Stuff we linked to on Twitter last week

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Chris Rowan

A post by Chris RowanA post by Anne Jefferson

Up-Goer 5

Volcanoes

Earthquakes

Planets & Astronomy

Fossils

(Paleo)climate

Water

Environmental

General Geology

Student Opportunities

Interesting Miscellaney

Categories: links

Ten hundred words of science spreads like wildfire…and gets a Tumblr!

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Anne Jefferson

A post by Anne JeffersonWow. Wow. Wow. When I challenged you yesterday to explain geoscience (or any science) research using only the 1000 most common English words, I had no idea how many amazing responses I was going to get to read. It is so COOL to read about all the fascinating research that we do, distilled down to a language that anyone (even my kindergartner) can understand. And while I’ve seen some grumbles about how limiting the lexicon can be (plant is not on the list!), I think by and large the explanations being produced do not suffer for lack of those words. In many ways, I think telling people that you study little green things that lived more than “10 hundred times 10 hundred years ago” gives a sense of the enormity of geologic time time in a palpalable way than saying that you study organisms that lived more than a million years ago.

Last night, Chris and I spent our evening compiling many of the amazing responses we saw in our blog comments, our Twitter feeds, and the Storify. Today we are proud to unveil a new tumblr that collects these responses into one place, where they can be easily found and enjoyed:

http://tenhundredwordsofscience.tumblr.com/

As of right now, there are 86 entries on the Tumblr, and more entries coming in through the submit form all the time. This has spread far beyond the geosciences, with recent submissions spanning invertebrate neuroethology to solar physics. Take some time to browse the entries, and then submit your own. Share it with your colleagues, students, or friends and encourage them to explain their research or course material. Read it to your kids as a bedtime story. Have fun! Learn something new about science!

Beyond the 10 hundred words of science challenge itself, I think this is a great vehicle for getting us to be thoughtful about the way we explain our work to each other and to non-scientists. It definitely takes more thought to distill a complex topic down to a jargon-free explanation of the core principles and why they are exciting. And sometimes it takes more words. But, in the end, if it helps people to understand what science is all about, then that effort and those carefully chosen words are totally worthwhile.

P.S. This wouldn’t have been possible without the inspiration from XKCD and the implementation to Theo Sanderson who created the easy and engaging Up-Goer 5 text editor. Thank you both so much.

Categories: public science

Explaining geoscience using only the 10 hundred most common words

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Anne Jefferson

A post by Anne JeffersonIt’s the beginning a new semester, and Chris and I have both been spending a lot of time thinking about how to distill our scientific specialties down to the appropriate level for undergraduate geology students. Starting the semester with a board filled with fluid mechanics equations is probably not the right way for me to convince my students that urban hydrology is an important and exciting discipline and worthy of their time and attention. But my audience as a scientist and professor is far more than those 28 majors sitting in a classroom; I want to be able to convince anyone and everyone that the way water moves through cities is an important topic. So I was intellectually primed for the challenge that floated past my Twitter screen yesterday afternoon.

Inspired by Randall Munroe’s amazing description of a rocketship on XKCD using only the 1000 (10 hundred) most common words in English, someone else coded a text editor that challenges you to describe a complex topic using only the 1000 word list. If you use a word not on the approved list, it tells you you’ve gone wrong “Uh oh! You’ve used a non-permitted word” and what it is. (For example, DESCRIBE, COMPLEX, TOPIC, LIST, APPROVED, LIST, UH, NON, PERMITTED are all non-permitted words the editor flags.) So I decided to see if I could explain urban hydrology and why I study it using only the words in the list. Here’s what I came up with:

I study how water moves in cities and other places. Water is under the ground and on top of it, and when we build things we change where it can go and how fast it gets there. This can lead to problems like wet and broken roads and houses. Our roads, houses, and animals, can also add bad things to the water. My job is to figure out what we have done to the water and how to help make it better. I also help people learn how to care about water and land. This might seem like a sad job, because often the water is very bad and we are not going to make things perfect, but I like knowing that I’m helping make things better.

Science, teach, observe, measure, buildings, and any synonym for waste/feces were among the words I had to write my way around. If I hadn’t had access to “water”, I might have given up in despair.

But my challenge was nothing compared to that faced by Chris, as he explained paleomagnetism without the word magnet:

I study what rocks tell us about how the ground moves and changes over many, many (more than a hundred times a hundred times a hundred) years. I can do this because little bits hidden inside a rock can remember where they were when they formed, and can give us their memories if we ask them in the right way. From these memories we can tell how far and how fast the rocks have moved, and if they have been turned around, in the time since they were made. It is important to know the stories of the past that rocks tell, because it is only by understanding that story that we really understand the place where we live, how to find the things that we need to live there, and how it might change in the years to come. We also need to know these things so we can find the places where the ground can move or shake very fast, which can be very bad for us and our homes.

