• Question: Is it hard to interest people in your work

    Asked by Eden to Gaia, Jim, Scott on 17 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Jim Barrett

      Jim Barrett answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      I find it tricky, especially since most of my work is just maths and programming. Working in astrophysics makes it slightly easier, since people are generally quite interested in space stuff 🙂

    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      Not if you’re as good as me at explaining it 😉

      How’s this for interesting – my job in a nutshell:

      I run a plasma (like the Sun) which drives a particle accelerator (the most powerful in the UK, based near Oxford) for over 1000 scientists to use each year to improve your everyday life!

      My machine, for example, has made better drugs, saved premature-babies’ lives, made sure aeroplanes don’t fall out the sky, developed hard-drive data-storage, made better solar panels and even improved Cadbury’s chocolate recipe!

      The key to science communication is to keep to the point with punchy, interesting, relevant anecdotes that anyone can understand and be entertained by. I hope that’s true of this comment! If so, please vote for me 😉

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