How to…

How to…
If you divide an elephant into two you don’t get two elephants. However sharing knowledge
both increases the number of people sharing it and it also develops what is shared.
This booklet contains a series of one liners, under 12 different headings, for aspects you
should pay attention to in different situations. It is part of the generic training of PhD
students at the Department of Applied Phyisics at Chalmers University of Technology in
Göteborg, Sweden – it is also a chance for me as head of department to meet you in a more
intensive setting.
The workshops are once a month (2h) and go under the name “How to…” with the following
topics (tentative dates in italics):
1. to teach (PA) – Feb 13
2. to give a talk (PA) – March 19
3. to write a paper (PA) – April 23
4. to make a poster (PA) – May 21
5. to apply for money (Mikael Käll) – June 18
6. to make it safe in the lab (Mats Rostedt) - (full day, September 5)
7. to inform the public & giving a public lecture (feat. Anita Fors &P-O Nilsson) – Sept 26
8. to make a career (feat. Ulf Gustafsson& Sofia Månsson) – Oct 30
9. to start a company (feat. Bengt Kasemo)- Nov
10. to figure out what responsibility I have for my research results? (Dec.)
Welcome
Peter Apell - 2012
1
1. How to teach
During the first part of the meeting the participants will gather in groups disucssing and
writing down their own experiences, expectations and endevours in the field of knowledge
and skill transfer. This is done in three ways: first you think about it for yourself, then you
discuss your thoughts in a small group and finally we bring up the group points for a
common discussion among all participants. After a break I present my own thoughts about
the topic How to teach leading to an even more general discussion.
While applying for a position in the Swedish academic system your “pedagogisk skicklighet”
will be evaluated – I give some comments about this at the end. It is in Swedish and you’ll
simply have to try to understand it ☺
How to teach. One liners:
1. Enthusiasm beats pedagogy
2. Knowledge beats didatics
3. Commitment must show
4. Be present
5. Identify your own way of learning
6. Identify your own way of teaching
7. Learn from the best
8. Do you know why you ‘re teaching?
9. For whom are you teaching?
10. Break the barrier you – students
11. Be interactive not reactive
12. YOU cannot make them engineers. Only themselves
13. Make contract about what everbody should achieve during the course
14. They’re called students but they´re grown-ups and should be treated as such
15. Learning goals needs proper assessement
16. Have you made a change in the students brains?
17. Variation is king/queen.
18. Oral exam underused - written exam overused
19. Attention span is usually maximum 18 minutes
20. Always make a summary
21. Provide take-home message
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22. Change course content constantly
23. Change courses at least every 5th year
24. Teach different student groups
25. The best lectures are available on YouTube – use “em”
26. The best powerpoints can be downloaded – why make your own
27. Use adhesive gold stars to show your appreciation!
28. Make the learning environment attractive to activate the students
29. Teaching might look like acting and stand-up; but is not
30. Review the past – foreshadow what’s coming
31. You: concepts, theories and techniques. Students: problems
32. Don’t be afraid repeating yourself
33. Ask a lot of questions yourself
34. Get students to ask questions all the time
35. The more energy you put in the more fun it is
36. Perfect your techniques
37. Vary the use of different types of equipment
38. 1 minute fiddling with equipment can ruin a lecture
39. 1 minute overtime can ruin a lecture
40. Nonchalance is a sin
41. Teach the audience you have - not the audience you dream of
42. Team-teach takes time but reward is enormous
43. Ask experienced teacher to come and see you in action for feedback
44. The new vocabulary encountered often defines a course and can be used as such
45. Vary lerning context constantly
46. Give students more information than they can handle at once and they keep it longer
47. Less is not always simpler
48. Make everything as simple as possible but not simpler (Einstein)
49. Figure out and beat student strategies which often goes for root learning
50. Space learning events for deeper longlasting knowledge
51. Testing not only means testing it changes the knowledge
52. Testing is another learning component
53. Desired difficulty: the harder to learn the harder to forget
54. You have to interrupt their own thoughts
55. Say the same thing over and over in different costumes
56. Lecturers talk while other people sleep (Camus)
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57. Don’t let your lecture notes pass to student notes without passing their brains (~Twain)
58. Teaching means showing to students a model of professional practice
59. Knowing something and knowing how to explain are different things
60. Lecture is not only material it is strategies to communicate and connect
61. Do not over-lecture
62. Know your audience
63. Lecture is like a paper – introduction/body/conclusions
64. Reflect over your performance
65. Monitor student expectations
66. Meet “em “
67. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires (W A Ward)
68. difficile est tenere quae acceperis nisi exerceas (It is difficult to retain what you may have
learned unless you should practise it)
