What Is the Last Word of the Learning Goals Box for Chapter 32 in Mcat Biology Review

"Most people, almost of the time, larn almost of what they know outside the classroom."

—George Tressel (quoted by David Ucko)

When most people think of learning almost science, a classroom or laboratory setting comes to mind, students existence taught past teachers co-ordinate to a set curriculum and post-obit a textbook. They motion-picture show a formal educational environment. Even so, children and adults actually larn well-nigh scientific discipline continuously, through a variety of ways and settings such as visiting museums, watching television receiver, or exploring outdoors, by what is called breezy didactics. In this opening session of the workshop, three speakers offered introductory remarks about informal education and constructive communication of scientific content. Kirsten Ellenbogen from the Science Museum of Minnesota provided an overview of breezy education, David Ucko of the National Science Foundation talked nearly the connection between chemical science and informal education, and filmmaker Stephen Lyons discussed the changing function of video and films in communicating chemistry. In addition, the speakers specifically addressed the challenges and opportunities for communicating chemistry content to public audiences in breezy learning environments.

SURROUNDED Past Science

Kirsten Ellenbogen started the morn off by immersing the group in the volume from the National Research Quango (NRC) Learning Science in Breezy Environments (LSIE)¹ and its companion volume Surrounded by Scientific discipline (Figure 2-1).^two Ellenbogen discussed the principal conclusions and research underlying the reports, the ways in which the field of informal education is starting to apply the reports, and the relevance of informal education to chemistry.

FIGURE 2-ane

Cover images of recent National Research Quango reports on informal educational activity. SOURCE: Philip Bong, Bruce Lewenstein, Andrew W. Shouse, and Michael A. Feder, Editors, Committee on Learning Science in Informal Environments, National Inquiry Council. (more than...)

Lifelong, Life-Wide, Life-Deep Learning

Ellenbogen explained that i premise of the report is that learning is lifelong, life wide, and life deep, encompassing formal and informal education.^three Figure two-ii illustrates this indicate, showing the significant pct of time in a person's life that is spent in informal versus formal teaching. The blueish area, referred to every bit the "sea of blue" throughout this workshop, represents the fourth dimension spent in informal educational environments; the black area represents the fourth dimension spent in formal education.

Figure 2-2

Map of human learning, which shows that people spend the majority of their fourth dimension from infancy to adulthood in informal learning settings. SOURCE: The LIFE Centre (The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Centre), Academy of Washington, Stanford (more...)

Ellenbogen said that one exciting conclusion of the LSIE report was that many opportunities exist to fill the unused educational time and provide an interconnected network of breezy learning environments. "At that place is abundant evidence of learning in everyday environments. . . . That includes settings like museums, experiences like watching a boob tube show."

Strands of Learning

Ellenbogen explained how the LSIE report emphasizes six strands of learning (Box two-1). She emphasized that the concept of calling the aspects of science learning "strands" is not unique to this report; information technology has been used in another NRC reports. The strand concept reinforces the thought that these aspects of learning are not individual elements that stand alone in informal pedagogy experiences. "These are literally strands or threads that are interwoven throughout many of the experiences. . . . In many instances, it is almost impossible to separate out ane office of the experience from another part of the experience, to identify which moment in the learning experience relates to which aspect of the learning strand." Learning is not just near content; it is also well-nigh the processes of science.

BOX 2-one

Strands of Science Learning. Learners in Informal Environments Strand 1: Experience excitement, interest, and motivation to acquire most phenomena in the natural and concrete world.

Another point made by Ellenbogen is that strands 2 through 5 are too in the book Taking Science to School, which focuses on K-8 learning in schoolhouse environments. "This was an important part of the LSIE report that was able to testify skilful evidence that there is a stiff overlap between what happens in our formal learning environments and what happens in informal learning experiences," she said.

The departure betwixt the two reports is the inclusion of strand one, excitement and motivation, and strand half-dozen, identity evolution, as office of informal pedagogy. "It is non to say that [strands one and 6] don't happen in school environments, but they are such a disquisitional and stiff part of what happens in informal learning experiences, we pulled them out into their own strands."

Ellenbogen showed many examples of breezy learning from her museum. She emphasized that she only provided a few examples, and in that location are thousands of research publications and evaluation reports referenced in the LSIE volume. At the same time, she noted that i of the interesting things to come up out of the study is at that place is still a bang-up deal unknown, despite the rich body of research and evaluation in informal scientific discipline education, She said there is a lot to be learned nigh effectiveness of different media formats and how they lead to good determination making in people's everyday life.

One issue in particular she mentioned is a lack of longitudinal studies on informal learning—"of following a learner through school experiences and abode experiences and museum experiences and looking at those over fourth dimension, and the connections between conversations in the home and how they related to conversations back in the museum." It is still difficult to obtain the larger longitudinal view needed to connect an informal educational experience with the touch it may have on how an individual uses science or pursues a career in scientific discipline, technology, engineering, or mathematics (Stalk).

In addition, she said, "nosotros know very petty most the cumulative effects. People talk most informal learning experiences beingness these very particular moments in time [to which] we as complex humans tin can attach various experiences throughout our life, drawing back many times on information or experiences from decades ago in a very meaningful way. David Anderson at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver has some neat examples of this and interviews that he has done with people about their World'south Off-white experience, decades and decades later on they went to the Globe'due south Fair."

Ellenbogen ended by mentioning that there are a number of commissioned papers bachelor, in addition to the LSIE and Surrounded past Science reports, from the National Academies Lath on Science Education.^four

Questions & Answers

Reflective Experiences

A workshop participant asked if at that place is a manner to design an "ah-ha" moment into the learning surround for children or adults: "For many of u.s.a. every bit professional scientists, this is the moment that we treasure, when something finally clicks and you integrate a lot of observations."

Ellenbogen said that such moments are connected to the cogitating needs of the learning experience. She said there is non much testify in the literature of reflective experiences being integrated consistently into the design of learning environments. However, museums are at present incorporating them into exhibits.

