FOEP at the March and April Meetings 2020

JOIN US AT THE MARCH MEETING IN DENVER FOR: THING EXPLAIN YOUR RESEARCH

The A.P.S.’s Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public (FOEP) is holding a contest at the March 2020 A.P.S. meeting in Denver, CO, to test your Science Communication skills!

We physicists routinely employ technical language when discussing our research with our colleagues, but often this terminology is a barrier when communicating our results with the general public. We also know it can be a challenge to describe our work without the jargon.

At FOEP’s public event: THING EXPLAIN YOUR RESEARCH, that challenge just got harder! Inspired by Randall Munroe’s book “Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words,” you will need to translate the title of one of your talks at the March meeting (contributed or invited), but you may ONLY use the 1000 most common words in English, as found at https://splasho.com/upgoer5/ !

(Warning: this list does NOT include the words: Topological, Insulator, or Graphene.)

A panel of judges will then try to determine which of three actual talk titles corresponds to your THING EXPLAINED translation. If they guess correctly, you can win fabulous prizes (well, we think they’re pretty nice).

Want to try your hand at boiling your research down to its basics? (And we do mean basic!). If so, send an e-mail to Jim Kakalios, 2020 Chair of FOEP at kakalios@umn.edu. You must include THING EXPLAIN SUBMISSION in the subject line. Submit your original APS talk title, the session your talk will be given, and your Thing Explained translation. The THING EXPLAIN YOUR RESEARCH event will be held on Wednesday, March 4, at 7:30 PM at the Denver Convention Center in a room TBD. Please plan on attending the event, which is open to the general public, as well as APS meeting attendees.

Happy Translating, and we’ll see you in Denver!

Double your exposure by giving an outreach talk in addition to your science talk!

The Forum for Outreach and Engaging the Public will have contributed talk sessions at the March and April meetings. Importantly, these talks do not count against you, so you can still submit a scientific presentation. We look forward to hearing about your work!

Session G06: Adventures in Outreach and Engaging the Public

Sponsoring Unit: FOEP

Tuesday, March 3 Room: 113

Session J38: Outreach and Public Science Communication, Invited

Sponsoring Units: FOEP, FPS

Tuesday, March 3 Room: 607

Session M37: Communicating Science to the Public, Invited

Sponsoring Units: FPS, FOEP

Wednesday, March 4 Room: 605