{"id":2615,"date":"2012-11-24T10:09:04","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T09:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/?p=2615"},"modified":"2012-11-24T10:09:04","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T09:09:04","slug":"an-interview-with-dr-helen-czerski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/2012\/11\/24\/an-interview-with-dr-helen-czerski\/","title":{"rendered":"An interview with Dr Helen Czerski"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Dr Helen Czerski, Physicist and oceanographer, is a well-known BBC science presenter. Her work includes the major BBC2 series ‘Orbit: Earth\u2019s Extraordinary Journey’, broadcast in March 2012. Recently she filmed Operation Iceburg for BBC2 and is a contributor to Dara O’Briain’s Science Club.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\"Helen\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

She agreed to answer a few questions I had…<\/p>\n

Science and Popularisation <\/strong><\/p>\n

What first got you involved in science, and in particular physics?<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really feel that I ever \u201cgot involved\u201d \u2013 it was just something I did and was interested in. I\u2019m lucky that my parents encouraged us to experiment with the world in a non-pushy way \u2013 if I said \u201cwhat happens when you do that?\u201d, they\u2019d just say \u201cwell, let\u2019s try it and see\u201d. I must have shown some specific interest in physics early on because my mum bought me a copy of \u201cA brief history of time\u201d when I was 10 or 11. But I was interested in all sorts of things, like dinosaurs and making stuff from clay, building treehouses, environmental issues, baking and languages. My parents just encouraged us in whatever we were interested in, and the strongest and most important message I ever got from them was \u201cdo your best\u201d. That\u2019s crucial \u2013 they weren\u2019t bothered about whether we succeeded or not, but they valued trying things out. And they wanted us to be happy far more than they wanted \u201csuccess\u201d. <\/p>\n

As time went on, I think that I chose to read a lot of popular physics books, and I knew from fairly early on that my interested tended towards the sciences. But I very consciously took every opportunity to study other things, because I felt that I\u2019d do enough science later on.<\/p>\n

How did you get involved in the popularisation of science?<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, going right back, I remember giving a talk on atomic physics to the local women\u2019s group (which my mother was part of) when I was 17. So I suppose that counts as the first time I did anything like that. My Dad has always said that I\u2019m a natural teacher, and when I was younger that mostly came out in the sports coaching that I did. During my PhD, I got involved in doing demonstrations during National Science and Engineering Week, and that led to other public lectures and talks. I was always happy to share my enthusiasm for science, and if that meant fun demos, so much the better!<\/p>\n

Which medium\u00a0 do you think is the most effective at popularising science?<\/em><\/p>\n

There is no one medium, because what you say is not anywhere near as important as what your audience hears. If you say something in a format that your audience doesn\u2019t see, it\u2019s pointless. So the most effective medium is whatever your audience finds most convenient, and that\u2019s different for every individual. Obviously, tv has a huge reach, but the ways that people get information are changing over time. I think that the one thing that will always be popular is seeing an enthusiastic and charismatic individual in person, and being brought into the world of the human being who is standing right in front of you. In an ideal world, we wouldn\u2019t have \u201cscience popularization\u201d because everyone who works or uses science and technology would naturally share their knowledge of it with the people around them, and that would be the most effective way of encouraging enthusiasm for science.<\/p>\n

What, in your opinion, should be the ultimate goal of science popularisation?<\/em><\/p>\n

To dispense with the need for conscious science popularization. It\u2019s not a phrase I like. I think that we need science to be part of our culture just like music, literature, art, politics and economics, and we can all have some level of natural curiosity about it. I would love everyone to appreciate science as an important and fascinating part of their world, and to be able to find out as much about it as they liked. In an ideal world, it would be valued appropriately, and it wouldn\u2019t be necessary to \u201cpopularize\u201d it.<\/p>\n

What were the challenges for you\u00a0 during the filming of Operation Iceberg?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Being in between two worlds. Usually, in that environment, I\u2019m there either because I\u2019m doing my own experiment or I\u2019m there because I\u2019m filming a tv programme. This time, I was halfway \u2013 slightly more on the tv side of things, and without an experiment that I was responsible for by myself. I found that very odd \u2013 it was like being the only person in the room who spoke two languages when everyone else only spoke one or the other.<\/p>\n

We really enjoyed science club, did you enjoy making it?<\/em> <\/p>\n

The studio days for science club have been some of my favourite days this year. It really is like an inclusive club of fun people, and everyone has something interesting to contribute.<\/p>\n

Are we going to see a lot more of you on the BBC?<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m working on a couple of other programmes at the moment. The one I\u2019m spending most of my time on at the moment is a BBC4 programme all about bubbles.<\/p>\n

Research<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can you say a few words about your research?<\/em><\/p>\n

I study the bubbles underneath breaking waves, and how they break apart and join together in different conditions. This is important because these bubbles act as a transport mechanism between the atmosphere and the ocean, and we need to understand the small-scale mechanisms contributing to global-sized transport effects. I like it because it\u2019s physics that happens on a scale that you can see. My lab experiment is the size of a bench, and you can really see what\u2019s happening. I\u2019m much more interested in phenomena that I can see directly, rather than quantum mechanical things that I can\u2019t experience directly, or cosmological things that are far too far away ever to touch. What gets me going is \u201cthe physics in the middle\u201d.<\/p>\n

Which one of your papers are you most proud of, and why?<\/em><\/p>\n

I was the first person to measure the thickness of the coating surrounding an ocean bubble in situ. All ocean bubbles are coated with a thin layer of organic material (effectively natural bubble bath), and it controls a lot of their behaviour but it\u2019s hard to measure. You can\u2019t take the bubble out of the water to look at it directly. I used a combination of acoustical and optical techniques to estimate the coating thickness while the bubble was still in the ocean, from a data I collected in the Pacific. I like it because it was a novel use of experimental data, and I hadn\u2019t thought that I could make that measurement before I collected the data. It was a minor eureka moment when I realized that I could.<\/p>\n

What are the major questions faced today in you area of research?<\/em><\/p>\n

The biggest question is how to integrate all the many effects that work together to influence how our planet works. There are too many for any one person to be able to hold them in their head. How do we manage the data so that we can still get insights into what it means? How do we integrate all the biological, chemical, physical and geological data to test our models accurately? When data sets are too big for a human to hold them in their mind, we lose the human\u2019s amazing ability to recognize patterns. How do we compensate for that?<\/p>\n

Anything else?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think that the world around us is full of physical toys \u2013 everyday things that we are completely used to, but which are each an amazing demonstration of some scientific principle. You don\u2019t need to go to far away places or use special microscopes to see fascinating things. They\u2019re all around you. The world would be a richer place if everyone got a bit better at looking at everyday phenomena and asking a few more questions than normal.<\/p>\n

About Helen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\"Helen\"<\/td>\n\n

Helen is a Physicist, oceanographer and broadcaster with a passion for science, sport, books, creativity, hot chocolate and investigating the interesting things in life. She currently works at the Institute for Sound and Vibration Research in Southampton, and is a science presenter for the BBC. <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

You can find out lots more about Helen via her website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Helen Czerski, Physicist and oceanographer, is a well-known BBC science presenter. Her work includes the major BBC2 series ‘Orbit: Earth\u2019s Extraordinary Journey’, broadcast in March 2012. Recently she filmed Operation Iceburg for BBC2 and is a contributor to Dara O’Briain’s Science Club. She agreed to answer a few questions I had… Science and Popularisation … Continue reading An interview with Dr Helen Czerski<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/ajb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}