For instance, the Science Museum of Minnesota is developing "tinkering spaces" or applied science labs "that give learners real questions to grapple with, issues that we don't exactly have clear answers on." Ellenbogen said the exhibit is set up equally a reflective experience that has focused rings of participation. "On the outer ring it asks some very bones questions and engages you in some exploration of phenomena, only as you motion in and go into an surface area that has to exist facilitated by staff, there are bodily fabrication tools that let you lot to try to design and build something that responds to the question or issue at manus."

Ellenbogen stated that different media sources are too trying to introduce this type of experience, such as in tv set or radio segments where they ask questions designed to cause a reflective conversation among the social group who may be watching the video or listening to that radio testify. "Information technology is something that is actually underutilized in an informal learning experience."

Science Identity

Beak Carroll asked how children come to identify with being a scientist. He mentioned how some kids seem to await at science and say, "I just don't think I can do that."

Ellenbogen mentioned the LSIE report has evidence and commentary on this in a diverseness of chapters. "If you want to await at the lifetime of the learner, it starts in the conversations and research on adult-kid interactions in homes, in family unit units, and the notion that very early on, conversations position science as something we do or something that we like."

There have been some insights from interviews with well-known scientists nigh early determinative experiences. For example, many scientists retrieve existence collectors in childhood. However, collecting rocks or other items can exist messy, and information technology takes a lot of time, which is something that is encouraged in some homes but not in others. At the aforementioned time, there is footling evidence of exactly how those early formative experiences link to a Stem career or developing an identity as someone who does science. She said that this is an area for gathering better longitudinal data.

Ellenbogen spoke of Robert Tai, at the Academy of Virginia, who has explored the topic of scientists and their determinative experiences. She recommended that participants come across Tai'south paper titled "Eyeballs in the Fridge"^v in which Tai discusses very distinct gender differences in what adults in STEM careers point to as a formative moment of "here is what I did as a teenager or youth that pushed me or encouraged me to get into this every bit a career." The experiences for girls in item were more about a moment in time that had a particularly affective element to them.

Zero to Five

A question was asked about the blazon of learning that happens during zilch to 5 years former (just a white spot on Effigy 2-2). Ellenbogen explained that there is "a meaning gap in the science that we know about the development of children at those ages, and what we do equally a society to back up learners . . . xc percent of brain development occurs in those years from nativity to 5." At the same time, "if you await at the style nosotros support citizens in our society, there is nearly no support, or a negligible amount of support for educating zero to 5-twelvemonth-olds in a way that works with what we know about encephalon development in those years." Co-ordinate to Ellenbogen, formal schooling for kindergarten and up is typically fabricated smaller or cuter or simpler for those nether v. Encephalon development enquiry indicates this is not how to develop a practiced learning experience for a zilch to 5-year-old. Ellenbogen suggested reading the "Everyday Science" chapter of the LSIE report for more than information on education needs of zero to 5-year-olds.

Jeannette Brown commented most early experiences in science. She mentioned that the Chemical Heritage Foundation is collecting video oral histories of women in science, and Brown is also collecting oral histories of African-American women in science. Some other resource for oral histories of African-American scientists is the Science Makers,⁶ bachelor on the History Makers website^vii (based in Chicago).

Lifelong, Life-Wide, and Life-Deep Learning

Ellenbogen was asked to clarify the distinction between lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep learning and how each needs to be congenital into effective informal learning projects. She responded that lifelong learning is the most straightforward concept; "from nascence to death, you are a learner, and you get through experiences every day that shape the person y'all are and the way you alive your life and the kind of decisions you make. The life-broad says you accept to jump into that ocean of blue and look at what the breezy learning experiences are, and then what is the width of experiences in addition to the length of it. . . . Life-deep learning is something that is emphasized to assist people look more in depth at the kind of earth view, the kind of values that shape what people believe. Information technology is a very underresearched area of learning."

The participant then asked, "How exercise you keep those three ideas in mind when you lot design something, a learning experience for the museum?"

Ellenbogen explained that museums sometimes do "front end-end studies" to discover out what the experiences and views of museum visitors are. She stated that "you will meet in the Learning Scientific discipline and Breezy Environments text that previous experiences are one of the nearly influential aspects of what people do and feel when they are in any sort of designed environment. You tin design all y'all want, and everyone walks in with a lot of baggage and things that shape the way they come across and interpret and experience anything you lot have designed. The aforementioned thing goes for when you look at how multiple people view the same media program."

As an instance, Ellenbogen discussed how the Science Museum of Minnesota duplicated a report called the "6 Americas"^eight that looked at national views on climate alter. The Vi Americas study found that there is a wide range of noesis and behavior almost climatic change, ranging from enthusiastically supporting and accepting the science of climatic change to atheism and rejection. In the center in that location is "a disaffected category of, I only don't intendance about this science stuff."

The museum found that few visitors who took the survey were in the disaffected category, which was lower than the national average in the Six Americas study. It was an expected consequence though since museums typically attract the science attentive. However, the museum was surprised to find that about 26 pct of visitors surveyed said they do non believe in or accept the science of climatic change, which was about the aforementioned as the national average.

Research on environmental pedagogy shows that values affect a museum visitor's ability to look at the scientific data presented. The Scientific discipline Museum of Minnesota is looking at how to shift from influencing to informing. Ellenbogen said many informal learning environments are specifically designed to influence someone's views or ideas near scientific discipline. The Science Museum of Minnesota is grappling with the issue of how to inform people with the kind of scientific discipline experiences and knowledge that they need and aid them understand the ways to make decisions about science in their everyday life.

Part Modeling

A participant asked whether there is inquiry on the importance of office models in learning, such every bit young college women or teenagers leading Daughter Scout events, which seem to be very effective in engaging the younger children.