69. A good course has width (information content), depth ( level of complexity) and height (the
level at which students can create new knowledge from the material)1
70. Three most important factors: practice, practice and practice.
For a continuous update and development of your own learning to be a better and better teacher I
recommend you to follow Tomorrow’s Professor at Stanford. For instance #1146 has a very good
summary of designing and delivering effective lectures.
GOOD LUCK in getting your students attention and engagement. It will be a very rewarding
experience throughout your life./P Apell
1
A course in law could have more information content than a physics course. The complexity refers to how
much everyday experience we have. Mechanics, Electromagnetism and Quantum Mechanics are deeper and
deeper. The height is related to the potential the course has to give the student a possibility to “understand” =
transformed to personal knowledge, make applications (I’m indepted to Arne Kihlberg for this structure which
deeply has influenced my way of viewing learning). In this respect Quantum mechanics has less height than
Mechanics.
4
Pedagogisk skicklighet (baserad på Uppsala Universitets dokument)
Förmåga och vilja att regelmässigt tillämpa ett förhållningssätt, de kunskaper och de
färdigheter som på bästa sätt främjar lärandet hos de studenter läraren har. Detta skall
ske i enlighet med de mål som gäller, och inom de ramar som står till buds och
förutsätter kontinuerlig utveckling av egen kompetens och undervisningens utformning.
1. Förhållningssätt = en tillämpad pedagogisk grundsyn så som den kommer till uttryck i
handling. Avser framför allt hur läraren ser på sin respektive studenternas roll och
ansvar. Hänsyn skall tas till vad forskningen visar bäst främjar studenternas lärande.
2. Kunskap inom fyra områden: ämnet, hur studenterna lär i allmänhet och i ämnet,
undervisningsprocess
och
undervisningsmetoder,
utbildningsmål
och
utbildningsorganisation.
3. Förmåga: att visa förmåga att planera och organisera verksamheten, att strukturera
och presentera ämnesinnehållet, att anpassa undervisningen till aktuell
studerandegrupp.
4. Situationsanpassning: Att optimera den mångfald av faktorer som påverkar
lärandesituationen så att studenternas lärande blir maximalt
5. Uthållighet: med oförminskat engagemang termin efter termin genomföra
omfattande undervisning = att regelmässigt arbeta på bästa möjliga sätt.
6. Ständig utveckling: kontinuerligt ta in ny kunskap, lära sig av erfarenheter, fortbilda
sig ämnesmässigt och pedagogiskt.
Sammantaget är det din förmåga att tillämpa din totala kunskap som är det synliga
uttrycket för pedagogisk skicklighet.
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2. How to give a talk (with ppt...)
During the first part of the meeting the participants will gather two and two and practice
one at a turn 1 minute talks:
Exercise 1: Who are you & what do you do?
Exercise 2: What is you main research question and take-home message?
Thereafter each one will talk to the whole group for 1 minute making a combo of 1&2.
Finally we do
Exercise 3: Do 1&2 in the elevator going up to the 7th floor (in the actual elevator).
Again we focus on action and your own resources. We bring up major points for a common
discussion among all the participants. At the end of our workshop I present my own
thoughts about the topic How to give a talk leading (hopefully ☺) to an even more general
discussion.
