FOEP at March Meeting 2016

At March Meeting 2016 FOEP and the APS Outreach Department hosted a day of outreach. For the first time FOEP put together a session of contributed papers. It was excellent, ranging from reports from the APS Outreach Mini Grant recipients to a history of World War II. Consider contributing a paper to the FOEP session at APS March Meeting 2017. These talks do not count against you, so you can still submit a scientific presentation.

Prior to the contributed session FOEP hosted an invited session featuring 5 amazing speakers (more on that in the next article). The day finished with an outreach happy hour to bring together those doing outreach. It was a fantastic networking opportunity and a chance for people to talk shop. It also was a chance to recognize this year's FOEP fellows. Each year FOEP nominates members to become Fellows of the APS. This year 3 fantastic FOEP members were given this honor. APS March Meeting 2017 will again feature a day full of outreach and engagement activities. Be sure to put everything from sessions to happy hour on your schedule.

Contributed by: R. Thompson

From left to right: Philip Hammer, Jennifer Ross, Don Lincoln, Daniel Steinberg, and Itai Cohen. Two of the four FOEP nominated APS Fellows awarded in 2015 display their certificates during the outreach happy hour.

The FOEP sponsored a very well attended, by now traditional session, at the 2016 March Meeting, in which various Public Outreach approaches were presented. These were all aimed at a general audience of participants in the APS March meeting.

Ray Orbach, who was Under Secretary of Science of DOE from 2006 to 2009, and is now at the University of Texas, presented a unique perspective on How to Interact with Congress about Science. He emphasized that all scientists have an important urgent role in this interaction and that to be effective, personal interactions are crucial. He highlighted the fact that authorization bills are in play which affect science funding in an essential way and that we all have an important role to play. Marc Schulman from the USA Science and Engineering Festival (USA-SEF) discussed How to Organize a World Renowned Science Festival. The USA-SEF is probably the world largest science festival and was started in San Diego by Larry Bock, a visionary venture capitalist who was a true believer on the importance of scientific outreach to the public. Schulman highlighted the many activities that that the USA-SEF sponsors with the participation of well known scientists, high technology companies and academia. Joel Shurkin, in a well-documented talk, described How to Write a Scientist Based Biography for the Public. He discussed particularly the writing of his biography, the controversial Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age. A particularly interesting aspect was the difficulty in writing a biography of a person who the author does not admire personally, but who nevertheless has made a major contribution to science. How Physics World Reaches Out in a Digital Age, was the subject of Matin Durani’s talk. The editor of Physics World pointed out that in recent years, technology has changed the way in which science should be communicated to new audiences. Important ingredients which were highlighted are: having a good story to tell, keeping in mind the audience, using the proper media, and exploiting the visual power of video. In a humorous talk, Jeremie Palacci, a young professor from the University of California-San Diego described how to explain Physics in a Brewery. He discussed the science of beer making and showed a number of tricks, which caught the attention of the audience. Overall this is a very entertaining, well-attended set of invited talks, dealing with Public Outreach and should be definitely continued for the foreseeable future.

Contributed by: Ivan Schuller