What’s in nail polish?

Hey Guys!

Today I’m going to talk to you about nail polish. If you have ever read the label on a bottle you would have noticed a huge number of chemicals in it. Why they are all there and what do they do? The huge long list of chemicals can be broken down into several different categories. These are solvents, film formers, resins, plasticizers, thickening agents, pigments and pearls.

Let’s start with the solvents. Solvents dissolve all the other compounds and form the liquid that is a nail polish.  These chemicals evaporate into a gas when they are painted on your nails, which is why you get the transition from liquid to solid. As a result of these flammable liquids you also get the strong chemical smell of nail polish. So what are these chemicals that you are breathing in? Usually it is ethyl acetate, butyl acetate and maybe some alcohols that form the solvents in nail polish.

Nail polish in liquid form. Credit to melloveschallah.

Film formers are chemicals that create a nice smooth surface when dried. Essentially they make your nails look nice and even, even if they are ridged. In nail polish it is usually nitrocellulose that has this job.

Resin is another really important ingredient.  This is what makes the nail polish stick to your nail. It also makes sure the nail polish appears uniform when dried and all the chemicals stick to each other. Resin also determines the hardness, depth and gloss of the nail polish.  This is usually toslylamide/formaldehyde resin.

There is a big myth in nail polish communities as to the formaldehyde resin. A lot of people have mistaken it for formaldehyde which is a reasonably dangerous chemical. However, formaldehyde exists as a gas at room temperature and is only used in nail polish for the preparation of formaldehyde resin. As it’s a gas there would be very little formaldehyde left in the nail polish solution, if any at all, when the bottle reaches the consumer.

Plasticizers are purely present to make the nail polish flexible so it is less likely to chip or crack and increase the lifetime of the polish. This has to be added because the resin and film formers make the nail very hard and brittle. Our nail polish would not last nearly as long if these chemicals were not present. Camphor is usually the chemical you can thank for this, without it your nails wouldn’t last nearly as long chip or crack free.

Thickening agents are added to help the nail polish hold the glitter and pigment all in place. It also stops the other chemicals from separating out. This is usually stearalkonium hectorite.

The last thing I want to talk about are pigments and pearls. Pigments are just present to give the colour to nail polish. This is usually a variety of different chemicals depending on what colour you want. These chemicals are usually the same as you can find in paints as it is what gives the colours and nearly always contains some kind of metal compound. Pearls give a shimmery colour to the nail polish but this also includes larger glitters which can also be found in nail polish.

A pretty pink nail polish with glitter! This probably has some red and white pigment in there to get this pink colour. Credit to JenPolishAholic.

So there you go there is how nail polish works and why it has such a long ingredient list. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I love nail polish and if you like it too make sure you check out some amazing Aussie indie brands such as Emily de Molly, Pretty Serious and piCture pOlish. This is my last blog post for assessment but I do have some more blog posts planned. So hopefully it is not my last!

Emma

Is love really a drug?

Hey Guys!

I read a very interesting blog post by Lab Muffin titled ‘ Perfume science: body chemistry and why you love the smells I hate.’ It’s a very interesting blog post about why we like certain smells. There is an interesting point in it where it says we like smells that are opposite to our own as it improves our child’s immune system. Interestingly, when a woman is on the pill the opposite of this happens and they are attracted to people with the same smell.

This got me thinking about attraction and I thought I might write a post about the chemistry of love.

There are three main stages of love. These are lust, attraction and attachment so I thought I might talk about what’s happening in your body with each of these stages.

Lust
This is the first stage and is general associated with the release of sex hormones such as testosterone and oestrogen.  So, as my Dad used to say, if you hang around boys too much you’ll get boy germs. Well, they aren’t really germs but in this first stage of love testosterone and oestrogen are released in both women and men.

Credit to pixajen.

Attraction
This is when your body starts releasing some adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine and phenylethylamine. Unless you have done some science you probably have no idea what that even means. I’ll go through it one by one for you.

Adrenaline you might have heard of previously. If you haven’t well this chemical is released in to your body anytime you do anything stressful. For me I notice the effects of adrenaline every time I give a presentation. This causes the racing heart and sweating that you usually experience in uncomfortable situations or when first spending time with your new interest.