I think it’s brilliant. Chris’s comment was “Good thing rock was one of them [the approved words].” Following our tweets, several other geoscientists took up the challenge.

I’d like to issue a challenge to the geoscience community (and the broader scientific community). Go to the Up Goer 5 text editor and explain your research or discipline in the 10 hundred most common words. Then drop a link in the comments or tweet it at Chris or I. We’ll  update the list this evening, and I’m sure we’ll all learn a tremendous amount in the process. Not just about science, but also about the how to communicate our cool stuff in clear accessible ways. Have fun!

Update: We have seen so many wonderful answers to this challenge that we decided they need to be properly preserved for electronic posterity. Check out Ten Hundred Words of Science on Tumblr, where we’ve posted all the responses we were made aware of. Not there? It’s possible to submit your own entries right in the sidebar.

Categories: academic life, public science, science education

Re-reflection seismology: an interview with Dana Hunter

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Chris Rowan

Many moons ago, I was pleased to discover that one of my posts had been selected for inclusion in the latest iteration of the OpenLab anthology of online science writing. Also included from the Geoblogosphere was one of its most prolific and exciting voices of recent years: Dana Hunter, who now flies the Earth Science flag over at the Scientific American blog network, and whose piece describing the process of falling in scientific love with geology really resonated with me. I am, I admit, a bit of a fan.

OpenLab is now out, and in order to promote it we decided we might conduct a mutual interview of each other about our pieces, our lives and our love of geology. Dana’s interview of me was published some time ago, but time and jobs and moving and conferences and Christmas all got in the way of me returning the favour. But believe me, it’s well worth the wait: Dana’s enthusiasm for things geological is rather cheeringly infectious.

Dana. She likes rocks.

Chris: One of the fascinating things about your account of getting bitten by the geology bug – and one of the reasons your essay is, well, adored – is how similar it is to my story, and the stories of many academic and professional geologists. The only significant difference is your starting point as someone who left science education behind early, whereas we are usually refugees from other scientific fields. Do you think that, in another life, you could have ended up as a scientist? In some nearby alternate reality, is there a hammer-wielding Dana who runs her own lab?

Dana: Yes, absolutely. And I envy her. Well, on nice days, anyway. During nasty weather, I’m usually pleased I stuck with writing, although I’ve begun to rethink that aversion just lately.

I wanted to be an astronomer, once. I suppose that qualifies me as a something of a fellow refugee!

Chris: Well, we have that in common, then, since my original scientific ambitions lay with astronomy too. On a related note, it sounds like it was more your interest in literature and the humanities that led you to dropping science, rather than an uninspiring syllabus or boring teachers. Is that right?

Dana: Honestly, I didn’t think I had the brain for science. My math education got derailed in middle school, and never got back on the rails, and I thought that meant I wasn’t a science sort of person. I didn’t know that there were fields where the math wasn’t quite as difficult. And by the time I hit chemistry in high school and discovered I could, in fact, do the math, it was too late – I’d decided to become a speculative fiction writer, and all of my thought was bent on that. Then PZ started me on writing about science, and then the geo bug bit me, and the geobloggers adopted me, and now I find I’ve dropped the fiction from science fiction. Some days, I even eye the possibility of getting a degree and changing my title from science writer to geologist – but right now, I’m loving what I do.

One thing I wish my teachers had done: told us just how varied the careers in science are, and that creative people can be scientists, too! That might have changed everything from the beginning.

Chris: Especially since it’s the creative scientists – the ones who are willing to push the boundaries of current thinking and dream up new experiments and techniques – who are the most successful of all of us.

In the past few months you have written a fabulous series of in-depth posts on the Mt St. Helens eruption. What makes this event so interesting for you?

Dana: St. Helens was my first introduction to what volcanoes can do, and it was unbelievably dramatic. I got Marian T. Place’s book on the eruption a few years later, and learned a huge amount of geology – I re-read it when I started this series and was surprised by how much complex volcanology she introduced her young readers to. Well, that stuck. And the people she wrote about, like Dave Johnston and Reid Blackburn and David Crockett, they stuck. I’d look at the stratovolcano in my back yard and think of St. Helens. I got jewellery made from her ash. Every time she came up, something new and unexpected revealed itself.

She was in eruption when I finally met her. I looked into her steaming crater, and a lifelong fascination pretty much became an obsession. I wanted to know absolutely everything about her. That turns out to be much more than I expected! And we haven’t even gotten to the 2004-2007 eruption yet, which is a series of papers at least as in-depth as the ones I’m working through now.

Just like the Grand Canyon taught me about deep time, Mount St. Helens taught me about the power of mother nature to create and destroy, sometimes in an instant, sometimes more slowly than we can imagine. And people adore her. That makes her an excellent ambassador for the earth sciences.