How to give a talk. One liners:
1. If YOU don’t look interested yourself…
2. Enthusiasm beats rethoric
3. Never ever start a talk making an excuse – for anything
4. Why do YOU give the talk?
5. What’s your main take-home message?
6. Listeners should understand why you say what you say
7. The listener decides what you have said not you
8. Who are they, why are they there, what do they want to know?
9. Tell what you’re going to tell them, then tell them; finally tell what you told them
10. Get the attention of your audicence
11. Logic
12. Tempo
13. Tell a story
14. Personal
15. Fill the stage
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16. Point with your body
17. Know what you’re talking about
18. Do something unexpected
19. I not you
20. Kill your darlings – discard anything unneccesary for the talk
21. Careful preration is a must
22. Don’t SAY anything essential which is not on your slides
23. Imagine no one listens to what you’re saying
24. Be careful to use symbols your audience are familiar with
25. Be specific
26. Be careful about citing others…did they say it?
27. Speak up loudly, clearly and monitor your speed
28. Use michrophone if available
29. 1 minute beyond alloted time is bad and can undo every point you’ve made before
30. Ending 5 minutes before alloted time is also bad and…..
31. When getting questions - position yourself as interested and helpful
32. Let questioner finish question – it buys you time
33. Sometimes questions have to be rephrased – also because some might not have gotten it
34. Answer yes or no if possible
35. Don’t be worried about not knowing the answer – thank for brining up the issue
36. Deflect hostile questions – never argue with a questioner
37. Can people in the back hear you, see you and see the pictures/text you project
38. Talk to your audience not only the experts in it
39. If using notes – put them on small cards
40. If using notes – don’t ever read directly from them
41. Never read from the screen/wall
42. If you fail to prepare you prefare to fail
43. Don’t distract your audience with fancy fonts, various effects or shaded backgrounds
44. Think about to use (full/partial) handouts if you need to share more information
45. Maintain eye contact with your audience
46. Use floor space while talking
47. Tell the audience if they can ask questions during and/or after the talk
48. Simple is always better than complicated
49. Practice what you say, how you say it and the timing
50. Limit number of equations
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51. Find out number of slides/unit time which come across
52. Practice your talk with friends and/or colleagues
53. Ask someone after the talk what was good – what can be improved
54. No audience have never been insulted by a clear talk (J Wilkins)
55. Black is easiest color to read – red the hardest
56. Keep the same colours and fonts throughout the presentation
57. There’s a lower limit to the amount of material on a slide…
58. There’s a maximum amount of material on a slide…
59. When you give a talk you present yourself
60. Many men are colour blind to various degrees
61. Body language matters – imaging hanging in your hair
62. Articulate – train your talk with a cork between your teeth
63. Keep the balance – train it; ask somebody to push on you
64. Use bent arms + open hands to be able to do gestures
65. Shaking? Push fingertips together for a few seconds (nobody notices it while doing it)
66. Shaking legs? Same method as above to make muscles” tired”.
67. Don’t let technology fuck you up
68. Carry back-up in case (USB, home-page with talk,…)
69. Acronyms might be easy but they should be avoided – they alienate the audicence
70. Check venue carefully before
71. Find/make a friend in the audience before starting
72. Structure I: what’s up, why and then what?
73. Structure II: inverted pyramid = end can be chopped without loosing main message(s)
74. Copy the best (checkout Thatcher, Reagan… on YouTube…)
75. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts (W. Churchill)
76. It takes 10 minutes to prepare a 2h-talk and 2h to prepare a 10-minute talk (W. Churchill)
77. Toute vérité n’est pas bonne à croire (Pierre-Augustin Caron Beaumarchais – Le Marriage de
Figaro = Don’t believe everything which is true)
78. Be inspired:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of trouble
And by opposing end them.
