Presenting Physics to Regular People

By Sidney Perkowitz

I’ve written seven science books and many articles, and presented physics in the media, all aimed at general audiences. My first book editor said “simplify the writing, not the science,” and I think it is possible to get physics concepts across without dumbing them down. After covering quantum weirdness, football concussions, interstellar travel, physics in the movies, and more, I’ve come up with guidelines for writing and presenting to the general public. They may help you too. Here they are:

1. What you leave out is as important as what you put in. You can get the science right without describing all the science, if you present the concept without bogging down in the details that only physicists love. If your audience gets the main idea, you’ve succeeded! For an article about quantum physics, I defined Planck’s constant h as the small quantity that sets the scale of the quantum world but never mentioned ħ = h/2π. Though ħ is more common in quantum equations, the detail of dividing h by 2π does not expand understanding.
2. People, please. The difference between an interesting article or talk, and a story that is truly engaging, is people. If you put in something about the personality or scientific approach of a famous physicist, or add your own experiences, you’re on your way. For a piece about lasers, I described how the invisible infrared beam from a CO₂ laser in my lab burned through a favorite shirt and then into me, and how careful I became around lasers after that!
3. Relate physics to the real world, daily life and pop or high culture. Some of my most popular efforts have connected physics to cooking, science fiction, music, and the visual arts. These areas link to people’s existing knowledge and interests, providing a path into the physics. You can make connections even for abstract ideas. Writing about the speed of light, I pointed out that stock market traders encounter Einstein’s limit because it constrains how fast they can trade and therefore make money. To give a feeling for Bell’s theorem and the strangeness of quantum entanglement, I explained them in terms of beating the odds of picking pairs of black and white socks from dresser drawers thousands of miles apart.
4. No jargon, please. Your goal is to make what you write or say completely lucid. Use clear and simple language without technical terms, physics jargon or acronyms that can be bumps in the road to understanding. If these are unavoidable, define them in simple terms the first time they appear.
5. Math and quantities. Steven Hawking said that every equation added loses more of the audience so use a graph or table instead. Also, to present large or small quantities. comparisons can work better than powers of ten, especially with a strong visual image. In a book about human vision, I showed the extreme density of the tiny light-sensing cones packed into the retina by calculating, and then writing, that it scales up to many hundreds of people tightly jammed together on a tennis court.

Outreach is important for physics. If my tips help your own efforts, that’s a good thing for our profession and for science.