Engaging the Public with Science

Over the course of this semester I was required to participate in 3 hours of service learning outside the class. Before this class I had participated in some community service but mostly dealing with people my age. Doing local community service helped me interact with a new age group.

My first service learning opportunity was in the atrium center helping out with the 6th graders. I was assigned to teach the students about a few different fossils. When the kids entered in I was a little unsure of how it was going to go, because I had never participated in community service with children this young. But after a few mins passed it proved to be easier then expected. The kids were fascinated with all the different rocks, and fossils they could observe. One kid even asked me if he could buy them.

Besides the fossils there was two rocks showing the difference in weight of each substances. One object was very light that I cant recall the name of and the other was 170 pound piece of granite. My Professor Marta Torran told me to have them try and lift each object to see the difference in there weight. I did not realize how strong six graders are until 17 students out of 4 groups picked up the giant piece of granite. After the first class I decided to make it into a little competition which the kids seemed to enjoy. The champions of this competition were the girls. Between all four classes 9 girls lifted the rock and only 8 boys could lift the rock.

Over Thanksgiving break I participated at Organ Lutheran Church at a Thanksgiving breakfast for the youth. This event occurred on the 25th and my day began at 7am. We made breakfast with frozen gravy, this task consisted of thawing out the biscuits and warming them in the oven as well as putting the gravy in the crock pot to thaw. Following the breakfast I helped pass out plates to kids and concluded my day with helping clean the dishes.

Overall both of these experiences were enjoyable and I had a lot of fun helping out two different communities. I also enjoyed the experience of working with different age groups. In the future I think I would like to possibly experience some service learning with the elderly to further expand my experience with different age groups.

Scientist can further help there community understand the nature of science by generically relating it to mass populations of people. By using a pathological approach scientist could explore the different elements that appeal to different groups of people. By exploiting each individuals emotions you can have a more efficient chance at promoting your view.

Helping People Understand Science

Why Its Important for People to Understand Science

Science plays a large role in are everyday lives all around us. When observing controversy regarding different topics like tobacco and vaccines, lack of knowledge can cause controversy in many different scientific studies. For example in contemporary society people are beginning to become more hesitant towards vaccinations. This could possible jeopardize herd immunity and put millions of lives at risk. This shows the importance of understanding science in our society.

How We Can Better Explain Science 

Some scientific topics can have a lot of controversy revolving around them. When observing different ways to display science to help others better understand, you should observe individuals based off there age group.



Above I have included a graph of some general ideas to help persuade the different types of audiences.
 When referring to how we can help society as a whole better understand science, we could work on promoting different scientific studies as well as disclaiming and removing false and bias discoveries contributing to the misinformation provided to the public.

Science and The Public Experience
In this course we reviewed different ways science is incorporated into contemporary society. I really enjoyed the way multitude of hand on activities that helped me better understand the different ways science is connected. This class helped me further understand the basic principles of science and its relevance in everyday life. Personally one of my favorite assignments was the painting because it allowed me to open up a more creative side that isn't usually common with science projects.

Engaging Scientist in The Public

Communication of science to the public is a necessity in this generation. Conveying the significance of science to the population of the world creates opportunities like financial funding and more for scientific research. Communication of science can also help spread awareness of an idea, getting more then one group involved on the same type of research. Both of these points illustrate how spreading the awareness of science can help further increase the rate at which we make new discoveries.



Throughout the scientist discussion there were a few main take aways that stuck with me. A point involving gender discrimination in the scientific field made by Dr. Sarah Carmichael stood out. She talked about how the guys in her grad school class always had an upper hand, and girls were sometimes taken advantage of by the professors. She also talked about how when she ran a drill crew she had a hard time gaining respect from her former colleagues. Another point that stuck out to me was made by Dr. Andy Bellemer. He quoted "none of us do our jobs for the money" this stuck out to me because it showed that all these people love what they do and actually have a passion for it. You could also tell they were extremely happy to talk about their research which helped keep someone like me who knows barely anything about earthquakes interested.

Scientist need to get there message across to public, so that the society can see the influence science has in their daily lives. Also science revolves around everything that we do, so the more people and time we have spent towards research the further we will progress the development of new scientific discoveries.  I feel that a great way for scientist to spread the awareness of their scientific research is through hands on interactions with college students. College students are the next generation of workers in this society and if you can get them involved early in their college careers it can spark new interest in the scientific field.

