The

SECtion

Intersection Study Association Newsletter

Issue
Oct/11

Editorial note

Six weeks at Six Flags

October 10/2011

Contents >
Time to save our own asses New discoveries: Too hard to handle The Discovery Festival Crashcase Page 2

By: Robbert van Leeuwen InterSECtion president

Six weeks have passed since Natalia, Robin and me became the new board of InterSECtion, and it still feels like Im entering some mad rollercoaster ride every day I cycle to Delft. Hectic at least, with so many things to think about, so many things to do, so many nice people to meet, and so little time. And like the corkscrewed double looped rollercoaster Nightmare at Crack Axle Canyon in Six Flags does, every ride looms before me as a terrifying experience. But once Im in it, I just enjoy the ride and have a great time. And when Ive completed yet another day on this ride, it makes me feel a bit proud when I step out (alive) and head for the next. When I look at the last couple of weeks, I cant help to feel a bit proud, proud of what we as students and staff of such a small study can achieve. Proud of our founders and the previous boards. Proud of the new students. And of course proud of what we already have achieved in the past six weeks. Weve had a great introduction dinner, a cozy transferborrel, we started our first Crashcase and we had the premiere of an already legendary Beachweekend.

Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 F168: Behind the Scenes Events and News Page 7 Page 8

SEC Students going abroad

InterSECtion activities

Robin, Natalia and Robbert

But our latest pride is whats in front of you: the newsletter 2.0 With this newsletter, made by and for SEC enthusiasts, we want to involve you (even more) with the study and the activities of the people from Sience Education and Communication. The newsletter will feature announcements of activities, stories of students, news from the field, interviews with teachers and much, much more. Enjoy this pilot version, share your thoughts about it with us, contribute with notes and I hope to see you soon on one of our activities!

Sta >

Board: Robbert van Leeuwen Natalia Rodriguez Robin Vermeij

President Secretary Treasurer

Design and Edition: Natalia Rodriguez Contributors: Merel Segers Robin Vermeij Miranda Pieron

Contact >
Room F154 Building 22 Lorentzweg 1 2628 CJ Delft The Netherlands board@sa-intersection.nl www.sa-intersection.nl

*The InterSECtion newsletter is a publication by the Study Association of the Master in Science Education and Communication at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Student Article

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The

Time to save our own asses

The danger of saying: I want to save the planet!
By: Merel Segers
The planet is fine, the people are fu@ked!, according to American stand-up comedian George Carlin. The planet has been around for 4.5 billion years while we have been living on it for just half a million of them. Earth has been through magnet storms, super volcanoes, solar flares, world wide floods and came out of it ok. But still most people think sustainability is about saving the planet, not ourselves. And that's just the thing that works against reaching a sustainable world. Reaching a sustainable world is a big task. It requires a group effort and anyone offering to help is valuable. Less people are motivated to put effort in something vague as the planet, nature or even climate change or reduction of carbon emissions. In contrast, working against the flooding of the Netherlands or enough food in the future are things people are motivated to work for. Linking the necessity for ourselves to (simple) actions will increase the amount of motivated people. Credibility is also an issue when I want to save the planet is the view of society on environmental experts. The association with tree huggers who just love nature causes preconceptions. People might not know that being sustainable also means making a profit and assuring we have the same or a better lifestyle in the future. Experts point out opportunities and problems with this in the back of their minds. Ok, but maybe you, the reader, are really into saving nature because nature is do really want to save the planet, instead of this weird creature `human beings'. What's wrong with that? The first danger is that planet-savers can focus too much on a tiny thing and dont see the big picture. Imagine this bug living in the middle of the Amazon. One day, an environmentalist notices that they are decreasing in number and decides to come to the rescue and save this species.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dandy_lions

After many years, he returns home and tells his family, I saved these bugs. But did he do anything useful for society in the meanwhile? Does society need this species? Probably not. Secondly, planet-savers are an elite group, closed off and with strict norms and values. Doesnt sound like fun does it? Many talented people who can bring a certain quality to the table are not likely to join the group of planetsavers. So you end up with a cynical little group complaining about the rest of society and contributing little. The last danger is the dream of many planetsavers to live, alone or with a couple of likeminded souls, in a self sufficient community. Do these people contribute anything to reach sustainability? No, because by sheltering themselves from society, being so busy the entire day with being self sufficient they dont work to save ourselves. George Carlin is right, we are the ones in trouble. This only increases by the I want to save the planet view. If we want more people to put an effort into sustainability the necessity to ourselves has to be shown. Sustainability should be about saving our own asses, stop trying to save the planet!

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The

Science News

New discoveries: Too hard to handle?