Serotonin helps out adrenaline by making sure you feel the effects of adrenaline repeatedly throughout your date. However, this is not the only thing this chemical does. If you have wasted time dreaming about the new guy or girl in your life you can blame this chemical for all that wasted. It is pretty effective at making sure you just think about that special person and don’t think about anything else.

Dopamine is the chemical which makes you feel pleasure and is the reason you feel happy when you see your new love’s face. This also causes increased energy levels and means you don’t notice as much when you are tired or hungry.  This chemical has the same effect on your brain as if you were taking cocaine which is pretty crazy. Love really is a drug.

Phenylethylamine is a chemical that you can find in chocolate. This lovely chemical gives you the energy and excitement about your new partner. It is the whole reason that all you want to talk about is the new person in your life.

These are all the crazy mix of feelings you experience in the initial stages of your relationship and once they begin to fade you move on to the next phase of love.

Attachment
This is the final stage that you experience when you are in love with someone. This helps you stay in love with the person and gives you a long term relationship. There are two chemicals involved in this process: oxytocin and vasopressin.

Credit to epSos.de.

Oxytocin is a lovely chemical that is released after you orgasm. It makes you feel like cuddling and feel closer to your significant other. So the more sex you have the more you will feel in love. This then results in you wanting to have a child and continue your family line. It also helps a mother form attachment to her child as it is released during child birth.

Vasopressin is another chemical that is present in a long term relationship. It helps you feel more devoted to your partner and as a result maintain a long term relationship with them.

So there you go,  you now know what it happening in your body when you fall in love with someone. Next time when you feel these emotions you’ll know exactly what is doing what in your body.

Let me know in the comments if there is anything you want to hear about.

Emma

Did you know Saturn would float on water?

Hey Guys!

Today I thought I’d do something a bit fun. I thought I would do some cool science facts because everyone loves having useless information. Who knows–it could be useful in a trivia competition! I thought I could make this a little series of posts with a different area of science every post. Today I’m going to start with planet facts (and Pluto!). I tried to get a fact in for every planet in the solar system. Some planets are  more interesting than others though (and I’m a bit biased).

Mercury orbits around the Sun every 88 Earth days. It rotates around its axis every 59 Earth days which means a year on Mercury is only 1.4 days.

The surface of Mercury. Credit to NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

I think Venus is possibly the most interesting planet in our solar system and it’s my favourite too. You may notice there are a lot of facts about it.

Venus is the only planet in our solar system to spin anti-clockwise and it does this incredibly slowly. It takes 224 Earth days for Venus to orbit about the Sun but it takes 243 Earth days for Venus to rotate completely. So the day is in fact longer than the year on Venus.

Venus is also the hottest planet in the solar system as it reaches temperatures of 462^oC during the day. This is due to its very thick atmosphere made up of 96.5% carbon dioxide. If you want to see what climate change will do go read about Venus. They have acid rain and everything!

Speaking of Venus’ thick atmosphere, did you know that it rotates in the anti-clockwise direction as well but it does this 60 times faster than the planet?

Credit to Kevin M. Gill.

The Earth can fit inside the Sun at least a million times. That is just huge in size or the Earth is really tiny.

Did you know that one day we may have no moon in our skies? The Moon is drifting away from us by 3.8 cm per year. Better enjoy it while it’s still around!

Venus is known as the sister planet to Earth but Mars is the most Earth-like planet in the solar system. It has almost the same length of days with a normal Martian day being 37 minutes and 22.67 seconds longer.

Mars has the largest volcano in the solar system, appropriately called Olympus Mons. It is 21 km high and 600 km in diameter.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and is more than twice the size of all the other planets. It also has the largest and oldest storm taking place on its surface. This is known as the Great Red Spot and is 40 000 by 14 000 km at its largest. The age of this storm is unknown as it has been around as long as astronomers have been observing Jupiter with a telescope which was in the 1700s.

Jupiter radiates twice as much heat as it receives from the Sun. There is obviously some internal heating that still remains from when it was formed.  This is also true for Saturn and Neptune.

Saturn has the lowest density out of all the planets. It is so low, in fact, if you put it in water it would float. Now that would be a sight to see.

Every 15 years  Saturn’s rings become completely edge on to the Earth and as a result completely disappear.

