Tag: presentations

Posted on

Stupid Questions

They say that there are no stupid questions.

And yet, in classrooms, presentations, and seminars, it’s very typical for to-be questioners to start with “maybe it is a very stupid question, but…”.

Often, once the question is out there to be judged for its “stupidity”, you find out that it was not a stupid question at all. That could be because there really are no stupid questions (or are there? We have probably not phrased every possible question in every language to make this assumption, so let’s just say that most questions are not stupid).

And yet, even though there are probably no stupid questions, we still like to call some questions stupid (or would have others and ourselves believe that). Working in science, where it can be very important to have the correct terminology, I sometimes wonder if it is really the right thing to do.

In my short career as a scientist, I have also come to believe that it’s rare when a question is stupid (probably only the ones that flit through my head). The thing is, we have been judging the quality of questions on wrong parameters. When you are all these scientists, where everyone is quite competent at what they do themselves, and not-so-good at what the others do, and no two people are working on the exact same thing at the same time – it becomes tricky.  While some questions can be quite basic for some people, they can be a whole novel perspective from another’s point of view.

So, in reality, there are no stupid questions; only rookie questions, basic ones, newbie’s perspectives, outsider’s outlooks. These are all far, far from stupid.

All “stupid” questions just need to be relabelled.

P.S. The author has nothing personal against the word “stupid”. All views expressed in the post are completely neutral and unbiased.

Posted on

Storry Telling – Part I

When you are a scientist, there’ll be countless times when you’ll be required to “communicate your work”. It’s necessary, it’s woven into the current system, and it makes sure people don’t have to reinvent the wheel (or at least that’s the point).

But sciieeeence… is too technical for good communication. And when it gets too specific (as in a PhD research), then it appears very far off from being relevant to general life. This means that often when science IS being communicated, it may not be reaching the ears it should be reaching.

Now that doesn’t matter in a lot of cases, because, after all, it is science and not a novel that we want to sell a 100 million copies of. It’s for other scientists, more specifically for those who are related to your own field of work… And even in there, people who really read your writings will be people who are almost exactly working on the same thing as you (how many people in the world does that mean, especially for a junior scientist? 10? Maaaay be 20, if they find your article)… And even they will not be reading it word to word, but mostly just skimming it, and extracting those precious couple of sentences that they’d find most relevant for their own work (and that you, by the way, spent months working to get).

So yeah, it is okay if it is boring and technical, because it is not meant to torture a whole lot of people (just the ones who might really need to read it).

Now this may seem sloppy on behalf of a scientist (although most of us are making a sincere effort to put forth that gibberish-to-your-ears in the most understandable way possible). And then, of course, we need to interact with people from other disciplines of science, and no matter how big of a scientist you are, it still helps that people from other fields can break their stuff down to bare basics for you to understand.

So good communication is still the king.

One of the key ways of communicating effectively is to tell it as a story (and this fad has been going on for a while now). And the thing, which I have always had a hard time understanding, is: how do you tell a scientific work as a story?

Story telling has so many elements, and so many styles: so which one is most suitable for the communication of a scientific work?

Okay, so you can give a good introduction. Start off by introducing the theme and “characters” of your story. If you give your audience (or readers) a really good introduction to ground them in understanding, it becomes easier (on both sides) as you progress.

Another aspect of this can be to tell your story with the story of your work. So you tried something, and it didn’t work (or, surprise!, this time it did work), and that’s how you jumped on this new idea that you’ll be telling people about (but hang on! you shall not overdo it, because, after all, thou shalt talk about science more).

Because story telling involves a lot of elements that can directly affect the integrity of your science. Like exaggerations. Or sometimes unnecessary and frilly details. It often also requires knowledge of the complete picture (which you never have in science until may be after you have gone through everything).

 

In science communication, I find this quite interesting as a scientist myself: What limits can you test and how far can you push the boundaries of science communication by applying principles of story telling?

(And how sorry should you be if you fail at it).

Posted on

The Lemon Battery

Most of us have gone through this stage in our lives when we built a lemon battery for some high school experiment. After that, you think (or may be it was just me who developed this mentality) that a lemon is some kind of a power fruit with all this electric potential.

But then, of course, those who have not built a lemon battery, might have built a potato battery. So which one is more magical as a fruit (or a vegetable)? Which side would you be on, team lemon or team potato?

Strangely, with these experiments, they wanted to introduce us to the world of batteries, but I think I never really knew how a lemon battery worked until just yesterday, around 18 years later (or my ignorance might just point towards the fact how I was probably never listening in those classes). 

It’s interesting how it’s a “lemon” battery but the lemon (or the potato) itself is of no value to the experiment. It just provides you with an electrolyte, a medium through which the charges can move, which results in the completion of a circuit. You could as well dunk zinc and copper in a salt solution, or perhaps an acidic solution, and you’ll still make a battery (may be even a better one).

Now, I am supposed to be making a presentation on batteries for a course I am taking, and I am suddenly obsessed with lemon batteries (and have been so for the past couple of days).

I figured it would give me a good start for the presentation, starting off with some thing that might not be so knowledgeable, but that would definitely be more relatable for everyone (plus I have quite a smart partner, and I am pretty confident he will pull off the technical stuff superbly).

I want to start off with a lemon battery because they are so bad, that everything is going to look state-of-the-art in comparison. But then, I stop and remind myself that I am a PhD student, and not a sales person for some battery technology. May be I should be talking about more high-level stuff than a high-school-level concept, something more suitable to the stature of a PhD.

Ahh, the pressures that come with doing a PhD degree.

You have to look smart, act smart. Talk smart. You have to show yourself as an understander-of-all-things-tough-and-technical.

A lemon battery? Pffbt. You can do better than this!

But I am currently so hooked on lemon batteries that I am going to proceed with the idea anyway (even now when I have become more aware of how it might not be the best idea – plus I would be talking about lemon batteries for the first minute and 40 seconds according to the script I am developing, and I don’t have that kind of time).

I am going to go with lemon batteries because: 1) as I said, I am hooked on them; 2) that is how I have been developing the story for the past week and a half, and starting over might not be the best case scenario; 3) I think I can still handle the concept of a lemon battery as a bad battery, and make that as a basis for jumping onto the concept of a “perfect” battery; 4) I am so hooked on lemon batteries, I couldn’t possibly now shift to the lithium ion technology, which would, of course, otherwise make more sense to start off with (I can give it 10 to 20 seconds, though); and 5) surprise, surprise, who is going to be expecting a lemon battery to pop up in a presentation being given by a PhD student? Presentations can sometimes use a little theatrics, some element of surprise, and it is not always a bad thing (it’s not like I am going to talk about lemon batteries in my PhD defense).

So lemon batteries over lithium-ion this time.