Bench Press

One of the ways in which scientists can reach out to the public with new social media techniques is through online video, and this is a lesson that the University of Nottingham has learned well. This past week, I found three informative sites that scientists at the University of Nottingham have contributed to:

• Sixty Symbols – a site dedicated to helping the layperson understand those crazy symbols that they see in physicist’s and astronomer’s equations and work



• Periodic Table of Videos – a site which has an informational video for nearly every element in the periodic table
• Test-Tube – an award-winning site which tries to document the daily life of a scientist, including the triumphs, failures, and the monotony/drama that occurs in between

The interesting thing, at least to me, is that the videos succeed not only in conveying interesting concepts in, hopefully, an easy-to-understand format, but that they do what textbooks and slides and figures and online encyclopedia’s can never do: they humanize the science and the scientists behind them. And, if that happens effectively, then social media may be the most powerful scientific tool ever.