A picture of Saturn with edge on rings. Credit to ridingwithrobots

Uranus is the only planet that rotates on its side like a ball rolling across the floor. As a result of this night time can last 42 years on this planet.

Uranus is the coldest planet in our solar system as it does not have an internal heating system like those of the other gas giants. It has an average temperature of -220^oC.

Neptune and Uranus are blue in colour as they have large amounts of methane gas in their atmospheres.

Neptune’s moon, Triton, is the only moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction to the rotation of the planet.

Pluto’s orbit brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune. This is only for a short period of time but is partly why it was so difficult to discover.

Pluto is smaller in size than the Earth’s moon and many other moons in the solar system. You can see this in the video shown below.

Pluto is the only planet (or ex-planet) in the solar system that hasn’t been visited by a spacecraft yet. New Horizons is planning on making a fly past of Pluto in 2015.

That is it for planet facts. Here is a fun activity you can do if you have some spare play-doh lying around. I found this to be rather surprising when I did it. I hope you enjoyed it. If there is any other science facts you want to hear about let me know and I’ll try do them next time!

Emma

All information for this post was gather from Collins Stars and Planets Guide and Collins Internet-Linked Dictionary of Astronomy which I own.

Communicating Science – Week 2

Hey Guys!

I thought I would do another summary of the last week of the course. Mainly for me so when I think about it later on I can look back and remember what happened. So on with the week!

Day One.
Not an overly exciting day. We did a two minute oral presentation on a research paper. It was interesting to see what all the other students had picked. I choose something easy to talk about as I only had 2 minutes and you can’t say much in that time.

Scariest room ever. Credit to State Farm

Day Two.
This was quite an interesting day. We had a work shop with Rob Morrison about working with the media. Now this is not something I really like. I’m always worried about not saying the right thing. I will talk to millions of people at an event like Science Alive without a worry but as soon as it’s someone from the media I freak out. This workshop gave me some information about how to deal with the media and now I think they might not have been as scary as I initially thought. However, I still don’t look forward to dealing with the media again.

Day Three.
We had more information about social media and how to use it to your advantage and for networking. This was very interesting and I certainly will try putting some of these in place. Using Twitter for networking was something very interesting. Using hash tags on Twitter, people around the globe are having organized chats about anything and everything. These are good places to meet like-minded people. This was something I certainly didn’t know about.

The other interesting social media website I heard about was LinkedIn. This can be used as an online CV for employers to look at when you apply for jobs. I have not had a chance to look into this yet but will definitely be trying it when I have some time.

Credit to Sean MacEntee

In the afternoon we had a talk from the editor of e-science. This is an Adelaide university science magazine. Now this magazine looks AMAZING on the iPad app. It almost made me want an iPad. It is also a really interesting magazine and showcases the research being conducted at Adelaide Uni. It also contains heaps of information for teachers, such as activities they can use in class relating to the article. This is something that I think the Uni really needs to do so it is good to see someone doing it.

Day Four.
This was another interesting day as we discussed the political and economic context of science and did some networking. Did you know we have a Chief Scientist who advises the government about science? Did you know that we also have a Chief Scientist for South Australia as well? Wouldn’t it be cool to say you were the Chief Scientist? Australia also has national priorities which dictate what sort of research our scientists can do. This was all very interesting and we discussed at length who really controls science. Who do you think controls Australian science?

In the afternoon we did some speed networking. As most of you know I’m quite good at talking so I wasn’t really worrying about this too much. I also had the advantage that I knew most of the people we were meant to be networking with. That’s just what happens when you are in a course run by the chemistry department and you are in the chemistry department. I’m going to say that my networking is pretty good though and that’s why I already knew everyone.

Day Five.
This is really the last day of class which was a bit sad. Our last class was all about event planning and marketing. It was about making sure you keep everyone happy, working out the purpose of your event, what marketing you should do and how you should market it. This was very interesting and it got me thinking a bit about what Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSA) is doing and how it could possibly improve its service. Maybe when I get more time I might try some of ideas out with them.

So that is essentially the end of the classes. I’m sad to see it end; I’ve been really enjoying the lectures. I’m certainly thinking about doing another longer course at another university on it. I’m also thinking about it as a possible career path but I don’t know. We’ll see what happens at the end of my degree.