Ellenbogen said the Girl Scouts have practiced enquiry on this—some is cited in the LSIE report. "The interesting affair is that the modeling happens throughout the lifetime. . . . It is one of the most interesting areas that need to exist studied across lifelong and life-broad learning. You have and so many different kinds of people in your life who model science experiences. You accept everything from the kinds of influences you see modeled in television or other sorts of media environments or in books. You also have modeling that happens in the adult-child relationships. There is a pregnant amount of peer modeling that goes on." Ellenbogen mentioned that Dirk vom Lehn at King'southward College, London, "has some really peachy studies of looking at the modeling impact of strangers in designed learning environments."^nine

INFORMAL CHEMISTRY

David Ucko provided some background on the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Enquiry and Learning (DRL), which focuses on improving learning and teaching across all ages and all settings, and funds enquiry and development (R&D) grants at about $250 meg a year. DRL has four programs, including one focused on informal science educational activity, and is the primary program within the Directorate of Education and Man Resource at NSF that funds furthering public agreement of science and enhancing public science literacy.

Ucko reiterated the point made by Kirsten Ellenbogen—that formal education is critical, "just it simply takes up a pocket-sized portion of ane's life." He provided a quote from one of his predecessors at NSF, George Tressel: "Most people, nigh of the time, learn most of what they know outside the classroom."

Informal learning goes by many other names. Some people phone call information technology free-choice learning, experiential learning, or recreational learning. Ucko described informal learning equally a pull miracle, equally opposed to a push phenomenon, because information technology is driven past the interests of the learner, at a particular fourth dimension. "Information technology is a voluntary activity," he said.

Ucko illustrated the appeal of breezy learning with a quote from Frank Oppenheimer, the creator of the Exploratorium: "No i ever flunks a museum or a television program or a library or a park." Ucko spoke of the growth of the field of breezy education, which began in the 1970s when the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) was created. ASTC was founded by 16 members in 1971, and today in that location are 583 fellow member organizations in 45 countries around the world.

Ucko started in this field nigh 30 years agone at the Museum of Scientific discipline and Industry, afterwards teaching at Antioch College. His first professional conference, an ASTC conference, had about fifty people in information technology. Today those conferences at present have almost i,500 people, giving another sense of the growth of the field in the last 30 years.

Landscape of Informal Education

Ucko discussed the mural of informal education, illustrated by John Falk and others in Figure ii-3. It shows many of the communities and organizations that exist within informal learning, across two dimensions: ane promoting Stem understanding and the other practicing informal education. Some groups do more of one than the other, and some sit correct at the intersection where pedagogy is loftier in both informal learning and STEM agreement. This appears on the diagram in the corner at the left on the lesser and consists of science museums, natural history museums, zoos, and aquariums. Over the years, NSF has funded all of these organizations and communities to varying degrees to improve the field of informal science teaching. Ucko discussed some of these approaches to informal pedagogy inside the context of chemical science in further detail.

FIGURE 2-3

Informal Stem mural. SOURCE: J.H. Falk, South. Randol, and L.D. Dierking. 2008. The Informal Science Education Landscape: A Preliminary Investigation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Advancement of Breezy Science Education. Bachelor online at caise.insci.org/uploads/docs/2008_CAISE_Landscape_Study_Report.pdf (more...)

Modes of Informal Education and Chemistry

Ucko talked in detail about different types of exhibits equally a mode of informal education. These include permanent exhibits that stay at a science museum, typically for 5 to 10 years, then are renewed and replaced; traveling exhibits that stay at a museum for near iii months and so are shipped to another museum for some other three months; and mobile exhibits that travel the state in vans, buses, or other vehicles. Ucko noted that chemistry is non highly represented in most exhibits. However, he was able to provide several examples of NSF-funded exhibits. One example, "Chemical science of Life," was an showroom at the New York Hall of Science, which still exists and is at present called Marvelous Molecules.¹⁰

Ucko developed an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in the mid-1980s, in collaboration with Bassam Shakhashiri and Rodney Shriner at the Academy of Wisconsin,^xi that was based on basic principles of chemistry when applied to everyday life. One case of the many interactive experiments at the exhibit is the electrolysis of water, which "never failed to startle visitors beyond the hall of the museum when the hydrogen that was formed ignited with spark and created a lot of dissonance."

One of the challenges Ucko spoke of in trying to present chemical science in an exhibit is conceptual. "It is hard to get people to go from the macro, from what they can run into visibly, to the micro." Ucko thinks there are also perception problems; chemistry and the give-and-take "chemical" are often equated with toxicity.¹² There are as well turf issues: "Things similar forensics may be of involvement to people, only they may not associate it with chemistry. Aforementioned with biochemistry; it might be more linked with biology than with chemistry—and certainly with nanotechnology there is a similar kind of thing going on today." There are too many technical aspects to creating chemistry in these environments. "You need to prepare, y'all need to go rid of waste material, y'all need to have storage and disposal and maintain things. You accept got safety and liability issues, toll and training for the people that are involved in doing this."

Although informal education is condign increasingly Cyberspace based, he said that Tv, radio, and behemothic-screen films are nevertheless important means for reaching people. Two examples of chemistry film projects that NSF has funded recently (both are discussed in detail by Steve Lyons later in this chapter) are:

1. "Lives in Scientific discipline," in 1999, a grant to WBGH Boston for the NOVA program on Percy Julian, and

2. The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements, in 2009.

Ucko said that grants for learning technologies (e.g., games) and digital and online media are the fastest-growing slice of the NSF funding portfolio. "Nosotros at present run into aspects of what we call cyber learning in almost every projection that nosotros fund." Other areas of informal learning include youth and customs programs, which allow time for more intensive personalized learning, unlike an showroom or digital media setting. Subsequently-school programs are probably the most common, but there are also many other targeted kinds of programs.

Also mentioned by Ucko is citizen science, or public participation in science, where the public is involved in making observations, collecting data, and even designing experiments in the real world. This idea started with public participation in bird observations at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in the 1990s.