By: Robin Vermeij
When explaining the speed of light a comparison like: It takes you 1.27 seconds to travel to the moon with the speed of light or A flight to New York from Amsterdam would take a light particle 0.0196 seconds can be used. Nice to know, but quite useless. Hardly anybody reading this has ever actually been to the moon and blinking an eye takes about 30 times longer than 0.0196 seconds (By the way, it takes 1169231 Eiffel towers stacked upon each other to reach the moon) . What has happened is that the problem is shifted to the other side of the unimaginable spectrum. So it is already difficult, if not impossible, to explain the speed of light in terms of what it actually means in earth scale measures. The superlatives of these communication difficulties, in this case neutrinos traveling even faster than light, asks for a careful explanation. Rescaling the size of the problem can help but the danger is that you keep balancing between the imaginable and the unimaginable (while it is still reality). For example the speed of light compared to a speed of a passenger jet is equal to an earth orbiting space shuttle compared to you biking to the TU campus. We can imagine the passenger jet and the biking, but the speed of the space shuttle and the speed of light are again way more difficult. A solution, although for some people probably difficult but in principle a very easy one, just comfort yourself with the idea that you will never be able to really understand the feeling of the order of magnitude and that people who do these kind of discoveries know what they are talking about and realize the possible consequences. Once we have practical applications the real value of terms as the speed of light or the size of a neutrino will emerge and the newest state of the art skyscrapers will be compared with time traveling neutrinos instead of Eiffel towers. And everybody will understand. *The Eiffel tower has a height of 325 meters and the
volume contained by an Olympic swimming pool is, give or take, 2500 cubic meters. Keep that in mind when you hear a comparison again.

Woosh!! There goes one, do you see it? I dont, it is smaller and goes faster than whatever I can imagine. The Scientists at CERN can, and therefore they saw neutrinos the size of nothing flying faster than the speed of light. Surprisingly, this breaking news of some time ago did not really grasp me as I would expect it to do. That same night at the Discovery Festival in NEMO, a scientist was trying to convince all listeners about the importance and implications of this discovery and chattered a bit on about time traveling. While she was talking, I got the feeling that also she could not (yet) really grasp the nature and behavior of the swift neutrinos. Without discussing the validity of the experiment and the reasons of CERN for telling the world the outcome it has been suggested that it is another charming act to raise funds we can ask ourselves what it really means for us, the ordinary people and how it is perceived. It is indeed very hard to depict these matters in language that everybody understands. Could it be that we do not realize yet the order of magnitude of neutrinos and the speed of light? When explaining scientific and engineering related subjects often a comparison with matters known to everyone, for example the Eiffel tower or an Olympic swimming pool*, will suffice. But the problem is that the order of magnitude of the numbers produced by CERN is beyond imagination.The result is that while explaining these numbers, they are compared with other events or physical objects which are also beyond imagination.

Crashcase

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Festival

Discovery

NEMO

By: Natalia Rodriguez

Nine Science Communication Master and Minor studens participated at the rst Crashcase of the year at the Discovery Festival of the NEMO Science Museum.
Science-related art, high quality music and DJs, experiments and more than 1400 young people met last September 23 at the Discovery Festival held by the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam. In this nightime festival visitors enjoyed party and also experienced what scientific research is about. The Discovery Festival began in 2006 as a small group of friends who where enthusiastic about new music, science and art. Today this unique combination has atracted thousands of visitors curious about new ways of communicationg science. This event was the perfect opportunity for the Crashteam to work on a real project and put in practice the knowledge learned through Science Communication courses. Hired by the NEMO the team conducted personal surveys and questionaires in order to evaluate peoples perception aboout scientists and evaluate the impact of the event. With the guide of TU Delft Science Communication teachers, the intersection Crash Team is a student consultancy service for companies who need advisory in communication strategies and evaluations. An international and multidisciplinary team will work on solutions on a short term period coming up with a presentation of results and an advisory report including recomendations. Now the crashteam is analysing data and working on the report for the Discovery Festival, results will tell how succesful was the event and what is the attitude toward science of young people who visited the NEMO. If you are a SEC student and want to experience what Science Communication work is about, join the next Crashcase, but if maybe you work on a company and need some expert help, dont hesitate and contact us: board@sa-intersection.nl

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SEC Students

Students going abroad

Two SEC students are going abroad to conduct research in the communication area, Australia and Dublin are the destinations.
Each year The University of Queensland in Australia offers the Summer Research Scholarship Program, an opportunity for international master students to engage in research projects over the summer vacation period (November-February). Projects are available in many areas at the different faculties of UQ which currently has an agreement with our university. A database of projects is available from July each year including some projects in the Communication and Education area. This year Science Communication Master student Natalia Rodriguez was awarded with the scholarship and will travel to Brisbane next month. She will receive an stipend for the duration of her research at the faculty of Molecular Biosciences. Natalia will work as an editor of a new science magazine and will conduct a research about student dificulties when engaging into science writing. This is an excellent opportunity for current first year master students who are looking for a research internship next year. For more information visit: http://www.uq.edu.au/. "Public Engagement with Cleantech Innovation" is the title of Pat Hongs Ph.D research at Dublin City University. Pat has recently graduated from our master in Science Communication. The aim of the research is to establish and design effective communication channels to enhance interactions, discussions and dialogues among policy makers, industries, the public, NGOs, research institutions, and relevant actors in the Cleantech Innovation. Pat was awarded with a full scholarship to conduct this research with the School of communications at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Dublin City University is the leader of clean technology and innovation of Ireland, where a new university designated research initiative is formed to engage stakeholders in the process of energy research and innovation. Pat is leaving Delft this week, we wish her the best luck in this new challenge. http://www4.dcu.ie/communications/phd_schol arship.shtml