Let me know if you want to hear about anything I still have more blog posts to do!
Emma

PS Here is a fun video showing how ASAPScience uses youtube to communicate science.

Want to see a blue sunset?

Hey Guys!

You can see a blue sunset on Mars! This is due to the atmosphere being thinner than Earth’s and as a result causing different refraction of the light. So Mars has a red sky during the day and a blue sunset. The opposite of what we get here. However, this is not the topic of my post today. I’m going to tell you some of the problems that need to be solved before we can have a manned mission to Mars or if we will have one at all.

A sort of blue sunset. Credit to Thomas Claveirole

The first issue with a manned flight to Mars is the time it takes to get there. Currently, it takes about 8 months to get to Mars. This is a very long time to be confined in a small space with a few people as you would be in a space ship. If you ignore the problem of people being forced to get along in a confined space. There are some other problems listed below.

There is also the problem of harmful cosmic rays. These cause huge problems on the human body, the ozone layer usually protects us from these harmful rays. However, testing on the international space station is underway to develop a technology that will protect the crew from the radiation.

The next problem is the low gravity the astronauts would experience while in space. The astronauts on the space station have to exercise daily to avoid the side effects of low gravity. This would become a daily part of the astronauts’ lives and it would still not be known how the astronauts would be affected. The longest anyone has survived in space is by Valeri Polyakov of 437 days. This is a far shorter time than the astronauts would be on Mars for as that would only allow them to travel there and back.

Mars. Credit to Kevin M. Gill

Let’s assume that all these things turn out to be fine and the astronauts make it to Mars. What happens then to the people if they get hurt or develop an illness. This would have to be treated on Mars with whatever supplies that were available. This would require a doctor to be sent into space and all the astronauts be trained medically. After all what would happen if the doctor fell ill?

My next question is what would happen if something broke? This would require an engineer to be sent with the crew and\or the crew to be trained to fix any problems. They could not rely on contact from Earth as it would take 3 minutes to 22 minutes depending on the proximity to Earth. It would take even longer for someone to be sent as Earth and Mars have to be in close proximity for the journey to be made.

Another issue would be forwards contamination when the astronauts arrived and back contamination when the astronauts returned. These could bring all kinds of microbes and life forms there and back. The effects of these on the environment would not be known and it would be very difficult to prevent such issues from taking place.

A space ships. Credit to Man & His Cam

The last issue I want to talk about is the cost. It is going to cost several billion to send someone to Mars. Where would all this money come from? The funding really isn’t available in space programs anymore. There has been talk of space programs joining forces to travel to Mars and this would probably be the only option.

However, there is hope yet. Apparently everyone can apply to travel to Mars. The catch…. It is only a one way trip. I personally don’t think I could travel to Mars as a one way trip. I would find it way to difficult to leave everything behind and be alone with 3 other people for 2 years. It will still be interesting to see if this really did happen.

What about you? Would you sign up for a one-way ticket to another planet?

Emma

How sailing and flying work

Hey Guys!

Today I’m going to talk to you about sailing!  Well more about how the sails work in sailing. How does this apply to you? Well a sail is pretty much like a plane wing sticking up in the air so you can learn about how planes fly as well in this article. I know it is going to be tough learning twice as much in one blog post but I’m sure you’ll survive.

When you picture sailing I’m sure you think of it how I originally thought of it. You picture a boat with its sails out with the wind behind it moving along. But have you ever stopped to think about how the boat gets back to where it came from? It can’t sail away from the wind forever, otherwise boats would get stuck at places for a long time. Let’s talk about how boats do the impossible and sail upwind.

A boat can’t sail straight upwind as the sails flap and become useless. However, they can sail about 45 degrees away from the wind. The boat must sail in a zigzag pattern to get upwind but eventually a boat will manage to reach the upwind location. The boat changes direction by tacking, which means the front of the boat must pass through the wind to change direction. So how does it work?

The curved shape of a sail. Credit to Nouhailler

The sail (or wing) has a curved shape which pushes the wind down either side of the sail. This creates two different paths for the wind, one of  paths is curved. Now when the wind curves around the sail it accelerates. This is similar to the laws of circular motion if you did that in high school. As a result of the acceleration, one side of the sail has wind travelling at a higher velocity. I know this is very difficult to visualise because I had trouble picturing it when I was learning to sail. So here is a simulation on how air flows over a sail or wing. It applies more to planes than to sail boats but you get the idea.

