"Dance Your Ph.D." Finalists Announced

sciencehabit writes "Science has announced the 12 finalists for its annual "Dance Your PhD" contest. Among the finalists are dances about nanofibers and explosions, fusion implosions at the National Ignition Facility, and the science of tornadoes. A panel of esteemed scientists, artists, and educators are judging the finalists now to choose the winners. The winners and audience favorite will be announced on 3 November.

Comments

Not entirely frivolous

[Krishnoid]

In a way, this helps connect scientists and the layperson:

• It's associating a very familiar visual form with frequently abstract, difficult-to-visualize topics in a way that makes scientific results (I'm stretching here) a little more accessible to the layperson
• The layperson can see that scientists who live in their brains and lab much of the time also express themselves in a universal human way
• For the scientists, it has them consider their research and work in something other than the classical scientific context. While many scientists have artistic talents, in a way this has them consider something functional and concrete in a more aesthetic form. You could say that artists do this when representing reality in an abstract way; this is similar, except with the reality here being otherwise inaccessible to human senses and experience due to its size, speed, location, etc.