Tackling the hard sciences

Science blogging: The essential guide - Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman 2016

Tackling the hard sciences

Rhett Allain

Tackling the “hard” science subjects like math, physics, and engineering in one’s writing can be a daunting task. The Internet, where misinformation abounds and critics are eager to advance their pet theories, adds an extra twist. Rhett Allain will explore the different ways of writing about the hard sciences on the Internet, and explain how the web can provide additional context to the findings of everything from math to astronomy.

In many ways, blogging about “hard sciences” like physics is just like blogging about other, “squishier” areas of science. There are generally four different types of science blog posts: reporting, explaining, analysis, and link filtering. Of these, posts that report on an event while explaining the physics (or other scientific principles) involved are the best, in my opinion. For examples of fine blogs that have more of the “reporting”-type posts, take a look at Physics Buzz (http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com) or Bad Astronomy (http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html).

Reporting

What kinds of events would a physics blogger report and write about? Some examples might be the 2013 Russian meteor event, the 2012 Higgs boson detection, or the 2011 faster-than-light neutrinos anomaly. These are events that are reported all over the place. So what makes science bloggers different from other news sources? Even if they don’t offer an explanation to go along with the event (though they usually do), they have a level of expertise that allows them to point out the important aspects as well as dispel any incorrect information. They also have the advantage of freedom. A blog post can report the news and include analysis in whatever way the blogger chooses.

Here are a couple of examples of “reporting” from my own blog (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/dotphysics). Note that you could probably consider these posts as fitting into more than one category.

• What Can We Do with the Higgs Boson?: This post doesn’t report the details of the discovery of the Higgs boson, but it is still a type of reporting (http://www.wired.com/2012/07/what-can-we-do-with-the-higgs-boson).

• Watch the Red Bull Stratos Jump Live: This is just reporting. In this post, I simply share details about how you could watch the Stratos Jump, a skydive from 120,000 feet (http://www.wired.com/2012/10/watch-the-red-bull-stratos-jump-live).

• Where Does Carbon Come From?: The intention of this post was to report on verification of the nuclear process that leads to the creation of carbon. It does that, but I first explained how we get carbon (http://www.wired.com/2011/05/where-does-the-carbon-come-from).

Explaining

At its most basic level, this kind of post is just an explanation. The blogger could be describing something simple, like the different colors of light or the nature of force and motion. Or she could be tackling something very complex such as a numerical solution to the energy levels in a hydrogen atom. I like to think of these types of posts as textbooks without constraints. The goal is to provide some enlightenment on a concept, and there are no limits to how simple, how complex, or how long the explanation can be. You also don’t have to assign homework (but you can). A blog can contain links to other material, animations and video, as well as various explanations aimed at readers with different levels of background knowledge about the subject. Sometimes my posts are about advanced physics concepts and other times they are very basic. Most textbooks can’t do that.

Just about every science blog offers this type of explaining at some level. Personally, it is one of my favorite types of post. Examples from my own blog include a post on Gollum (from the book and movie versions of The Hobbit) to explain how humans see and how we could possibly see in the dark.1 And in “Why Do Astronauts Float around in Space?” I just answer the question posed in the title of the post.2 It’s all just explanation.

Are there things to explain in other disciplines? Of course. Why are some bacteria resistant to antibiotics? How does a computer work? Explanations are needed in every field.

Analysis

What is an analysis post? Let me start to answer that question with an example of one of my favorite types of analysis posts: video analysis. In video analysis, I start with a piece of video and find data to share about that video. For instance, suppose there is a crazy video of an eagle picking up a child.3 Is this real or fake? Answering this question would be the main point of one of my video analysis posts. Another popular class of analysis posts is the “what if” type. What if everyone on the Earth jumped at the same time? What if I wanted to start a car with D-cell batteries? How is an analysis different from an explanation post? In an analysis post, you are trying to show some possibly new thing (even if that thing actually isn’t new). It usually involves some type of calculation or data collection. An explanation post doesn’t require any data or calculations.