To die – to sleep
No more: and by a
8
sleep to say we end…(W Shakespeare)
79. Practice, practice and practice
For a continuous update and development of your own learning to be a better and better speaker
again I recommend you to follow Tomorrow’s Professor at Stanford. J Wilkins, Physics professor at
Ohio State has a web-site on matters of interest in this context which is really good. The link to
onepages is on http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins and
http://www.physics.ohio-
state.edu/~wilkins/writing I met him first time in 1976 while working on my first manuscript. He
offered to read it. He came back and torn it in pieces in front of my eyes. I have been on the learning
track since then! A very condensed and useful summary in this context is Presentation Guidelines on
the homepage of Vicki H Allan (Utah State) at
http://digital.cs.usu.edu/~allanv/
TED
(http://www.ted.com/talks ) is also a very nice venue for finding some of the best speaker
performances around.
GOOD LUCK in getting your audience attention and engagement. It will be a very rewarding
experience throughout your life. If you need a blunt and honest feed-back on anything you produce
in this area send an email to [email protected]
Have fun/P Apelll
9
3. How to write a paper
During the first part of the meeting the participants will in groups of five discuss why we
write papers. We share each others knowledge when each group gives their main points.
Then we turn to “Title and abstract” as one unit/source of information as a preview of the
report. Can also be used to up-date your knowledge in a field or simply to remind you what
you have read!
Exercise 2: Write a title for your research.
A good title should highlight the topic, nature and scope of the study.
Exercise 3: Write an abstract for your research according to:
1st sentence: Presentation of problem to put reader in context (present tense)
1-2 sentences: scope of study and methodology (present perfect or past tense)
1-2 sentences: main results (past tense)
1-2 sentences: main conclusion (present or past tense)
At the end of our workshop I present my own thoughts below about the topic How to write a
paper leading (hopefully ☺) to an even more general discussion.
How to write a paper. One liners:
1. Almost linear, nearly linear, linear,…choose your words
2. Read rules of journal – you only want to get it back because of referee comments
3. Perfect pictures with their captions – they carry your (take-home) message
4. Sometimes a table with good caption needs to be added to “3”
5. Active sentences: they should be clear on their own and hence give more impact
6. Compare “Use XY…” and “ The XY is to be preferred…”
7. Be careful to find the best keywords….let them influence the title
8. At most one point per paragraph – always in the beginning (single-idea paragraphs)
10
9. Writing is not easy – perfect it to clarity
10. If a sentence becomes clearer by adding one more = rewrite the first one
11. First sentence of figure caption is a statement. The rest tells the reader what to see
12. The abstract should be a stand-alone specific description of the paper.
13. tell’em what your’re going to tell’em, then tell’em and tell’em what you told them