Bad and Good Graphs

Bad and Good Graphs : Climate Change

There are two different forms of graphs below. One has a more adequate way of presenting the information while the other seems to be very generic and hard to read. I believe graph two has a more adequate way of presenting the information and showing the affects of climate change.

Chart #1

I Believe this graph is a bad representation of climate change because of the lack of labeling. It doesn't really explain the different between the blue, green, and red lines.This graph seems to present the information in a very minimalistic way over a long period of time, making the graph more spread out and harder to read. It also doesn't represent the data far enough in depth for the last one thousand years which is where climate change has mainly came into play. Another reason this graph presents this information in a less efficient way is that it has multiple scaled which can be confusing when your trying to read. 

Chart #2

This data presents the information in a much clearer format. As you can see it has easy to read X and Y axises. It also consolidated to a shorter time period which prevent the cluster and confusion thats within graph #1. It accurately represents the increase in temperature due to modern development and the industrial revolution. 

Mountains to Mountains

Entering the theatre I did not expect the inspirational short film my eyes were about to witness. It started off with the cast introducing the story of what happened in Nepal. Before even seeing the short film, they had in store for us I was already was intrigued in the topic. They were covering an issue in the country of Nepal where the people of local communities have a hard time accessing local water. This causes a delay in the production of the economic wealth, education, and overall standard of living. They also covered how the Gorkha earthquake, and its impact of the local communities. On top of nine thousand deaths causes by this environmental tragedy, it made rebuilding infrastructure nearly impossible.

Wine to Water's main mission is to overall raise awareness and economic help to provide clean water for countries in a water crisis like Nepal, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. While other organizations focus on a broader region to help these countries in crisis, wine to water focuses on the basic foundation of life, water. In the short film it showed communities in Nepal where mothers and their kids, younger then the age of six or seven had to walk thirty to forty minutes just for water. Wine to water implemented waterway systems running off of local Environmental sources (lake or river), that made accessing clean drinking water more practical. This short film displayed how the community would come together and work on this project because of their dire need for water. I found it very inspiration and eye opening to see all the mothers working in the heat day in and day out because that’s how much accessing clean water meant to them. They also explained how they set up a payment system for the water taps that allowed for Nepalese people to manage their own water and provide upkeep for the new integrated water taps.

The second part of this film showed the growth the communities had a year after the newly imbedded water taps had been put into place. This short film explained how the taps went beyond just providing a clean drinking source, but they also provided a seed to help rebuild the economy of those regions recovering from the detrimental effects of the earthquake. The taps achieved this goal by providing more time for the people of these communities allowing them to rebuild broken down infrastructure, create a system of government, and improve the quality of living for the people.

How Science Changed My Life

Life Changing Science

When I was young I was put on antidepressants due to the tragic death of my father at age of five. Taking this medicine mixed with the poor eating habits lead to a long and strenuous journey that put me into a even more negative thought loop. What really caught my attention was when I went to a research center on a field trip for school. They were testing to see what portion of the kids were in a healthy shape, and those who fall in the obesity range like myself at the time. I hopped into the egg like compression chamber, I still remember the weird sensation caused by pressure of the chamber on my ears, close to that feeling you get when you go up a mountain or fly in a airplane. I hoped out curious to see what my results were, little did I know what I was about to here would change my life forever. They told me that I was twenty five percent body fat and that if my eating habits didn't change then I would be at risk of becoming a diabetic. This shook me I decided that I needed to get my life together before it was to late. I tried many different workout plans and diets but none of them really seemed to work for me at the time. I always seemed to give up or get tired of eating the same bland grilled chicken with no seasoning. This caused me to give up hope and loose track of my goals many times but as my weight steadily increased it finally came to a point where I was willing to do anything. I was age fifth-teen at the time and I was pushing two hundred and sixty pounds plus. I knew if that I continued onto this path it would only make the switch to a healthy lifestyle that much harder. One day I looked in the mirror and I decided from there on out there would be no more cheat meals, no more skipped days in the gym, and it truly changed my life forever. I researched for hours on end looking up different diets and exercises that would best work for my body type. Eventually after a lot of trial and error I found the diet plan for me. It was a low calorie diet with high protein mixed with a rigorous work out schedule. I worked out seven days a week and over the course of a few months I lost over a hundred pounds. Science really helped me learn how muscles work and how to properly build muscle and maintain a heathy and balanced lifestyle.