A few of us organizers are graduate students in the Astronomy department at UW. We’ve been giving shows in the campus planetarium since we arrived on campus. Last year was the international year of astronomy and we opened the planetarium to the public for a series of shows that each presenter wrote on their own.
It was excellent opportunity: being able to talk to the UW community about our passions was not only great practice for our future as scientists, but was a really fun and engaging experience. We graduate students got together and thought about what to do with the excitement we garnered from the community about our shows and how to keep the spirit going (we had over 1000 ticket requests for 40 seats per show, and more than 600 emails on our email list). We floundered until at a Forum on Science Ethics and Policy book club where we read “Unscientific America” and “Don’t be Such a Scientist.” The outcome: a free series of science talks – now including topics outside of astronomy – with no attendance limits or tickets required. The focus of each talk will be cutting edge science in terms your entire family can understand. The half hour talks will start with the basics of our field, cover questions we are trying to answer during our time at the UW, and end with time for you to ask us any questions you may have.
We’re a bit biased towards astronomy this year, but we will build off this solid foundation next year and expand to a wider range of departments, when these talks will be part of a graduate student seminar on giving public science lectures. We hope to improve our abilities to share our knowledge through clear language and stunning visualizations, while bringing you information on the most active areas of research being conducted today.
All this year, doors will open at 6:45, talks begin at 7:00, and we’ll have the room until 8:00. They will be in the Physics Astronomy Building on the floor below the planetarium in room 118.
Look around our new site for mini-bios of each speaker, longer descriptions of each talk, and soon we’ll have videos of the talks for you to view again or catch if you missed.
We hope you will join us, and help us by telling your friends and families, and giving us feedback to help us grow as science communicators while serving the community that allows us to do what we love.
Is there a way to have a list of planned topics at the talks. I do not see them listed here at all. I am a self-taught backyard astronomer. I’ve learned from books, online and from 2 quarters of University of Ohio’s astronomy podcasts. I’d like to try learning in a new environment.
We only have this year’s talks scheduled – please see http://engage-science.com/talks/
We won’t know next year’s series of talks until near the end of next fall.