14. As with teaching and giving talks: connect with the audience
15. What am I telling whom and why?
16. Provide throughout sense of focus and purpose
17. What are your ideas – what are other’s
18. There’s often a 20 year cycle. Check out what they did in your field 20 years ago?
19. Use a language which shows that you’re aware of the readers
20. Articulate ideas accurately
21. Iterate, iterate, iterate to perfection
22. Let someone else read your paper – you’ll be surprised what they find
23. Writing should be straightforward, precise and efficient
24. Can you back your writing with evidence?
25. Make your paper as self-contained as possible
26. Most journal allow you to put your manuscript in eg arXiv = lot of response and faster
27. Avoid acronyms
28. All science texts are (should be) about convincing
29. Writing is rethoric
30. Analyse texts – you’ll learn a lot
31. Your passion (for physics) should reflect
32. Never write without a “reader” in mind
33. Title should clearly and concisely reflect emphasis and content of paper
34. How should one find your paper when Googling for it?
35. Be generous to co-authors and other contributors (acknowledgement)
36. References: check, check and check again that they’re correct
37. Check how color graphs turn out in black-and-white
38. Supporting information is spreading like wild-fire….
11
39. Practice Kenshu2, learning how others write
40. Give relevant information so others can redo your experiments or calculations
41. Be aware of differences between British and American spelling (modelling/modeling)
42. Be aware of translations from your mother tounge to English3, especially value words
43. Writing a scientific article is a delicate balance of providing too much or too little
44. Remember readers do not read from start to end
45. We have a structure in papers so you should be able to jump in anywhere and read
46. Usually you can do the “methods” section anytime and anywhere
47. Practice writing daily! It’s like preparing for a marathon
48. Write while doing the research – not afterwards. It will improve your research!
49. Keep your research statement on the wall in front of your eyes
50. Paste together all your paragraph messages into one document. Does it make sense?
51. Read out your paper loud. Listen to it. You’ll find logical flaws and alike
52. Ensure that each sentence is a consequency of the preceeding one – connect them
53. Avoid many modifiers between subject and verb
54. Use verbs that portray action rather than “is” and “has”4
55. On each level one major point (article, section, paragraph…sentence)
56. Avoid Linglish (Li=Swe,….). Learn common mistakes
57. Is it really your idea?
58. Check paper for unintended plagiarism
59. Make the output of your writing, not the input, a goal
60. All that is written has to be simplified and thus is amenable for mis-interpretations
61. It is good to keep it simple, but not simpler
62. Portray your work as solving a puzzle
63. Find the time of day you write best
64. Writing is a way of refining your questions and to define precisely what you’re doing
65. Difference of a successful scholar and a failure is not better writing rather editing
66. Revising is the key to publication – rework existing text5
2
Japaneese for research understanding: B.D. Drake et al., Journal of Chemical Education 74, 186-188 (1997).
I’ve seen sign in Norwegian busses implying to me as a Swede that I should not destroy the driver; i.e. a shift
in value from the close by disturb (stör vs förstör).
4
A is B dependent vs B limits A.
5
See #1107 of Tomorrow’s Professor: Writing an Article in 12 Weeks
3
12
67. Don’t try to get published. Write about ideas and arguments instead
68. Everyone’s unwritten work is brilliant
69. Writing makes a difference
70. To succeed you feel inadequate, stupid and tired. If not you’re not working hard
enough (M C Munger, Duke U)
71. The difficulty is not to get people to accept new ideas rather to give up the old ones
(J M Keynes)
72. What are you writing today that will be read in 10 years time from now? (J Buchanan
1986 Nobel Prize)
73. Most mistakes in philopsophy and logic occur because the human mind is opt to take
the symbol for the reality (A Einstein 1931)
74. Where everybody thinks the same not much thinking is done (Voltaire)
75. Practice, practice and yet again practice.
A lot more could be said about this topic but let me end with four interesting references:
•
Writing on prose:
Helum II is a liquid quite strange
it flows without viscosity
It goes through holes and powder packed tubes
of exceedingly low porosity
from M. Chester et al., An experiment regarding the wave function of superfluid
helium, Solid State Commun. 5, 807-808 (1967).
•
Writing one page:
N.D. Mermin, Lindhard dielectric function in the relaxation-time approximation, Phys.
Rev. B1, 2362 (1970). Cited 538 times.
•
Make a video
Take
a
look
at
the
Journal
http://pubs.acs.org/journal/jpclcd
13
of
Physcial
Chemistry
Letters
website
14
•
I like it:
•
…and the funniest of them all
4. How to make a poster.
During the first part of the meeting the participants will in groups of five discuss why we
make posters. We share each others knowledge when each group gives their main points.
Then we get to see and hear Lisa Simonsson explaining why her recent poster looks the way
it does.
Based on the previous chapter (How to write a paper) you have a title and abstract ready to
be implemented in a poster. Make a sketch. Share the main points in the layout with the
others in your mini-group. Present your “dream poster”.
At the end of our workshop I present my own thoughts below about the topic How to make
a poster leading (hopefully ☺) to an even more general discussion. Notice that the poster is
in some way the ultimate communication tool. It is like teaching but you don’t see the
students. It is like giving a talk but you don’t see the audience. It is like writing a paper but
the reader has only 20 seconds to read it.