The acceleration causes a low pressure to develop on the curved side of the sail and a high pressure on the other side.  Now, basic science tells us that the air will want to flow from the high pressure area to the low pressure. This will put a force on the sail towards the curve. This will of course result in the boat moving in the direction of that force.

Now you are thinking, ‘Emma that force is going to be mostly sideways. Why doesn’t the boat travel mostly sideways and a tiny bit forwards?’ Well there is another set of forces taking place below the water. All sail boats have a thing called a keel. This is essentially a part of the boat and the water has to flow around it when it is sailing along.

A Keel on a sailing boat. Credit to Paul Schultz

The keel operates as an opposite force to the force on the sail. This is due to the keel be perpendicular to the force on the sail. The boat then has to push aside a large amount of water to move in that direction. It is the same idea as trying to walk through water yourself in the swimming pool.   The result of this force on the keel? Forward motion of course! If you are sailing correctly you also get hardly any sideways motion. Well that is a win win situation isn’t it just!

Here is an interesting video about how this applies to a plane if you are still stuck on that.

I hope that wasn’t too much to learn in one blog post.
Let me know in the comments if there is anything you would like to hear about next.
Emma

P.S. Here is a video showing you exactly what you can do if you understand the forces involved in sailing a boat. These boats have solid wing sails and even “hydrofoil.” This is basically the same idea as plane wings but underwater. They lift the boat out of the water  which makes it go faster by reducing drag. It is way cooler to having a flying boat than a flying plane.

Communicating Science Course

Hey Guys!

Today I’m going to talk to you about why I’m doing a communicating science course and the first week of this course.

I started my Masters in Chemistry this year and a required course for this degree is the communicating science course. However,  I’ve done a lot of promoting science in the past through Young Scientists of Australia (YSA) and the Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSA). I really enjoy sharing my love of science with other people. So this course is really interesting for me and has given me a lot of information about a possible career path I hadn’t really considered.

Credit to jfinga

I want to talk about some of the interesting discussions that have come up as a result of this week’s course.  I’ll do this day by day and give you a breakdown of my thoughts on the day.

Day one.
We had a general introduction to communicating science and how the field has changed since the arrival of social media and the internet. We also learnt about our responsibility, as scientists, to inform the general public about our work. They are paying for our research in most cases so have a right to know what we are doing. It had never occurred to me that we should communicate to the public as they are funding our research. It is also sad that most of the public show no interest in learning where their money is going.

Day two.
Not much was covered on this day. We had a library workshop which covered using search engines. In the afternoon we set up these blogs and started writing our blog posts. It was good to have a relaxing day and think about the information presented on the previous day.

Day Three.
This was a particularly interesting day as we discussed how the media can report new stories incorrectly by omitting just one word from the original article. There was one case that I remembered reading on the university website and really stuck in my mind. They discussed how women who eat junk food could cause their child to be obsess as well. The bit that was omitted even from the University of Adelaide press release was the fact that it was a study on rats! Yeah I know it is a significant thing to omit. So it might not even be true for us. We discussed other things during the day such as how to present effectively and how to deal with the media.

Day Four.
We only had a morning and had the afternoon off. This day was spent exploring new social media domains. I learnt a lot about the usefulness of Twitter and how it can be used to network. I certainly will be more open to new internet sites and the possibilities to promote my image further now.

Credit to Eric Fischer

Day Five.
This was perhaps the most interesting day as we spent the day at RiAus and met with Dr Paul Willis (Director of RiAus), Joseph Milton who works at AusSMC, James Byrne (an experienced blogger) and Lisa Bailey the Programs Manager of RiAus. Dr Paul Willis gave an interesting talk on the changing area of communicating science and how we as communicators should go about it. He had many interesting points of view and the most interesting point was that we should not communicate to the people who have no interest in learning science. This is something I don’t personally agree with. We won’t stop cases like the lack of concern on global warming if we do not communicate to these people. I know it would be difficult to reach these people but we have to at least try to reach them.

