The Last Word
Everyweek in the New Scientist magazine I always end up skipping straight to the ‘Last Word’ column. The ‘Last Word’ is a small section of the magazine in which scientist from across the world try to answer questions from members of the public. These can vary from intelligent questions which are quite difficult to answer such as;
Why is it when two people walk together they often subconsciously start to walk in a synchronised manner?
To highly amusing, silly questions such as;
Why is snot green?
The highlights of the ‘Last Word’ column were, last year, made into a highly successful book aptly named ‘Does anything eat wasps?’ This was so well received by the general public that the follow-up ‘Why don’t penguins feet freeze?’ has just been released.
Even though these books are presented in a light-hearted and jovial manner I believe they actually represent a very good piece of science communication and further aid the publics understanding of science.
Why? One might ask. It is precisely this type of informal scientific writing which intrigues those who relish wit, insight and scientific curiosity, yet may not want to read the complex, and sometimes slightly boring articles in the New Scientist or Nature. These books are definitely a ‘wise, weird and wacky compendium that is guaranteed to amaze, inform and delight.’
1 comment:
I'm puzzled by your reference to how they "aid the publics understanding of science"
Firstly, why would you think 'public understanding of science' is necessarily a good thing?
Secondly, even if we do decide to be all old school and assume PUS is a good and necessary thing, I'm not convinced these books do work to help people understand science? they are largely trivia, which is hugely fun but that's about all. Something I suppose some of the answers show is how much debate and uncertainty there is in science, so you could make an arguement to suggest that it's public undestanding of how science works...
Personally, I'd say these books might promote science, but that's compleately different from PUS.
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