NSF funds Communicating Research to Public Audiences awards through the Informal Science Educational activity Plan. This program allows principal investigators to use function of their research grants to create public learning activities. One example from an NSF Chemistry Division (CHE) funded inquiry grant involved a hands-on activity based on flavonoid establish pigments. He besides mentioned that inside CHE, broader impacts are required as a review benchmark, so many of the research grants have some kind of public activity associated with them also.

In addition to these kinds of publicly oriented activities, NSF has also tried to accelerate the field direct through professional development in a variety of ways, such every bit research and working on infrastructure and capacity edifice.

Project Evaluation

NSF evaluations of the programs information technology funds are a critical part of the procedure. Ucko referenced Kirsten Ellenbogen'south talk most front-end evaluation. This evaluation is done at the beginning of a projection considering of the need to sympathize who the audition is, what its members are interested in, what they know already, and how to engage them in a particular bailiwick.

He said that while developing a project—when it is still relatively easy to brand changes in the project design—it is of import to practice formative evaluation, which involves airplane pilot testing, creating prototypes, et cetera. After pilot testing, in that location is remedial evaluation, which looks at how all of the components of an exhibition piece of work together as a whole and helps place issues in the project that may need to be contradistinct. NSF requires a summative evaluation, which determines whether the projection has accomplished the impact originally intended. These summations must exist posted to a website called Informalscience.org, which currently has about 200 examples of summative evaluations for NSF-funded projects.

To help people learn more about these summative evaluations, NSF funded a workshop and published a report chosen The Framework for Evaluating Impacts of Informal Science Evaluation.^xiii NSF created categories to characterize the impacts of breezy instruction projects, including awareness, cognition and understanding, appointment, attitude, and beliefs skills.

Ucko as well highlighted key aspects of the LSIE report and its importance to the didactics community, as listed beneath:

1. Broaden the definition of learning. Typically learning is defined as what happens at school. By calculation items 1 and half dozen (see Box 2-1) to the strands of learning, it "extended the definition of learning beyond the cerebral, to talk near interest and motivation and to talk near identity formation."

2. Provide a foundation for future enquiry. The LSIE study is a synthesis of what has been washed in inquiry and evaluation across informal learning, drawn from many sub-disciplines. By making this work known and by making recommendations, information technology provides a foundation for future research and expansion of the data.

3. Provide a guide for practitioners. It is a way for them to take what has been learned well-nigh the research in informal learning and apply information technology to their everyday work.

Ucko described the Nanoscale Informal Science Instruction (NISE) Network.¹⁴ Now in its 5th twelvemonth, information technology is the largest project that NSF has funded in recent years and is a $20 million 5-year effort. It is led by the Museum of Science in Boston, and includes the Scientific discipline Museum of Minnesota, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and many others. NISE brings together scientific discipline museums around the country with nanoscience and applied science researchers, to develop exhibit elements, programs, public forums, and a diversity of products designed to increase public sensation and agreement of nanoscience and technology. Everything is being developed as open source materials, so they can be shared freely and to avoid duplication.

Another NSF effort to fund informal learning is the Centre for Advancement of Breezy Science Teaching, CAISE.¹⁵ It is designed to serve the field overall and to help create a community of practitioners across those different dimensions of informal learning discussed earlier in the landscape report. Ucko believes that these activities are helping the field of informal scientific discipline education to reach greater recognition of its impact and public engagement, for example:

• Nature had an editorial recently chosen "Learning in the Wild" near the impact of breezy science instruction.

• Professional organizations such as the National Science Teachers Clan have an informal science twenty-four hours as a role of their activities every year.

• Private foundations such as the Noyce Foundation are increasingly funding breezy learning.

• There was recently a Business firm subcommittee hearing on Beyond the Classroom: Breezy STEM Education.

• NSF recently held an Informal Science Instruction summit that brought together 450 people from across the field.

Ucko provided a few suggestions for how chemists tin take advantage of breezy didactics resources and opportunities:

1. Start with the learner, not with the contact. First with what is going to engage the learner; or the "claw." He highlighted the work of Matt Nisbet at American University,¹⁶ who has written well-nigh framing, which takes into business relationship the audience'south values, knowledge, and attitude when ane tries to engage the public.

2. Create learning experiences that are engaging. Studies from Robert Tai and others show that many scientists knew they wanted to exist scientists by ages 12 to 14, so it is important to engage children early on. However, Ucko cautioned that it is of import that these efforts be done in ways that are not overly promotion oriented.

3. Build on the research and practice. Ucko encouraged participants to build on the NRC LSIE study and to remember about the lifelong learning ecology and the web of experiences that bridge settings and time. He believes creating a network of people interested in informal learning virtually chemistry would help leverage the existing infrastructure and resources.

4. Research and evaluate efforts. Ucko believes that standing inquiry and evaluation of projects related to informal learning are the only ways to add together to the knowledge base and keep support for informal pedagogy.

Questions and Answers

Chemistry in Museums

A participant noted that in addition to the list of museum chemistry exhibits that Ucko mentioned having, the Museum of Natural History has ane chosen Scientific discipline in American Life that is sponsored by the American Chemical Lodge. The exhibit too has a room of easily-on activities geared toward young kids.

Mark Cardillo mentioned that the Dreyfus Foundation has a seed program that supports museum exhibits in chemistry. He noted that many of the exhibits mentioned past Ucko and others were initiated with a seed grant.

NISE Network

Participant Dr. Rosenberg asked Ucko about the effectiveness of the NISE Network in incorporating chemistry.

Ucko believes it has been effective and has grown substantially. For example, nigh 200 science museums effectually the country have an event each twelvemonth called Nano Days. The NISE Network creates constructive kinds of learning experiences past bringing museums together and linking them to researchers and could exist a useful model for other organizations.

Ellenbogen noted that in that location would be a report¹⁷ bachelor September 30, 2010, that summarizes the chemistry experiences in NISE programs and exhibits.