A speed test between the DC Comics superhero Flash and the Marvel Comics mutant Quicksilver is very typical of my analysis posts.4 I like to take something that could be real or is clearly not (it doesn’t matter) and then apply physics models to the situation. Another analysis post examines the depiction of gravity in the iPhone game Angry Birds Space.5 Do you think a peer-reviewed journal would accept a publication about superheroes or Angry Birds? Probably not.

Link gathering

How is any mere mortal able to sift through all of the eye-catching posts online and find the good ones? It seems like an impossible task. This is where your blog can come to the rescue. The best blogs take the time to filter through the massive Internet and find the best pieces of science for their readers to consume. Consider Swans on Tea (http://blogs.scienceforums.net/swansont) or Physics and Physicists (http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com). Perhaps the best example is Jennifer Ouellette’s Cocktail Party Physics and her “Physics Week in Review” (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics). All of these do an excellent job of finding and sharing great links—connecting readers to up-to-the-minute, accurate material in ways that traditional media can’t. I don’t post links too often on my own blog, but linking is the peer-review process of the Internet. Things with more links could be seen as being more valuable (although this is not always true).

Beyond the text

Where do you get ideas for blog posts? If you’re like me, you answer questions that you have yourself. When I see something in the news that looks interesting and physics-related—which isn’t difficult given that just about everything that moves or is powered by electricity is connected to a physics concept—I will make that a blog post. Sometimes, too, it will be a question that someone else asked. For instance, someone asked why the moon doesn’t crash into the Earth even though the Earth pulls on the moon.6 That’s a great question. It is fun to try and explain these things in a way that large numbers of people can understand.

There are two other great sources for physics blog posts. The first is movies. The physics of movies is usually wrong, making them a great source for posts. I think I could take just about any movie and make a physics post about it. If you want to connect with your readers, who may or may not be physics experts, movies can be an excellent way to go. Each scientific discipline has its own connections to the real (or fictional) world. This is what makes it so much fun to be an expert in some particular area.

The other very useful source for blog ideas is the Internet itself. Just start wandering around and see what questions are being asked. My own favorite sources for ideas are the social networking sites Reddit and Twitter. While on these sites, I look for anything that can spark an idea. It could be an awesome video, or maybe an unsettled argument. All you have to do is pick the topic and find out what scientific concept applies. It’s like an instant blog post right there. As a bonus, it is probably a video or discussion that is already popular. By adding the analysis or explanation, you are contributing to the usefulness of these Internet ideas.

Something else to consider for your blog posts: who is your audience? Sometimes you aren’t sure. A blog isn’t like a lecture or a presentation; instead, it is like a billboard on the side of the road. You might have an idea of who will pass by and see it, but you don’t know for sure. This can make it difficult to choose a writing level. Should you assume that your readers already understand Newtonian mechanics or should you start from scratch? Really, it’s a decision you need to make for each post. One of the nicest things about a blog is that you can write at whatever level you like, and unlike a magazine or newspaper article, you aren’t limited by length. Sometimes it is very helpful and interesting to provide every single detail needed to support a concept or idea. It may be one of the greatest things a physics blog can do—to show all the details that are needed.

What about blogging tools? This might be an area where “hard science” blogs differ most from other blogs. I can’t imagine a physics, math, or engineering blogger who would never use graphs. Scientists in general love graphs, but often physicists need them. How can you share the trajectory of an object without a graph (unless you show an animation)? There are several ways you can create a graph. Pick one and become an expert. This way you will know all the tricks and can work quickly to put your graph online. Some of the options include:

• Microsoft Excel. Excel might offer the simplest way to make a graph, particularly if you are already familiar with Microsoft Office products. But I rarely use it. Why? First, I think it was made with business people in mind and not scientists. Just look at the method for fitting a function to data: it is called the “trendline.” You can’t get more businesslike than that. The other problem I have with Excel graphs is that I find them less than pretty. Sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I’m just not fond of the way these graphs turn out. There are other software packages for graphing that are similar to Excel: Open Office, Google Docs, Apple’s Numbers. I would group these all together.

