Prompt post #3: Exploring Communication

by Guangyao Q.

It was such a pleasure to have an interview with Professor Kirsten T. about her research in particle astrophysics. She used to work for ATLAS, which was the experiment of detecting and measuring proton-proton collisions. Now, Professor. Kirsten is working for the High Altitude Water Cherenkov(HAWC) and is mainly about the most extreme environments in the universe. For instance, gamma-ray bursts, pulsar, and black holes. PHY 184, which is about electromagnetism, is her class , and she is a great instructor.

"The balances of writings , which write for public, between profession and public are hard to control", Prof. Kirsten told me. First, scientists use different medias. Scientific journals publish the articles, which mainly prove for professional readers. University websites proves a way of communication with public, which mainly contain special articles. The usages of words are very different. Special articles have fewer specific-nouns and more explanations. These details are easy for public readers, who do not have background knowledges. Even special articles have some properties, which are reader-friendly, but it is still a challenge for professors to write an article for public readers.

Do researchs. Collect datas. Analysis datas. These are fundamental concepts of writing of physics field. Research is the first step of writing. All essays are based on researches. You need to design the experiments well, and then you can get the data you want. Some researches and experiments are so advanced that professors have to invent the special tools to fix the problems. Good experiments provides good datas, sometimes. Analysis datas and pick up the datas, which are needed. Set a topic after you analysis the datas. Topic needs evidences to support, and evidences come from datas. Wrong conclusions is tolerant. The collection of small steps will be a huge steps for human beings.

Thanks for reading.