NSF Broader Impacts

Another participant commented that NSF broader impacts grants seem like a skilful opportunity for collaboration among chemists and informal science educators, considering the recipients of these grants are chemic researchers, who "don't really know that much virtually how to attain out to the public. Yet at that place is this whole population of people who do simply that, and they are not connected to each other."

Ucko said NSF encourages chemistry primary investigators (PIs) to interact with people from the informal science didactics communities in accelerate. Unfortunately, he has heard that PIs will often ask for a letter of the alphabet of support from a museum or instruction practiced the twenty-four hour period before the proposal is due to NSF, which does not lead to effective collaboration.

Opportunities for Chemistry in Informal Education

Ellenbogen asked Ucko to speak virtually the compelling areas of chemistry that might do good from or be well suited to informal scientific discipline education. Ucko warned against starting from chemistry and suggested instead planning an informal education activity based on real-world topics that typically interest people, such as environment, food, or wellness, and and so address the chemical aspect. The topics tin can be identified from front-stop testing (as mentioned earlier by Ellenbogen) or by surveying the intended audience before planning an action.

Marker Cardillo mentioned 2 new Dreyfus-funded chemistry exhibits, one at the Science Museum in Boston (Effigy two-4)¹⁸ and ane at the Museum of Science and Manufacture in Chicago.¹⁹ The Museum of Science and Manufacture in Chicago in particular has developed a new and exciting multimillion-dollar Scientific discipline Hall.

Figure 2-4

Dreyfus Foundation-funded energy exhibit at the Museum of Scientific discipline, Boston. SOURCE: 2010. Printed with permission, MJ Morse, Museum of Science, Boston.

Chemistry, THE NEGLECTED SCIENCE

Stephen Lyons explained that his involvement in science communication stems from producing the program Forgotten Genius (mentioned before past David Ucko), a 2-hr biography of the African-American chemist Percy Julian (Figure 2-5), which aired on the PBS NOVA program three years ago.²⁰ He explained that "Julian's scientific career involved a lot of pretty astonishing chemistry, including his landmark synthesis of a glaucoma drug called physostigmine, and his pioneering work trying to make cortisone and other steroids available to people at reasonable prices. On the forcefulness of this work, Julian was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was the first black chemist elected to the Academies."

FIGURE 2-five

Chemist Percy Julian, winner of the Spingarn Medal in 1947. SOURCE: Percy L. Julian, Scurlock Studio Records, Athenaeum Middle, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Lyons described how he came away from the project with 2 lessons near communicating chemistry topics. "Lesson number one was that chemistry tin can make interesting television set." Equally he began to look deeper into Julian'southward work, he was fascinated by the pharmacist's ability to manipulate tiny bits of thing, to work with atoms that he could non run into or touch, just was so able to rearrange them to make molecules that could meliorate peoples' lives. Lyons described this as "nearly magical," and a very interesting topic for a television documentary.

The second lesson was that chemistry was non beingness covered on television. "I looked effectually and I discovered that I essentially had the whole field to myself; no other telly producers were interested in making goggle box on chemistry."

Chemistry Can Make Interesting Television

Lyons has found 2 things that make chemistry interesting to people: making the program most people, and showing why it matters. This was relatively easy in the case of Forgotten Genius, because Julian'southward life story was and so compelling: he had a lifelong battle against racism, worked hard to become a pharmacist, and used chemical science to help people.

Lyons applied what he learned from Forgotten Genius to his new video production titled The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements. This is a 2-hour special focusing on the man story behind the development of the Periodic Tabular array (Effigy 2-half dozen).²¹

FIGURE two-half-dozen

Marie Curie is one of the personalities to be featured in the Lyons-Moreno film The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements. SOURCE: U.Southward. National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division.

Many people are familiar with the Periodic Table, considering it hangs in virtually every chemistry course in the world. Still, there is an incredible story that very few people know behind the rows and columns of elements. There was a long quest to discover the elements and to define and explain the hidden order among them. Lyons described this quest as one of the great adventures in the history of science, filled with fascinating characters. For example, at that place was Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemistry professor whose struggle to organize a textbook led him to devise the Periodic Tabular array in 1869; Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen; Marie Curie, a Smoothen graduate student who launched the science of radioactivity and used it as a tool for finding new elements; Harry Moseley, a young Englishman who used the new tool of X rays to redefine the very nature of elements, merely to die at age 27 in Globe War I; and Glenn Seaborg, whose discovery of plutonium played a key part in ending World War Ii and who went on to pioneer the creation of elements beyond uranium in the Periodic Table.

In producing Search for the Elements, the production squad plans to use many of the aforementioned techniques as in the Julian film. Actors play the primal characters, delivering lines drawn from the scientists' own writings, historians, biographers, chemists, and writers who helped tell the story, and in that location will be dramatic reenactments of key discoveries with period lab equipment. All the same, instead of focusing on one scientist as was washed in the Julian moving-picture show, Search for the Elements will be an ensemble drama about the collective endeavor to empathise the nature of matter, virtually a series of individual discoveries that gradually built a foundation of knowledge.

The program will also bear witness how modern scientists go along to build on that foundation, conducting new chemic research that may affect peoples' lives in profound ways. For case, the film volition highlight the work of Massachusetts Plant of Technology (MIT) pharmacist Daniel Nocera. For years, Nocera has been searching for an element that could serve as a catalyst to speed up the splitting of water into oxygen and hydrogen, which could then be used as a clean-burning fuel. Even though the Periodic Table was invented more than a century agone past Mendeleev, it has led to modern chemical research that may one 24-hour interval assist the earth's energy problems. Thus, the moving picture relates chemistry to renewable free energy, a topic that resonates with many people.

Lyons noted that his production team received a critical NSF planning grant to help this project concluding year and has also received support from the Dreyfus Foundation, the Haas Trusts, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. At the fourth dimension of the workshop, NSF was because his proposal for production funds. The funding has since been received, and Lyons hopes to produce the movie in fourth dimension for broadcast on PBS belatedly in 2011 during the International Year of Chemical science.