• Python. What do I use to make graphs? I almost always use the high-level programming language Python. Python is very simple to learn, and what makes it awesome are the modules—groupings of related, ready-made lines of code. You want to make a graph? Just import a graphing module (like Matplotlib). For me, this strategy has a number of advantages. First, the results are pretty. Second, since it is a module in Python I can plot things as a result of a calculation. It might take some time to learn a nice graphing tool like Matplotlib, but doing so will save time in the long run.

• Plotly. Another graphing option is the online tool Plotly (http://plot.ly). This free tool allows you to make both simple and complex graphs without too much fuss. What’s even better is that you can share them online.

What about equations? You might be tempted to just write out in your text an equation such as x = (1/2)at2 to represent that distance is equal to one-half the acceleration multiplied by the time squared. This does get the point across and it is simple. But what if you want to do something more complicated? What if you want to show an integral? Here is where you will need some method for making equations. LaTeX is a type of document formatting code—a typesetting programming language designed for equation-heavy documents. There is a LaTeX plugin for WordPress that will allow you to write LaTeX code in your blog and, just like magic, it will appear as a nice equation. You could think of it as the paper version of HTML in that you don’t see what your paper looks like until you render it.

If you don’t have a plugin, you could use some other method for creating your equations. I like to use a LaTeX equation editor for Mac OS X, but you could also use Microsoft Equation Editor or an online equation editor (see http://www.numberempire.com/texequationeditor/equationeditor.php). From here, you can save your equation as an image and then insert it into your blog. Just like the graphs, I would say it is important to become proficient with your tool of choice.

There is one more tool that I can’t get by without—something to make illustrations. Just about every science blogger at some point is going to need to make a drawing of something. Maybe it’s a diagram to show forces or something to indicate how dust interacts with air. Sure, you could do a Google image search to find a suitable diagram—but you might not find exactly what you want, or maybe it isn’t free to use. It’s always better to make your own. How do you make diagrams? Whatever you use, you want to be an expert. Just about all of my drawings are created in Apple’s Keynote software. Yes, I know that is meant for presentations and not really for drawings, but I can make just about anything with the drawing tools, so that’s what I use. And about pictures: you have a phone, right? It probably has a camera. Take pictures of things like bananas. You never know when you will need a banana picture. Again, it is better to use your own since it is exactly what you want. For moving images, I also like to use the free video analysis tool Tracker Video (https://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker). This lets me look at the positions of objects in each frame of a video. It is very useful when writing about YouTube videos and movies. The other thing that I use quite often is, again, the programming language Python, because there are so many situations that can be modeled with numerical calculations. If you don’t like Python, you could use any number of other packages. Again, pick your tool and become an expert.

Before you start your own blog in the hard sciences, then, try to think of the type of posts you might like to write and consider which tools you will want to use. Remember what Abraham Lincoln said about science blogs: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” If you take the time to master your tools and sharpen your skills, when the time comes to get a quick turnaround on a hot topic, your blog post will be ready.

Rhett Allain is a physics professor at Southeastern Louisiana University. He also writes the blog Dot Physics at Wired, and is the author of the book Geek Physics.

Rhett is based in Hammond, Louisiana. Find him at his blog, http://www.wired.com/category/science-blogs/dotphysics/, or follow him on Twitter, @rjallain.

Notes

1. Rhett Allain, “How Does Gollum See in the Dark?,” Wired, December 10, 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/12/how-does-gollum-see-in-the-dark.

2. Rhett Allain, “Why Do Astronauts Float around in Space?,” Wired, July 9, 2011, http://www.wired.com/2011/07/why-do-astronauts-float-around-in-space.

3. Rhett Allain, “Eagle Picks Up a Kid: Real or Fake?,” Wired, December 19, 2011, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/eagle-picks-up-a-kid-real-or-fake.

4. Rhett Allain, “Who’s Faster? Flash or Quicksilver?,” Wired, June 5, 2014, http://www.wired.com/2014/06/whos-faster-flash-or-quicksilver.

5. Rhett Allain, “The Gravitational Force in Angry Birds Space,” Wired, March 29, 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/03/the-gravitational-force-in-angry-birds-space.

6. Rhett Allain, “Why Doesn’t the Moon Crash into the Earth?,” Wired, November 29, 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/11/why-doesnt-the-moon-crash-into-the-earth.