to be this expensive though?
The simple answer is: probably.
The fun answer, however, is NO!
I’ll give you an example (and let’s pretend to ignore the fact that I’m too lazy to find another example): easy-to-make, affordable, microscopy lenses. It is quite similar to the water drop hack, which is even cheaper than the method I am going to purpose, but not quite as versatile. I am talking about a lens made out of PDMS.
Bear with me, I am going to explain.
The idea was published last year. It makes use of polydimethylsiloxane (also known as PDMS), which is a elastomer used commonly for making microfluidic devices. The elastomer is made by mixing to reagents together and exposed to heat to allow it to polymerise and form a stable, flexible, clear, rubbery bit of stuff.
An example of a microfluidic device made of PDMS (as a result of a quick google search).
As it is clear and has a high refractive index, making a droplet-shaped bit of this PDMS might very well be used as a lens in combination with a smartphone. And it is cheap, a 1.1 kg bottle of this PDMS might cost a little bit (around £100, but I have already that this is cheap in scientific consumables terms), but you can make so many lenses out of this, it results in about £0,05 per lens. Cheap huh.
So yesterday evening, we spent some time trying to make some of these lenses, which worked quite well. It is very easy to make (we are going to try this as an outreach workshop) and it is also absolutely cool. From just a few hours of messing around – and it is quite a sticky substance to work with – with cover slips, the PDMS, a syringe and a lamp to provide the heat, we made quite some lenses and took quite some pictures.
Wait, I’ll give you another example (it isn’t really though): so using these lenses, you can make a simple (and cheap!) optical trap. An optical trap uses a laser to trap, for example, a bead*. This can be used to measure the viscosity of fluids, measure forces involved in cellular processes (protein folding, motor proteins, adhesion, cytosol viscosity, motility forces, …) or to play a game of tetris. It’s quite a cool technique, and now you can save on costs by making your own lens! (I’m sure the paper will be accessible soon.)
Anyway, this is just to say that research doesn’t always have to be expensive. And obviously it was already fun, but it can be even more fun (who knew)?
The result of mucking around. Top left: a PDMS drip lens. Top right and bottom left: pixels from some text on a paper. Bottom right: some of my finger print lines.Another example: the fabric of my watch. Left is taken in macro mode without the lens (even a bit out of focus), right is with the PDMS lens.
We live in exciting times. Nostalgia-drenched movies are out now or being released soon. Our childhood hero is returning in the form of theatre. Certain fantasy characters might have actually existed**. Advances that we could only dream of (or write Sci-Fi novels about) seem within reach. And new awesome ways are being developed to make science cheap and accessible for anyone.
Finally, I’ll end with a teaser:
We are currently setting up an outreach project bringing these things together:
And it’s already been so much fun! Learn more on twitter or wait until I dedicate a post on the subject (sometime I will!)
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*Yes, this is in no way an adequate explanation of optical trapping. I could say it uses “magic” to trap beads, though I’m sure you won’t believe me. ** Yes, I just rushed over multiple topics that I not-so-secretly wanted to mention in one way or another.
