Grad Student Wins Alan Alda's Flame Challenge

eldavojohn writes "Scientists have long been criticized of their inability to communicate complex ideas adequately to the rest of society. Similar to his questions on PBS' Scientific American Frontiers, actor Alan Alda wrote to the journal Science with a proposition called The Flame Challenge (PDF). Contestants would have to explain a flame to an eleven-year-old kid, and the entries would be judged by thousands of children across the country. The winner of The Flame Challenge is quantum physics grad student Ben Ames, whose animated video covers concepts like pyrolysis, chemiluminescence, oxidation and incandescence boiled into a humorous video, complete with song. Now they are asking children age 10-12 to suggest the next question for the Flame Challenge. Kids out there, what would you like scientists to explain?"

Comments

1 of my favorite Antenna channels

[cpu6502]

Over-the-air channel 12-3 broadcasts an hour of Scientific American every day. Very well done (if a bit simplistic). They air other documentaries too. I remember when TLC used to have shows like this, but now it's PBS doing the job.

Re:1 of my favorite Antenna channels

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

Is it just me, or has the quality of the trolls at Slashdot absolutely plummeted in the last several years? I really appreciate quality trolling, but I'm afraid that it's turned into a lost art form around here.

Re:1 of my favorite Antenna channels

[Obfuscant]

Why? Because we're all precious little snow-flakes, we all have interesting stories, and we all deserve our own television show.

Nope. Wrong.

The mass marketing of specialized channels happened because there simply weren't enough specialized viewers to keep the specialization afloat. They all had to start creating new stuff to draw more eyeballs for the advertisers.

MTV was an early victim. People got tired of watching music videos and they had to expand into whatever was edgy and new for the demographic they sought. That's why we have Real World and Road Rules and The Challenge XXI and "Pregnant at 16" and whatever other stuff they can draw people to. "Made" is homage to the fact that MTV has changed from music TV into "teen TV" but just not been honest enough to change the name.

It is an insidious problem. AMC (American MOVIE CLASSICS) has created new TV series (Mad Men) and is now heavy into "CSI Miami". Even TVLand has fallen into the trap, airing new sitcoms they've produced.

It was a grand and glorious vision in the 80's. 500 specialized channels so anyone could find the kind of material they wanted to watch anytime. Cable networks starting up to do the equivalent of "The Scotch Tape Store" or "Spatula City". And then finding out that fractional audiences brought fractional ad revenues.

PBS gets away with it because they have convinced donors that they are special and it's an honor to give lots of money ( a rich people demonstration of social responsibility), they have convinced advertisers to pay for ads that are almost not ads ("this show is funded by ..."), and use a lot of BBC produced programs to draw viewers that will pay to keep the transmitters fed with electrons.

PBS is, however, far from the "if not PBS, then who..." they were close to being many years ago. I was going to say british sitcoms are "if not PBS, then BBC America", but even BBCA has fallen into the trap and is busy showing lots of US shows --- at least any US show that has Gordon Ramsay as the host.

Re:1 of my favorite Antenna channels

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot ghosts and aliens.

If I see that orange guy that is just abosolutely positive that aliens are milking our prostates to create alien-human hybrid living spacecraft to deliver pyramid materials to far-off galaxies... I'm gunna throw my TV out the window. The best part is that H presents him like an expert. Whatever the fuck an "expert" in active alien conspiracies is, I'll never know.

As for all the fucking retarded ghost shows, they just repeat the same nonsense, over and over.

"That has to be a ghost."
"No it doesn't."
"I dunno, I'm pretty sure that's a ghost."
"Nope."
"Look here, there was a sound."
"You're in a 200 year old building, jackass."
"Yeah but that's not the sound a building makes."
"God, please shut up."
"We need to do an emergency exorcism. C'mon everybody..."

"Next time, on ghost show, the guys we pay to make this show are sure they think they might have recorded yet another random sound that could be evidence of a potential ghost. Maybe."

What kind of asshole tunes in, week after week, for that?

Re:1 of my favorite Antenna channels

[moderatorrater]

now it's PBS doing the job

Nova's been on the air since 1974. Either you're really old or you aren't giving PBS enough credit for always having good science shows.

Fucking magnets how do they work?

[h4rr4r]

âoeFUCKING MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist

Re:Fucking magnets how do they work?

[v1]

FUCKING MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK?

yes, that would be an attractive video to watch!

Re:Fucking magnets how do they work?

[FrootLoops]

How do they work? Like this.
Why do they work? Fuck if I know. At least Richard Feynman agreed with me.

Re:Fucking magnets how do they work?

[paulmac84]

Definitely going to want a citation for that. Failing a citation, a copy of your prescription will do.

How Women's Minds Work

[fallen1]

I'd enjoy hearing the explanation behind how women's minds work. Seriously. I'm sure most guys out there have experienced the "I think I've finally figured out most of what makes her tick. Now I just need to.. what the fuck?! She just did the opposite of what I.. never mind, I give up."