How to make a poster. One liners:
1. Think In pictures
2. It is all about visual literacy6
3. Poster should be visually pleasing
4. Viewers care about Question and Take-home message.NOTHING ELSE
5. Use columns
6. Left justifying text reads easier
7. Max 2-3 fonts
8. Don’t put conclusions at the bottom
9. Use landscape
10. Large fonts are essential
11. Powerpoint is for images in a darkened room. Instead use closer to white.
12. Black is text color
6
The ability to intepret and create visual, digital, and audio media is a form of literacy as basic as reading and
writing. R. Bleed, Visual literacy in higher education, EDUCAUSE learning initiative (2006).
15
13. View from 2 meters – do you get the message?
14. Title the graphs
15. Highlight with “pointers” to bring out essentials for reader
16. How did you get the data presented?
17. The graphs should tell the WHOLE story
18. Remove text and see if you get the message
19. Point out data in figure not in legends
20. Avoid tables
21. If you’re in front of the poster – interact with people passing by
22. Why should someone stop and watch?
23. Short informative title
24. Don’t repeat the abstract
25. Avoid acronyms and jargon
26. Emphasize with boldface, italics or underline NEVER ALL CAPS; NEVER ALL THREE
27. Words must be near visual aid
28. Most people focus upper left hand corner!
29. Pretend you have to pay 10$ per word
30. Watch out for bullet lists
31. Conclusions are not a restatement of results!
32. Test the poster on your friends
33. Are colours readable in low light
34. Post it at f1000.com/posters an open repository for posters and slides
35. Be observant of axis labels
36. It I could convey the message here in only one picture – have a look at next page
37. As usual Tomorrow’s professor has a lot on making posters, e.g. #1136
38. Practice, practice and practie is replaced by Take.home message, take-home message and
take-home message.
16
Take home message, take-home
Take-home
take
e message and take-home
take home message
Practice, practice and practice
17
5. How to apply for money
In this workshop you met one of the most successful researchers in the department (Mikael
Käll) to find out the essentials of sustaining a living in modern science where you’re not only
supposed to do good research but also pull in the money making it possible. Sometimes it is
not that easy to match your own ideas to existing calls without tampering to much with the
reasons that makes you get up from bed every morning. My PhD supervisor always advised
me to get in a position where you’re one step ahead of the grant providers. In other words
you have already made a major share of what you’re applying for. This gives you enough
leverage to push your own ideas and the application becomes less aloof.
As in workshops 1-4 above there is a lot of pedagogical and communication aspects involved
when applying for research money, especially to relate it to the call and a likely/imagined
evaluator with all the flaws and virtues characterizing human interactions.
After the 2h session the participants were asked to submit a short summary of the five most
important points which they picked up. They were amazingly coherent (= teacher succeded
in doing what you have to do in an application) and are without any priority order:
1. Use the web to find the various sites where you can apply. There’s even special pages
listing all application agencies in a specific field/area of research. Notice however
that they’ll never going to be complete.
2. Many applications are ranked more based on your CV and number of publications
(and quality of journals) rather than the ideas you present.
3. You always have to ask for more than it will cost. This is the inflation of research
agencies always giving you less than you apply for. It is also good from the point of
view that the reviewers might think that their contribution is not large enough to
make a difference in your research situation.
4. Notice that in Sweden, successsful applications to government agencies are public
documents. Benefit from this by reading the best – notice in particular the structure
used.
5. For a PhD student it is good to apply for grants even if they’re small. This gives
experience in applying for money and it boosts your CV where you should list all your
successful ones. By time the less important ones will automatically be replaced...
6. Proposals should be formulated at a level suitable to experienced scientists who are
not in the same field as you.
7. Keep in mind the following important key questions when writing an application, and
answer them as clearly as possible: What? Why? How? Who?
8. The description of who you are / CV is the first thing a reviewer will look at. The more
publications (for PhD students) the better. Include conference papers, patents, etc to
make your CV look longer and trigger some additional interest on your profile.
18
9. Always check rules, OH costs etc in your work place, in order that you can really
perform what you have promised. As important are also the formal aspects of the
application and reviewing procedure.
