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Popular Science by Popular Scientists

StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
I keep hearing that there has been an intellectual decline, or at least a worrying trend in the scientific community for some time now and that people don't care as much about science as they used to anymore.

With the internet or the digital village came an unprecedented way for common folks to keep tabs on society's most influential scientific people.

YouTube, Twitter and all those social networks are nice tools to get to know these people up close and personal, much more so than TV ever did.

People like the late Carl Sagan paved the way for making science more appealing and fun. I sort of wished I had teachers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Michio Kuko or even Stephen Hawkins. Of course you don't need to have been taught by the top of the cream to get excited about science, but it would have made a world of difference in many people's lives if they had had more enthusiastic and more communicative teachers in their classroom. It is sad that the arts get so much more exposure when reality can be so much more exciting than phantasy.

So who is your favorite contemporary scientist or dare I say role model?

Comments

  • sinclairsinclair Ranger
    People at Sixty Symbols and Periodic Table Videos:
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    [url]http://www.periodicvideos.com/[/url]
  • ShadowDancerShadowDancer When I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie." London, UK
    I doubt folks outside of the UK will have heard of him, but over here there is quite a popular scientist, [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)"]Professor Brian Cox[/URL] who is often on the tv these days. He was a in a pop band in the 90's over here, then returned to physics when they disbanded. He's a research fellow at the Royal Society and a professor of particle physics at Manchester university, and is part of the ATLAS team at the LHC. He's also annoyingly good looking and the ladies love him :p

    Most of the shows he's done have been what I would call popular science, in that I never really learn anything new from them, however he's very engaging and has an almost childlike fascination and excitement about the universe which is contagious. He also is on a radio show here called Infinite Monkey Cage which is a mix of popular science and comedy which is quite funny. I don't know I'd you can get it outside of the UK, but here you can get it on iTunes for free and is worth a listen IMO.
  • WORFWORF The Burninator
    He also appeared on QI recently.

    [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3WHofhL1wY#t=9m13s"]Link[/URL]
  • JackNJackN <font color=#99FF99>Lightwave Alien</font>
    I don't know that people are getting turned off by science...

    Maybe people are getting turned off by the anger and hatred of both sides of the Evolution vs Creationism debate.

    Let's give that thing a rest... and get back to the cool stuff...
  • StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
    Yeah, Brian Cox is a name I've heard before and it was indeed in relation to the LHC.

    Brian May (Queen) is also familiar with the sciences. :D What is it will all the Brianses??? :D

    I guess that's because it's brain misspelled???

    Anyway...

    [QUOTE=JackN;194529]I don't know that people are getting turned off by science...

    Maybe people are getting turned off by the anger and hatred of both sides of the Evolution vs Creationism debate.

    Let's give that thing a rest... and get back to the cool stuff...[/QUOTE]

    I think a lot of the problem stems from how science is fed into the heads of students. There is no easy way (yet) to do it and there are a lot of things that are far more pleasurable to the younger minds than learning theoretical principles from books. While I do enjoy the beauty of science, I don't get all warm and fuzzy about it. I guess that's what is keeping an engineer from becoming a scientist. :D
  • croxiscroxis I am the walrus
    Most science is taught as if it was preparation for a trivia game; an assortment of facts and explanations. What science actually is I think is far more engaging and interesting and that is being able to predict the future with a bit more certainty than random chance.
  • StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
    Just watched this [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f9wcSLs8ZQ"]one hour lecture[/URL] with Brian Cox about quantum physics and it blew my mind. I didn't know how deeply we were connected with the universe. Neil Tyson always talks about star dust but it goes much deeper than that. Certainly explains why the LHC is so important right now. :)
  • ShadowDancerShadowDancer When I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie." London, UK
    Yeah I watched that the other day. He's very good at explaining and engaging with any audience. I saw him do a live lecture/comedy show and he's funny too!
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    I don't know how widespread this is (I suspect it might be very in the western world), but it seems to me that part of the problem is that the idea of "protect the children" has led to increasingly severe restrictions on what hands-on experiments children are allowed to perform. Anything even vaguely dangerous is not allowed in NZ anymore, which has turned chemistry into the textbook hour. How are kids supposed to enjoy learning about science if they can't do any themselves?
  • StingrayStingray Elite Ranger
    Call it ignorance, call it stupidity, call it what-you-want but there is still a lot of pioneer spirit in the field of liquor mixed with pyrotechnics towards the end and the beginning of each year. ;)

    As is tradition every year, emergency rooms are then filled with budding scientists who experimented with fire crackers and rockets. It's dangerous work, but someone has to do it. :D
  • Capt.MontoyaCapt.Montoya Ranger
    I'd say that Brian Greene (look Stingray, yet another Brian!) has done a great job of explaining string theory and related subjects to the general public. In addition to reading his first book (The Elegant Universe) I saw him in a talk about his second book (The Fabric of the Universe). Very good writer and speaker.

    Philip Plait has been doing a good job when it comes to astronomy related topics, via his Bad Astronomy site and a Discovery series (Bad Universe, IIRC). He's also a very outspoken skeptic. He's also quite active in Google Plus now, as another channel to popularize science.

    For some reason most famous popular scientists seem to come from Physics...

    I know of one chemist: Sir Harold Kroto (Nobel, Chemistry, 1996), who has also been doing a lot of work on explaining science to the general public. I once saw him give a talk geared to children, quite good speaker too. He's been involved in several science education efforts, I think the latest is at [url]http://www.geoset.info/[/url] (I haven't had time to really look at that site).
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