Session R5: Communicating Physics to Non-Physicists

Engaging High School Students in Research Through QuarkNet

QuarkNet is a national program of Education and Outreach in Particle Physics. A hallmark of QuarkNet has been research experiences in physics for nontraditional participants at Centers located in universities and national laboratories across the US and Puerto Rico. Through the first five years of program operation these participants have been high school teachers. New in the sixth program year (2004) are high school students who have received immersive research experiences at several QuarkNet Centers. This initiative will grow significantly in future years. An overview of the program operation with high school students will be provided, and examples will be presented of how research scientists such as faculty and graduate students can engage the interest and participation of high school students in physics research projects.   

Filling the Void: Speaking to the Others

A survey of subscribers to science magazines reveals that roughly 80\% of the audience is white, male, well-educated and over forty. During a 20-year career as a freelance writer, Margaret Wertheim has been developing ways to communicate about the physical sciences to non-canonical audiences. For ten years in her native Australia, she wrote columns about science and technology for women's magazines. For the Australian Broadcasting Corporation she wrote and directed a six-part television series, called Catalyst, aimed at teenage girls. Wertheim has written for almost every conceivable medium, including interactive video. In Los Angeles she writes the Quark Soup column for the LA Weekly, sister paper to the Village Voice, and is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and New York Times Science Section. She has recently established The Institute For Figuring, a maverick organization that presents lectures and exhibitions about the poetic dimensions of science and mathematics. In this talk she will discuss how to communicate with audiences who have never heard of Schr\"{o}dinger's Cat.   

From Lab to Legislation: Communicating Science to Congress

After finishing my physics PhD in 2003, I spent a year as a science policy advisor to U.S. Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts. My duties included summarizing developments and giving advice to Rep. Markey on issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to space exploration to radiological materials security. I worked with him and his staff on writing legislation, speeches, press releases, and opinion columns, and met a variety of scientists, diplomats, military officers, and government officials along the way. In this talk I will discuss some of the lessons learned by myself and the 30 other scientists sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to spend a year working in Congress. As quickly became clear, it was less our specific scientific knowledge that was valuable to the legislators we worked for, but rather our ability to communicate with both scientists and politicians, and to help make each group a little less inscrutable to the other. Although many scientists would like to ignore it, the impact of Washington policymakers on American science is enormous, and programs like the Congressional Science Fellows are vital in helping to make that impact as positive as possible.