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Last month on National Astronomy Day, I was at the Clay Center Observatory signing copies of How Do You Burp in Space? And Other Tips Every Space Tourist Needs to Know. After inscribing a copy for a young boy, I looked up at his older sister. “Do you want to go to space, too?” I asked.
“I did once,” she said.
“What happened?”
She gave me a small smile, a Mona Lisa smile—that is, if Mona L. were a just-budding adolescent proud of her newly acquired sense of condescension.
“Oh…other things took over,” she said in a tone that implied I couldn’t possibly know what she meant.
Oh…but I do. Having been there and done that, I was actually thinking about something else. Do these other things that "take over" really have to edge out wanting to go into space or a daily check on favorite animal cams? Is this really an either/or situation? Do the hormones make us want to pack away those childish things? Or, despite so many strides, do we still think there’s only one type of girl that does those hormones justice?
This last question still on my mind, I later googled “nerds becoming popular” and immediately clicked on the images page. I already knew that Sheldon’s chic and Zuckerberg’s billions have brought those three words in close company. What I wanted to know was how many pictures of girls I would see sprinkled in among the guys wearing pocket protectors and suspenders.
Discounting “popular” girls torturing geeks, here’s the first “nerd girl” picture I came upon. I was hopeful. What a fool I was. Once I clicked through to its home site, here are the words I found: Who would have thought that being a nerd would be cool? Well the time has finally come. There is nothing more fashionable that an over-sized pair of geeky glasses. PS-When I saved the picture to my computer to easily transfer to this post, I noticed it was labeled, "pretty nerd." Little Mona Lisa Girl at the Clay Center, the deck has been stacked against you. Come on, STEM books, cool geek girl role models, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Help girls aspire to go to space and wear cool nail polish in orbit, if that’s what they want. Help everybody feel as if science and smart is back in fashion and sexy.
I spoke to astronaut Sunita Williams when writing Burp in Space, but never asked her if she felt she had to choose between lipstick and her dreams. I wish I had. Maybe I would have been primed to say something to this young girl. Even if she couldn’t hear me now, perhaps it would plant a seed. I know lots of girls get reacquainted with previous interests as women, but I hate to think of what has been lost in the meantime because their intellectual passions couldn’t coexist with the teenage definition of femininity.
On June 20, Liz Rusch is publishing I.N.K.’s last recommended booklist. This time it focuses on STEM-related topics. Let’s all take a second look.
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Thank you, Linda. Thank you, I.N.K. Thanks to all of our readers. It’s been a pleasure.
Last week
Brian Greene, the physicist and mathematician, gave a lecture at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Greene is the author of several books about relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, parallel universes, and other fields of contemporary physics. He’s also hosted two Nova series dealing with the same subjects on PBS. Several members of my family attended his presentation, including my 14-year-old son Jamie.
Greene talked about string theory, multiple dimensions, and the
multiverse. The hall, which holds more than 2,000 people, was completely full (apparently that many more people showed up but couldn’t get in, which struck me as pretty remarkable).
The audience included lots of physicists — even a few Nobel laureates. But many of us were non-scientists, so the talk, which presented mathematical, theoretical, and observational arguments for the existence of multiple universes, had to accommodate a wide range of educational backgrounds. Greene managed this by placing his main points in a linear historical context and by using stories, analogies, and images rather than advanced math to explain his hypotheses. He’s quite good at this. When I talked to Jamie afterward, I found that he’d understood the essential points of the lecture even though his freshman physical science course hasn’t progressed beyond Newton’s
physical laws.
There’s an obvious connection here to writing nonfiction picture books about subjects like evolution, geology, and astronomy for an audience with a limited scientific vocabulary. Before I go there, however, one more story.