Oh, wait, this is /. I'm talking about... ;-)

Re:How Women's Minds Work

[lpp]

I'm just guessing here, but probably:

Give me this.
Buy me that.

Re:How Women's Minds Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Most non-boring men are complicated too. It just seems that some men whine a lot more about it.

So please get over this overused trope. I don't come here to have my gender made fun of. It's getting pretty tiring getting hit with this ridiculousness in the middle of reading actual decent comments.

Re:How Women's Minds Work

[Megane]

I think you missed a few:

6. If he is tired, or sick, she wants to be pampered.
7. If he is is stressed, she wants assistance
8. If he is trying to get some actual work done, she just wants someone to listen to her
9. If he is feeling tired or lonely, she wants to be gushed over.
10. If he is crying over the monthly bills, she wants to go shopping. Sometimes, she doesn't even know why she wants to go shopping. In those cases, just leave her alone till she's done.

Re:How Women's Minds Work

[FrootLoops]

You know, there are a lot of downsides to being gay and not a lot of upsides, but at least I've never seen a book titled Bears are from Mars, twinks are from Venus.

Re:Next Question?

[eyenot]

God, dude. Alan Alda has made significant contributions to the public understanding of science through hosting a show about it. He never plays the smart-ass, he's always unassuming and humble, and through that honesty (and by way of interviewing authorities on various subjects) he brings the most complex scientific concepts down to a common level that most people can understand. It's why his show is so popular. So, it may have been quite awhile since M*A*S*H* but that doesn't mean he hasn't stayed relevant. In fact, if Alan Alda wanted to interview a famous scientist -- better yet, YOUR favorite famous scientist, take your pick (I'll pick Stephen Hawking for you in your absence) -- he would get that interview at nearly a moment's notice! There's no scientist who wouldn't want to be interviewed by him and seen on his show. So, Big-Mouth, how many famous scientists can you speak with whenever you feel like it?

Re:The burning question...

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Can you explain why you're never gonna give me up?

Re:Next Question?

[jedidiah]

Some people judge based on the message rather than the messenger.

Is this aimed at 11-year-olds?!?

[MartinSchou]

It's a great explanation, but why does it feel like it's explaining it to a 6-year-old?

I have a hard time imagining my 11-year-old self taking it serious at all.

Personally I think they should change the challenge a bit. Explain X to an adult, but in a way that an 11-year-old can grasp.

Stop talking down to kids.

Re:Is this aimed at 11-year-olds?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, it's talking down but it's also spouting all kinds of random vocabulary that they don't need. Getting a basic understanding of the concept is much more important than knowing what everything's called.

Re:Is this aimed at 11-year-olds?!?

[FrootLoops]

Verily, betimes jargon need be eschewed for the erudition of the laity.
Err--I mean, sometimes avoiding big words is the best way to teach people something.

That's not universally true though. Some concepts are just complicated and avoiding jargon makes them harder to understand--in the long term. An example from math:

Jargon-filled: "An nth degree polynomial has at most n roots."
Non-jargony: "Suppose you are given a starting number and have a fixed process you use to create an ending number. Let's also say the process has a few rules. You begin with the starting number and are allowed to do three types of operations on your current number: (1) add a number from a list you chose beforehand; (2) multiply by a number from a list you chose beforehand; or (3) multiply by the starting number. For how many starting numbers can your process end up creating 0? It turns out the answer is at most the number of times you used operation (3), plus one, unless you multiplied by 0 at some point in operation (2) in which case every ending number is 0."

Now suppose you were interested in proving the statement. The jargon-filled version can be followed up by basic properties of polynomial factorization which gives the result quickly. You could translate those properties without jargon but there would be three long-term problems: (1) the result would not be very memorable since the important individual ideas wouldn't be picked out for special emphasis with special words; (2) the ideas presented wouldn't be very portable (that is, applicable to other problems) since they're not clearly broken into usable pieces; (3) it would take a long time to communicate with others on similar topics without jargon (they'd invent their own, actually).

Still, when teaching things to a general audience that probably won't continue down a particular line of inquiry, jargon is a bad plan.

Re:Usefulness?

[ae1294]

Mankind has learned and used fire for over 100,000 yrs without needing to explain in words to a 10-12 year old something that is best grasped through the senses.

Pretty sure the number you where looking for was 6000... 6000 years.... your welcome...

Re:Why is the sky blue?

[dylan_-]

The sky is blue because air is blue and the sunlight is shining through the air.

Where do babies come from?

When a man and a woman love each other very much, they cuddle is a special way and make a baby.

How can I make this other person like me?

Firstly, you need to record all your actions for a whole month.

Once you have that footage, kidnap the person. Then randomly torture them for a couple of days asking questions that are totally irrelevant to your purpose. This is to invoke a Stockholm syndrome with the torturer.

Now, start showing clips of the video of yourself in different scenarios, and following that you test your victim with choices on their actions... such as way of walking, responding to people, types of clothing etc. If they choose the same as you would, they are rewarded. If not, they are beaten and tortured further.

After about 18 months of this treatment, this person will be just like you.