In addition to the television set plan, the project will include an all-encompassing outreach programme involving the St. Louis Science Heart and its Yes Teens program. The American Chemical Club has pledged to make Search for the Elements the focus of National Chemistry Week, and a special teacher's edition DVD of the program will be produced with many extra features to help teachers apply the human stories behind chemistry to educate their students.

Chemistry, the Neglected Science

Lyons elaborated on the second lesson he drew from the Julian project: trivial chemistry is highlighted on television. By reviewing the previous 12 years of NOVA programs, he found that the most popular category was "history mystery." In this category, the producer uses science to explore a historical mystery, such as the Kennedy bump-off. Even so, only one film out of the 190 broadcasts focused specifically on chemistry, which is lower than all other areas of science.

He noted, even so, that the information he collected are a few years old, so they do non reflect the most recent programs in the NOVA schedule. For case, there have been a few short pieces near chemistry on NOVA's summertime magazine plan, Science Now, but no full-length films since Forgotten Genius. Also, he did non take into account bits of chemistry in many other films, such as those on molecular biology, global warming, and forensics. Some people might likewise quarrel with his categorizations, such as two science programs near the bottom of his list on artificial diamonds and the samurai sword, which he categorized equally material scientific discipline. Both concern the structure of affair. However, "if you put them in the chemistry column, chemistry jumps right up over math and botany."

Lyons reviewed the programs through NOVA's 36-year history and only institute 6 programs out of a total of approximately 690 that were clearly and primarily about chemical science:

• Forgotten Genius (2007)

• Race to Catch a Buckyball (1995)

• Hidden Ability of Plants (1987)

• Plague on Our Children (1979)

• A Pill for the People (1977)

• Linus Pauling: Crusading Scientist (1977)

Nonetheless, he said NOVA is not lonely. If other programs, for example, on the Discovery Channel could be searched, "I'm sure we would find the same pattern there. In fact, there is even less chemistry on other networks than in that location is on PBS."

Similar results were institute when he reviewed other popular media, such as books, newspapers, and magazines. There are recent pop books on chemistry, such every bit Oliver Sacks' Uncle Tungsten, ²² Philip Ball's H ₂ O, ²³ and John Emsley's Molecules of Murder.²⁴ Lyons noted that compared to many other sciences, these writers and books are rare.

Lyons cautioned that his investigation was not a systematic survey of how chemistry is covered by the media. He wanted to get a quick sense of chemistry's media profile by looking at limited samples of a few key representatives of the various media. Lyons believes it would be useful if somebody could do a more thorough report than this. "However, the blueprint seems clear. Given the huge number of chemists in the world, the amount of scientific discipline they do, and the enormous impact it has on our lives, the lack of attention from the mainstream media is boggling. That is why I call chemistry a neglected science."

Lyons said he is puzzled by writers' and TV producers' abstention of chemistry. 1 common explanation is that chemists do not communicate information well-nigh their fields finer. All the same it is clear from the Julian film that there are many articulate chemists. Lyons also suggested that many people are discouraged past their loftier school chemistry experiences. "There is some truth in this, because badly taught chemistry has left a lot of people—writers and Television producers included—with a lasting aversion to chemistry."

Another factor often cited is that chemical science is hard to visualize, considering information technology occurs at the molecular level. This is a handicap for filmmakers, merely it has non stopped producers from making films about the Big Bang, black holes, super-strings, and many other equally invisible things in physics.

Lyons thinks the main reason chemistry has been neglected by popular media relates to the types of problems studied by chemists. From the media's indicate of view, scientific discipline is merely as interesting as the questions it asks, such as: What is the origin of the universe? What accounts for the rise and autumn of ancient civilizations? Tin can we keep the planet from overheating? What can nosotros learn nearly ourselves from studying creature behavior? Can nosotros find cures for AIDS or cancer? These are some of the questions pursued by scientists in cosmology, archeology, ecology, biology, and medicine—big captivating questions of interest to everyone. These questions brand good subjects for books, articles, and TV programs.

Lyons thinks chemists have not been good nearly articulating those big questions. Many chemists seem to be focused on fairly narrow technical questions, non the kinds of big questions that captivate a television audience or excite a science writer. When they do have a discovery that might be of cracking public interest, many chemists are not very good at letting the world know about it. Biologists and physicists may not be any more articulate than chemists, but they are more expert when information technology comes to public relations and promoting their work.

Lyons said that chemists are probably non going to change the nature of their research but to go more media attention, nor should they. However, if they are doing inquiry that is potentially of interest to people outside their field, they can frame it in terms wide plenty to entreatment to the public. They could work with their institutions' news offices to reach out to the media, also as put in fourth dimension working with writers and Television receiver producers to make the stories as accurate and interesting as possible.

Lyons spent the residuum of his talk discussing two things that he thinks can have an even greater impact on improving chemical science communications: (ane) exploiting the Cyberspace and (2) capitalizing on chemistry's financial resources.

He explained how the sources for news and science information have changed over the by 10 years. For case, the Pew Research Center on the People and the Press found that television continues to be the main source of news for Americans.²⁵ However, the percentage of those who obtain news from idiot box, newspapers, and radio has declined, while the proportion obtaining news from the Internet has grown dramatically, passing all other sources except for local TV. This trend is also seen in the media sources Americans apply to become news and information about scientific discipline in particular. The Pew Research Center also institute that forty million, or 20 per centum, of Americans now rely on the Internet equally their principal source for science news. Only television ranks college at 41 percent.

Lyons said this trend is even more pronounced among young people with broadband access, equally shown in Figure two-7. Among those ages 18 to 29, 44 percentage said they accessed most of their science information from the Internet, surpassing television, and far outstripping all the other sources. When asked which news source they become to beginning for science information, 76 percent of high-speed-connectedness users in this age grouping said they plow to the Internet. All other sources combined totaled only 17 percentage.