When I was a graduate student in design school, I taught an introductory photography course for four semesters. This was in the pre-digital era, so in addition to the aesthetics of the medium the class covered many of the technical aspects of B&W photography: the relationship of f-stop and shutter speed, the process and chemistry of film development and printing, and so on. The first two times I taught the class, I just turned the students loose to make images, and we covered the technical issues as they arose. The quality of the final product — a B&W print — was pretty abysmal, at least for a while. But the class was having fun making pictures. As an experiment, I decided to try a different approach during the third semester. I spent the first few weeks of class explaining the technical side of the process before we started making images. Depth of field, freezing motion, reciprocity failure, the chemistry of film, that sort of thing. And the students were bored to death. I can’t ignore the possibility that my limitations as an instructor were at least partly to blame. But it was pretty clear that jumping right into the heart of the process — making images — was much more rewarding.
Based on own experiences as a student — and on those of my three children — something similar often happens in school science classes. The beautiful, awe-inspiring parts — the power and elegance of Darwin’s
theory, the way
Einstein changed our fundamental understanding of the world, Watson and Crick’s incredible discovery of the
digital nature of life — get buried in an often intimidating deluge of formulas and facts to be memorized. It’s a forest and trees problem. This isn’t intended as a criticism of science teachers, who have a prescribed — and, sadly, often circumscribed — curriculum to get through in a short period of time.
Instead, it’s another way to think about what we do as authors. We know that children — even very young children — can often understand complex scientific concepts as long as they are presented in a context and with a vocabulary that makes use of what they already understand about the world. A 32-page book (I’m talking picture books, but these ideas are just as applicable to longer chapter books for older children) presents the same sort of challenge that Brian Greene faced in explaining a significant chunk of modern physics to a lay audience in an hour and a half. Children’s book authors also use stories, analogies, and images to make complex concepts understandable. We have no choice but to skip over many of the technical details and get right to the heart of an idea.
Oh, April is speeding by! This weekend was gone in a flash, but that's because any time I have with the fabulous Loree Griffin Burns is always too short. Loree was in town for the USA Science and Engineering Fair, and I caught her presentation on Citizen Science. After writing about scientists who track trash and scientists who investigate honeybees, Loree decided to write about something powerful and simple: how any human being with alert senses and a willing heart can participate in the grand adventure of scientific discovery.
From listening to frog calls to hunting for lost ladybugs, each citizen scientist is asked only to be an expert in their own local community, and to observe and share the data he or she collects. It's a bit like Twitter science. (I hope Loree won't object to that description!) Just like Twitter has enabled millions of people to be on-the-spot reporters, observing and relaying what they see and hear, citizen science empowers kids, families, scout troops, classrooms, 4-H clubs, nearly anyone--- to take what they see and hear in the small square of their backyards and add that knowledge to the vast earth-wide pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Cool, huh? You can read more about
citizen science and Loree's fascinating path to writing the book here.
Loree and I also talked about haiku----since she knew I was writing some for Poetry Month--and because she believes science and haiku have a lot in common. By focusing on the very small and the very particular, we gain access to the profound. She even recommended a poetry book to me that I can't wait to find:
Seeds From a Birch Tree. For now, though, I'm paying attention only to what I heard and saw and learned from Loree today.
Shh! I'm listening
Spring peepers caught on iphone
shared sound grows louder
Red binoculars
Held breath, sharp eyes, open ears
One sky; many wings
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I found this post fascinating, Steve. I'd love to hear Greene talk, myself. You have very nicely stated exactly how I construct my books. My Science Play series for preschool kids is an inquiry-based sequence of questions that lead to very exciting, non-intuitive conclusions using empirical evidence and reasoning that even young children seem to have in abundance. My book, I See Myself, which is why you see yourself in a mirror, teaches three concepts: everything we see due to reflection of light, the angle of incidence of a light beam equals the angle of reflection, in mirrors light beams are not scattered but are reflected perfectly. Of course, I never use these terms in my book but I've seen how kids internalize these concepts and exhibit their comprehension in sometimes startling and brilliant ways. We may be depriving children by not exposing them to intellectual challenges. Burdening science students with TMI is one way to turn them off before they ever experience the rush of pleasure that comes from grasping a BIG idea.