Chris: As well as stratovolcanoes, you’re clearly fascinated by subduction zones, partly as a result of now living on top of one. Are there any other aspects of Earth Science that particularly fascinate you?

Dana: It depends on which shiny new paper I’ve got my hands on this week. Seriously, just about anything to do with geology captures my imagination. I’ve done (and will return to) caves and karst landscapes – karst has been one of my favorites since learning about it in college. Tafoni weathering fascinates me because we know so little – if I ever go for my degree, I might just do my thesis on it. I’m dying to know more about earthquakes, because my ignorance regarding them is a great gaping hole begging to be filled. I love glaciers and ice sheets and the bizarre things they do to landscapes. Your coblogger, Anne, has gotten me in to hydrogeology – I just downloaded a paper about ancient Chinese hydrogeology and plan to do a write-up for her (shh, don’t tell her!). Geology on other planets and asteroids, and bits of said exo-geology falling to earth and creating features here, is captivating. Basically, if it’s earth science, I’m interested. I want to know how worlds work, from silt to solar systems.

Chris: a kid in a scientific candy shop then, just like the rest of us! Nonetheless, you have a fairly unique perspective on geoblogging and other attempts to engage with the public using online and social media tools. Are there any areas/subjects where you feel the community should perhaps focus more effort, either because they are explained badly, or because they are very poorly known and understood?

Dana: Earthquakes, for one – people come up to me all the time with misconceptions about earthquakes. I love what you do, because you explain so clearly what we know and what we don’t, how earthquakes work, and I think we need more of that. Especially in light of what happened in Italy.

I think we need to make people more aware of how they’re surrounded by geology, and how it’s incorporated into their daily lives. People don’t realize geology has anything to do with their smartphones – but those rare earth elements have to be mined, and mining is geology. Hazards are geology. Beautiful recreation areas – geology. Evolution – geology. Our survival and our civilizations depend on geology. Geology has so much to do with just about everything, yet people are so busy staring at physics or biology that they forget geology exists, and it matters, and they need to be aware of it. Especially here in Seattle, I see the consequences daily of people not understanding geology. Because they don’t, they end up building their houses on bluffs underlain by the Lawton Clay, and then become mightily surprised when the stuff on top of the Lawton Clay slides off during periods of particularly heavy precipitation, taking their beautiful houses with it. Yet geologists knew all along it was bound to happen.

There’s beauty, and there’s utility, and I’d like to see people become much more aware of both while having pernicious myths busted. The only way that’s going to happen is if we’re loud and proud and persistent. Snark, humor, and a heaping helping of sheer awe help. So does letting people know about the beer. I have discovered a sudden increase of interest in our field every time I mention the beer…

Chris: Well, beer is important. Understanding about earthquakes is important too, and I’m hoping to be a bit more regular with the earthquake blogging, particularly Friday Focal Mechanisms, this year. Your passion for rocks shines out of that last answer: do you think that your growing knowledge of geoscience has started to infect your daily life? Symptoms include: spending more time looking at the ground than the view when in the mountains, being an extremely dangerous driver near roadcuts, and having to move rocks around to access your bookshelves. Sadly, there’s no known cure…

Dana: I knew it was a systemic infection when I, a certified bibliophile, started sacrificing books in order to create shelf space for rocks. I will drive miles to loop back to a particularly good road cut, and have only just prevented myself from parking behind construction vehicles and marching up to demand a look at cuts in progress. When I look at vistas, it’s only to get the context of the stuff under my feet. One of my coworkers spent an afternoon sending me lovely landscape photos, and I was too busy identifying the geology in them (and finding it outstanding good fun to be able to identify so many places by their geology alone) to comment on their value as vacation spots. Many of my dreams involve field trips. I itch to correct fantasy maps, and figure out if they may have a plausible plate tectonic history. The first thing I see in pictures is rocks, even if they’re off to the side and out of focus. I miss major plot points in movies because I’m busy trying to unravel the geology in the scene. It has gotten so bad that I see geologic features in my Greek yogurt.

And I don’t ever want there to be a cure. I love this disease.

Chris: Let’s set out to infect more people, then! Thanks Dana.

The OpenLab anthology. It’s really very good.

Categories: bloggery, geology, public science

Stuff we linked to on Twitter last fortnight

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Chris Rowan

A post by Chris RowanA post by Anne JeffersonIt’s been a slightly slow start to the new year here on Highly Allochthonous, as your intrepid bloggers have spent most of their time either travelling or preparing for a new semester of teaching (and, much of the time, both). Things will hopefully pick up soon: in the meantime, we have an bumper crop of interesting stuff to read that we’ve discovered elsewhere on the internet.

Volcanoes

Earthquakes

Planets

(Paleo)climate

Water

Geomorphology

Environmental

General Geology

Academia

Interesting Miscellaney

Categories: links