10. When applying for time in another lab – stress the uniqueness of this lab to be able
to perform your proposed project.
Finally I include 13 basic tips from Chalmers unit for Strategic Reaserch Support:
1. Read the instructions carefully and follow them. If anything is unclear – do not guess, contact
your local SFS contact person or the funding agency.
2. Is anyone of your colleagues writing a similar application to the same funding body? Ask around.
If you are competing with close colleagues you should be aware of this in any case.
3. Sell your idea on page 1 (at the top)! On page 2, the evaluator may have “fallen asleep”.
4. Use the correct font size from the beginning to be able to evaluate the length of the application.
5. Clarity! Write exactly what you want to say. If a section is not needed to explain your reasoning
you should delete it. Never use etc. instead of fully describing a subject.
6. Assist the reader so that he/she can better understand the context – you cannot expect the
reader to read between the lines to understand how details are connected. Write what you are
thinking. Build a logical chain. Do not rely on references; all relevant facts must be in the text.
Use subheadings in a structured manner. What is the problem you intend to solve, how will you
attack it and what is the possible impact?
7. Use figures to assist the reader. Choose high quality figures that really say something. Include
convincing preliminary data.
8. If you include equations; check that dimensions and units are correct.
9. The evaluator is not necessarily an expert in your field but will feel smart and knowledgeable if
you educate him/her. Spell out all abbreviations the first time you use them, and define/explain
all technical expressions that are not widely used. If you do not know the level of the evaluators
you should assume that they are “educated readers”.
10. You need to find an appropriate level for the popular description. Suggestion: Describe the
project to someone who is not familiar with the subject (e.g. a family member); useful words and
expressions that are more popular will often come to you automatically.
11. Sometimes the popular section should be in both Swedish and English. When you translate the
Swedish text directly into English the text quality will suffer. Suggestion: Translate the arguments
in bullet format and then write the text using both languages separately.
12. Carefully check grammar and spelling. Use the word processor spelling tools and try to get
someone else to check the spelling too. Write in short sentences and as simple as possible. Your
main message should not disappear in technical jargon and unnecessary adjectives.
13. Let an “educated reader” read and comment on the application. They should be able to
understand the main idea and find the project interesting. If they do not you need to re-write.
Ask for honest and constructive criticism – if they conclude that “it looks good” they have not
read it properly.
GOOD LUCK ☺
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6. How to make it safe in the lab
At the Applied Physics Department we have three principles we use to guide the over-all
work at the department to improve the work place and in the end be even better physicists
and doing physics with a higher impact in the world. We want the members of the
department to have the following priority: your own health – family & friends – a passion for
physics. In line with this it is important both for our experimental activities as well when our
PhD students are in the teaching laboratories that safety is a must. For this reason we have a
course how to make it safe in the lab. The course covers topicas as general safety, electricity,
gases, chemicals, biology, lasers and ionizing radiation.
Announcement:
Dear Ph.D. students at the Departments of Applied- and Fundamental Physics at Chalmers
and at the Department of Physics at the University of Gothenburg.
We welcome you to a new opportunity to participate in a safety seminar for experimental
physicists. The seminar will take place on Wednesday September 5th at 8.00 am* in F7103.
The seminar will be held in English this time.
The primary target audience is Ph.D. students teaching in the physics teaching lab (FÖL) or
doing experimental research. However, if places are available, everyone is welcome.
If you did not participate in the previous seminar (19 January 2012) you have to join this
time in order to be allowed to teach in the teaching lab this autumn.
In the afternoon there will (probably) also be a possibility to participate in a first-aid course
with CPR for a limited number of students..
A detailed program and more information will follow before the event.
Lars Hellberg, Curt Nyberg and Mats Rostedt
on behalf of the heads of departments (prefekterna).
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More detailed information about the safety course and its content can be found at the
website:
http://gul.gu.se/public/courseId/48817/lang-en/publicPage.do?item=19013752
.