SEC students and sta are always welcome at the InterSECtion room, you can get free co ee and join us at anytime. At 12:00 we have lunch together and for 1 Euro you can eat with us.
Want to write an article, publish an event, new Fridays at 16:00 is our beer day so come and enjoy !!!! or advertise?. Next newsletter isuue will be out on November 14, deadline Join our facebook group (Study Association InterSECtion) and you willfor submissions: November 8.

get the latest information and activities organized by the board, you can also follow us on twitter at @sa_intersection.

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With an amazing sunny weekend Scheveningen was the perfect place to enjoy an intergration activity with the new master students. Starting with breakfast at the beach students had the opportunity to relax but also get to know better other SEC members and the new board. Afternoon trivia games, dinner De Beren restaurant, drinks at a cozy bar and staying on a nice surfer-container hotel made the Beachweekend event a complete success, hope next year you can joins us too.

The

Beach Weekend

transfer borrel

The transfer borrel is a tradition every new academic year. Pat, Melvin and Kees (who unfortunately was absent doing his internship in Hamburg) members of 2010-2011 board say goodbye and welcome the new board members. The new board received nice gifts including a picnic basket, dishes to paint and a racket to kill mosquitos.

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Graduating students

F168 Behind the Scenes

By: Miranda Pieron

Decorated with huge sheets of paper with colourful mindmaps, brainstorm overviews and complex schedules, we find ourselves in the graduation room. Although located at the very end of the SEC hallway, hidden from view, we are actually in the middle of crossing the metaphorical bridge to the real world that awaits us outside the safe university walls. So, what should you know about this hideout? First of all, these are the people you will encounter there: Clemence, in the far corner close to the window, with a background in Industrial Design. Her graduation keyword is innovation. Then we have Merel, sitting opposite of Clemence and devoted to Industrial Ecology. Graduation keyword: sustainability. Directly on your left youll find Ammeret, already graduated in Applied Physics and researching interdisciplinarity. Lastly there is Miranda, seated at the high table (youll understand when you compare it to Ammerets). With a background in Water Management, her graduation keyword is knowledge. Although some of us spend much time in the field, others practically live here in F168. The nice flowers, which should be very pleased already when they are properly cared for longer than three days, the bread machine and the wall decorations make this the perfect home to venture out from into the big world. You might have noticed that we are four girls, and next to this four science communication students, which means we are in need of some diversity. And it gets better: theres even still an empty place left to make things complete! Already looking forward to your graduation project after reading this story and curious about what will become of you? Come and visit us in F168.

At the end of every quarter, we have a course evaluation, for both minor and master students, Science Education and Communication, please join them to improve your lectures, the next one is coming soon, we will anonce the date and location.

News and Events

PCST
The deadline for proposals submission for the next international Public Communication of Science Conference (Florence, 18-20 april 2012) has been extended to 14th October, 2011. For more information go to www.pcst2012.org to get news, updates and information on programme highlights, registration and accommodation.

SECtion

The

ECSITE
The Ecsite Annual Conference is the main European event for science centres and museums. The Call for Proposals is now open.The Conference will be held at Cit de lespace, Toulouse, France, 31 May- 2 June 2012. More information at: www.ecsite.eu/annual_co nference Deadline for proposals: 25 October 2011.

British Science Communication Conference

Dates are now confirmed for the annual two-day Science Communication Conference of the British Science Association. The conference will be on 14 & 15 May 2012 at Kings Place, London. More information at: http://www.britishscience association.org

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dandy_lions

Study Store Discount!!!

A special 10% discount on Science Communication books is now available for SEC students through the study store. If you want to have more information about titles and procedures drop by the InterSECtion office or send us an email at: board@sa-intersection.nl

Want to contribute?
If you enjoy writing you can contribute to the next intersection newsletter. Science related stories, events and activities can be part of the next issue coming up on November 14. The deadline for submissions is November 4 and all SEC students and staff are welcome to participate in our new 2.0 project, the newsletter will be available online and a small number of copies will be printed.

Newsletter name
SEC newsletter name is currently The Section, however we would like to receive opinions and suggestions for a nice name that identifies our Master and Association, send us your ideas for the next issue so we can all choose a title for the newsletter. We would also like some feedback about this issue and know what you think about it, inew ideas are always welcome, hope you have all enjoyed it!