FIGURE 2-seven

Media sources used by American (home broadband Internet users) to obtain almost of their science news and data, grouped by age. The y axis is the percentage of those surveyed. SOURCE: John Horrigan. 2006. The Cyberspace as a Resource for News and Information (more than...)

Lyons said, "Clearly if the chemistry customs'southward goal is to communicate more finer with young people, the Internet must be part of the strategy." One potentially powerful tool for exploiting the Cyberspace is video. For example, since its founding v years ago, YouTube has come up to boss the market with its eclectic mix of generally amateur videos and clips from movies, TV shows, and music videos. Notwithstanding, the last 2 years has seen the emergence of another subtler trend, a growing number of high-quality videos created specifically for the Internet. In 2008, the New York Times reported that more and more than office workers are using their lunch hours to watch short videos over the Internet, "video snacking."

He noted that the explosion of Internet video is a tremendous opportunity for the science customs. It offers a new aqueduct for delivering scientific research news directly to the public without the barriers imposed by the broadcast media. In that location have been a few small steps in this management, simple video podcasts by journals such as Nature and isolated videos produced past museums and others. Even so, he said video producers and the scientific customs accept barely begun to tap the promise of this new medium.

Lyons described his effort of 2 years ago, with support from the Dreyfus Foundation, in which his company produced a short online video on the water-splitting catalyst discovered by Dan Nocera at MIT. Because Nocera told him almost the catalyst shortly later its discovery, Lyons' visitor was able to produce the video and have it ready to stream just a few days later Nocera'southward paper was published in Scientific discipline. They posted information technology on Bleep.Boob tube,²⁶ a service that offers free video distribution on the spider web.

The viewership for the video started small but grew chop-chop later on being noted by the Chemical Applied science News blog principal. Following that reaction, Wired Scientific discipline gave information technology a positive review as well. This public exposure seems to be the reason viewership increased twentyfold overnight. All of this Cyberspace traffic moved the water-splitting catalyst video onto the front folio at Blip, where still more than people viewed it. Afterward 5 days it was one of the near viewed videos on the site.

This feel illustrates one of the chief attractions of Net videos—the ease with which they can be disseminated, Lyons said. This video can at present be viewed on many websites, including at the Chemic Heritage Foundation, the Dreyfus Foundation, MIT, NSF, and others. Understandably, he said viewer traffic for the video decreased after the initial excitement over the catalyst discovery, nonetheless 9 months later, people were still watching. Lyons estimated that the video has now been seen past 20,000 to thirty,000 people. He noted nevertheless that this is fiddling compared to chemical science-related videos that have gone "viral," such every bit the well known Diet Coke and Mentos geyser (ultrasonic soda fountain) video,²⁷ shown in Effigy ii-8, which at the fourth dimension of this workshop had 9 1000000 viewers. He said his endeavor was not bad for a niggling video launched into cyberspace with no real publicity, simply a serial of chemistry videos with a regular home on the Cyberspace where people knew to expect for them would probably practice much better.

Effigy 2-viii

YouTube favorite, the "Diet Coke + Mentos" geyser. Mentos candies are dropped in bottles of diet coke soda, causing a rapid-foaming chemic reaction that shoots into the air like a geyser or fountain. Video available at www.youtube.com/sentinel?five=hKoB0MHVBvM (more...)

Based on teacher response to the first video he made, Lyons thinks such videos could be widely used in classrooms. He said chemistry teachers are hungry for video sources, particularly those that show chemical science at piece of work today.

In producing this online chemistry video, Lyon's approach was to treat it similar a television magazine piece, even so keep the upkeep as low as possible. Notwithstanding, he said there are many other potential means to produce chemistry videos for the web, although at that place are no standards or rules. Cyberspace video is yet new, so nobody knows the best approach.

Lyons encouraged the chemistry community to embrace video and experiment with information technology to see what works best. He said the Internet offers a way to bypass media gatekeepers and get the content out to audiences that would like to see it. In the procedure, chemical science can be a real leader, showing scientists in other fields how they can use this new medium to achieve immature people in creative ways.

Lyons finished his talk by highlighting chemistry'due south unique position among the sciences. Information technology is the foundation of a large and profitable industry, which sets information technology autonomously from other fields of scientific discipline. He speculated that if the chemical science customs chose to, it could pool its resources to create a fund to bring nigh greater coverage of chemical science, what he referred to as the "Chemistry in Media Fund." For example, if ten donors gave $250,000 a year, it would provide an almanac fund of $2.5 million, which could be used to support chemistry communications in all media sources. He said, "The outcome would profoundly modify the landscape, giving chemistry a much higher profile in the pop media than information technology has now."

With scientific discipline journalism in peril, people accept begun to explore new concern models that would allow it to survive in a different form. One case Lyons gave is the organization Pro Publica,²⁸ which pursues public involvement investigative journalism and is supported past a group of philanthropic organizations including the MacArthur Foundation. Some other example is a service called Kaiser Wellness News,²⁹ launched by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Run by a former National Cancer Institute science editor, it provides impartial coverage of wellness care bug. As the old advertising- and subscription-based business organization model crumbles, people in the media are looking for new means of support. Philanthropy is emerging as a strong contender. In this new climate, Lyons thinks the media would be receptive to support from the chemistry and media fund, as long as the funds are used to support solid impartial science journalism.

Lyons said that this is a good opportunity for the chemistry community, because it may be the best manner to improve public agreement of chemistry and enhance appreciation of the chemical enterprise. He said, "Today many Americans come up out of school with both a poor understanding of basic chemic concepts and a negative attitude toward chemistry. The only way the chemistry community can turn this effectually, brusk of an overhaul of chemical science teaching, which is a subject for another day, is to tap the 1 remaining conduit for science learning, informal educational activity."

In the first year alone, the chemistry and media fund might support a mixture of chemical communications. Over time, past supporting a wide assortment of informal science education initiatives, Lyons thinks the fund would do more than to heighten public understanding of, and appreciation for, the field than all the image advert the chemical science industry at present invests in, and at a modest fraction of the costs.