It gives the detailed content behing the headings below:
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7. How to inform the public and give a public lecture
This workshop was led by Public Information Officer Anita Fors and Professor Per-Olof
“Physics Toys” Nilsson, both at Chalmers. Instead of describing what happened or massaging
answers given afterwards I give below the direct written response from five of the PhD
students present – so you can make your own opinion what is important for you in this
context. However I cannot refrain from making you aware of how many points resemble
those of teaching, making a poster, apply for money….
PhD1:
1) With respect to polls of public trust in scientific theories it strikes me that the most
important message to express to the pubilc is the scientific method in itself. If you don’t
know how a theory is made on scientific grounds it doesn’t really matter if you believe in
creationism or evolution. In both cases it is blind faith in a “higher” power.
(see Nature 488, 431 (23 August 2012).
2) Researchers should try to be more visible in the public arena – even when it is not asked for.
3) I should on a personal level make myself more involved when listening to discussions based
on false premises.
4) Without anyone asking for it explain physical phenomena in daily life.
5) Try to have a dialogue with the ones you communicate with; a monologue is useless.
PhD2:
1) I think it is wonderful feeling, when you explain something to somebody, something that
they did not know anything about before and then you see how they start to understand,
how they grasp the concept and start to engage in the topic – how their eyes light up.
2) It is great to see how people get proud once they understood something, how you can give
people self-confidence by having them understand things they thought they could never
figure out
3) I also see it as giving others a chance, if I talk to 100 people and there is only one person
among them who afterwards thinks “that is great I want to do something similar, I never
thought that I could do science, but that guy told me everyone could” for some people that
might sound trivial, but we are not all coming from the same background. For some people
academy might be something far away. So if there is only one person like that it was worth
all the effort.
4) For me it is also a way of giving something back. I was fortunate enough to have a lot of
possibilities and I love what I am doing, maybe not everyone has the opportunities and I
would like to encourage them to try to do what they want.
5) I do not want my research only published in scientific journals that only a very few people
can read, even fewer understand and only a handful cares about.
6) I always learn when I prepare a talk for the public. Often, it makes it much more important
to rethink concepts when you talk to people outside your field. You are forced to go back to
the basics –thinks you might forget otherwise. And I also learn a lot from the questions I get
from the public, they often bring in a new view to the whole research.
7) I simply enjoy it, I think it is great to talk to people and tell them a little bit about what I am
doing
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PhD3:
1) There’s a correlation between how much your results are visible in mass media and how
often you are cited in scientific journals.
2) It is important that there’s a discussion of the role of science in society since the public trust
in scientists is going down (my personal reflexion is that you should not only talk about
research results but also how research is conducted; something the public is not aware of in
general).
3) When writing popular science one should keep in mind that most people know less than you
think.
4) The importance of relating things which might appear difficult or boring to things people in
general recognizes and are interested in (e.g. coupling mathematics-computers)
5) We should use much more the insights we have of the functioning of the brain, that we all
learn in different ways and to use all senses when learning.
PhD4:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
It is important to inform the public to spread knowledge, both how the world works but
also what we as scientist do.
It is good also for yourself to be able to explain your research in a simple way. Also helps
immensely when writing applications.
Informing the public is a good way of increasing the visiblity of your research and hence
larger impact on your research area.
To reach the public it is important to be able to tell a story and not only foccusing on
details.
Try to make the reader/listener reflect on what you tell them using simpler
experiments/thought experiments having an unexpected outcome
PhD5:
1) Know your audience (think about which concepts the audience already knows, and which
are new to them).
2) Make sure that you understand the material completely yourself.
3) Pick examples that are clear and easy to relate to.
4) If there is a demonstration that fits the topic, use it.
5) The more senses (sight, hearing, touch...) that you involve, the more likely is it that the
audience remembers your lecture
6) I've noted that most of these points are equally valid for teaching/giving conference talks.
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8. How to make a career
9. How to start a company
10. How to figure out what responsibility I have for my research results? (Dec.)
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