Lyons said he has spent a lot of time talking with chemists over the last few years, and his sense is that chemists feel neglected by the press. They feel virtually people do not empathize or appreciate what they do. They have a story to tell, simply as other scientists do, only for some reason their story is not getting out there, and this bothers them. From his perspective as an exterior observer, this seems like an important problem and 1 the chemistry customs needs to confront, empathise, and address. He thought the workshop might be an important step in that direction.

Questions and Answers

Jeannette Brown thanked Steve Lyons for the Percy Julian film, which she noted "is the only film that shows African-American chemists." She mentioned that the ACS Committee on Minority Affairs and the Women Chemists Committee are now working hard to start another film about Dr. Marie Daly, who was the first African-American woman to go a Ph.D. in chemistry. Brown farther commented about the demand that exists for more materials about other underrepresented minorities, such every bit Hispanic and Native American chemists, and how useful information technology would be to accept those materials available on the Internet.

Steve Lyons responded that one of the most rewarding things virtually the Julian project was having the chance, with the back up of the Dreyfus Foundation, to go out and interview 60 people who knew Julian. Lyons and his team gathered information virtually Julian's life and his scientific career that would have otherwise been lost, making it a very rewarding experience.

Lyons too agreed with Brown that her Daly project would be ideal for the Internet, because more and more teachers are looking online for educational materials. He said if she could help produce a series of short videos about African-American women in chemistry and African-Americans in other fields of science as well, they would be widely used. He cautioned that videos should be kept short though, because that is what nearly Internet users have grown accustomed to.

Open up Word i

David Ucko commented most NSF funding. He encouraged those with good ideas to bring them to NSF. He said, "We can only fund things that we get proposals for. And then I would encourage folks to develop proposals for informal scientific discipline education in chemistry."

Bill Carroll commented that 1 of the difficulties in chemistry is counterbalancing the negative images. For case, he said, "If y'all cure someone it is medicine, if you poison someone, it is chemistry. Information technology is almost as though you lot have to undo that first."

Lyons agreed and said the best fashion he sees to address the problem from the point of view of the media is to continually show how chemistry is used through the stories of individual people. Gradually, it will help people to see chemists in a different way. He said people generally have no idea what chemists actually do in their work, so it would be useful to provide stories of their lives as a series of videos on a television program or an online series of videos. His video about Dan Nocera is a good example of showing the story of a chemist, how Nocera set out working for twenty years to address the energy problem. A series of those kinds of examples would help people to see chemical science in a new and more than positive way.

Mark Griep from the University of Nebraska asked well-nigh the use of chemical symbols and formulas in communicating chemistry to the public, such equally the construction of physostigmine in the Percy Julian film.

Ucko responded that in a museum, visitors come from many different backgrounds. They range from people who know null nearly chemistry and would never recognize a chemical symbol at all, to others who are Ph.D. chemists, and then there demand to be varying degrees of content that support the feel. He suggested that chemical symbols not be the starting point for engaging the public. He said the symbol is often secondary to what the work of the pharmacist is really virtually, so it can be there at some betoken in the showroom for those that would understand what it is or those who desire to learn more.

Lyons added that it is dissimilar in television. In the Percy Julian documentary, the use of letter symbols for chemicals was avoided entirely. There was not a single frame in the entire film that showed a chemical formula. Instead of using symbols, they used a simple brawl and stick analogy to help people understand the chemicals. An explanation was provided for the basic steroid construction of physostigmine and how it could be modified by adding and subtracting pieces on the end of the construction. It was a very of import concept in understanding Julian's work, and it was besides simple plenty for people to grasp. He explained how fifty-fifty if the audience did not sympathise the details, they could get the thought that the properties of molecule could be changed by adding unlike pieces in different places.

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Philip Bell, Bruce Lewenstein, Andrew Due west. Shouse, and Michael A. Feder, Editors, Committee on Learning Scientific discipline in Informal Environments, National Inquiry Council. 2009. Learning Science in Informal Environments. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

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Marilyn Fenichel and Heidi A. Schweingruber, National Research Quango. 2010. Surrounded by Science. Washington, DC: National Academies Printing.

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The LIFE Center (The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Center), University of Washington, Stanford Academy, and SRI International. 2007. Learning in and out of school in diverse environments: Life-long, life-wide, life-deep. Available online at http://depts​.washington​.edu/centerme/LEARNING​%20LIFE%20REPORT.pdf.

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A.V. Maltese, and R. H. Tai. 2010. Eyeballs in the fridge: Sources of early on interest in science. International Periodical of Science Education 32(v):669–685.

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A. Leiserowitz, East. Maibach, C. Roser-Renoug, and N. Smith. 2010. Global Warming's Six Americas. Yale Academy and George Mason University. New Oasis, CT: Yale Project on Climate change. Available online at environment​.yale.edu​/climate/files/SixAmericasJune2010.pdf (accessed November 5, 2010).

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For more recent activities, see Shakhashiri's "Science is Fun" website, www​.scifun.org/ (accessed Apr half-dozen, 2011).

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In this report, chemistry is defined as the science of composition, structure, and properties of substances (chemicals) and the changes they undergo.

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For more information, run across www​.nisenet.org (accessed September 13, 2010).

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For more than data, see caise​.insci.org (accessed November 10, 2010).

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For more data, see the NISE Network Research and Evaluation website at world wide web​.nisenet.org/catalog/eval (accessed November xi, 2010).

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The showroom is chosen "Fuel Your Time to come." For more than information, see the Museum of Science Boston website at www​.mos.org/ (accessed November xi, 2010).

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For more information, come across the PBS Forgotten Genius website at www​.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/julian/ (accessed September 10, 2010).

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O.Westward. Sacks. 2001. Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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P. Brawl. 1999 H ₂ O: A Biography of Water. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd.

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J. Emsley. 2008. Molecules of Murder: Criminal Molecules and Classic Cases. London: Imperial Social club of Chemistry.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK91482/

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