Joseph Milton talked to us about dealing with the media. This was an interesting talk as I don’t know all that much about the media. It was amazing to learn all that AusSMC do to try and ensure that the media report the correct facts about science correctly. They also respond to any news reports that incorrectly report science by getting experts to reply in the news. The last thing they do is send out reports to the media of any interesting science. They do a really good job of making sure the media is correctly informed and I was really impressed that this organisation existed.

James Byrne did a Q and A session where he discussed the finer points of making a blog and how to promote it. This was really informative and interesting. Lisa Bailey then gave us a tour of The Science Exchange and it really was a stunning building as it was located in the old Stock Exchange building. The afternoon was spent working on oral presentations and thinking about the week that was.

Here is an interesting video from the day.

Let me know in the comments if there is anything you want to hear about.

Emma

The chemistry of making bread

Hey Guys!

It really would be nice if I got some ideas from some of you! Then I could write about something you might like instead of stuff that I enjoy.  I have a million ideas, as I love to talk, but it would be more interesting reads for you if you told me what to write about.

Credit ulterior epicure

 

Today I decided to talk to you about the chemistry of cooking! Why you ask? Well for one I love cooking and eating the food I cook. Two, I love chemistry and understanding how things work. I always think while cooking about the millions of compounds that must be making reactions to produce the amazing food I’m eating. Three, I made pizza and while making the pizza bases I was wondering what exactly was going on inside the dough. Lastly, I’m sure a lot of you do cooking too and it might just be helpful or interesting to someone.

Credit lynn

 

To make dough for a pizza or bread you need several things: flour, yeast, water, salt, sugar and some oil. Why are they there and what dictates the amount of them? Let’s talk about these ingredients individually and see exactly why each one is in there.

The main ingredient in any dough is flour. This contains starch and proteins (mostly gluten). What do these things do that make bread, bread? The proteins, when combined with water, begin to form gluten networks. These make up the general structure of bread and hold it all together. Starch also performs a similar task in the presence of water. This is due to the water molecules linking the different proteins together. This process is helped along when you knead the dough and explains why it becomes very elastic after kneading. This is the bulk of dough but the other ingredients are just as important.

Credit mrlins

 

Yeast is the next ingredient and this is just a fungus. Ewwww! But it really is important. Bread it’s all soft and squishy because of the air present in the finished product. How does that air get in there?  The fungus in yeast feeds on the starch and the sugar present in the mixture. This allows for it to release carbon dioxide as a by-product of this process. The carbon dioxide is then trapped by the protein networks and forms a bubble. This gives bread its overall light texture and makes the difference between bread and damper.

Water is H2O and also an important ingredient. Bread wouldn’t be bread without it. We discussed its roles above with flour. However, with yeast it also does something interesting. The water present in the solution helps the yeast to multiply and produce carbon dioxide. Without this present you really wouldn’t have bread at all.

Salt–plain old sodium chloride–is mainly there for flavour. However, it does have some other interesting functions. The other reason that salt is added is to help the yeast form carbon dioxide bubbles. It does this in a backwards way. It limits the carbon dioxide production of the yeast. This would be a problem if the proteins weren’t fully formed as the gas would escape and you wouldn’t get the bread you know and love.

Sugar is what gives you energy, as it’s just a carbohydrate. Aren’t they meant to be bad for you though? Why are they in there? Just like sugar giving you energy it also gives energy to the yeast. This helps it to produce the carbon dioxide and form the bread we know and love. However, too much sugar can influence the formation of the gluten which is generally why cake has more sugar.

Oil is the last ingredient I want to talk about. It coats the proteins in the flour and, since it’s not soluble in water it helps to keep them away. This has an important influence as it stops the proteins in the flour forming gluten. This is why when you make cake you add more oils as gluten is more common in bread formation.

There you go! That is just some of the chemistry going on in the bread you are eating every day. I personally think it’s pretty interesting. Here is a little video to watch about the history of bread as well.

Let me know if there is anything you want to hear about!

Emma

Science Equity?

Hey Guys!

So this will be a quick post before I head off to RiAus for the day.
I want to talk a bit about Dr Paul Willis’ blog post titled ‘Storytelling for Science.’ In this post he mentions this idea of science equity. Dr Paul Willis said this about science equity:

“Instead we need to look at science equity: the ready access to science for all Australians who want it. And the way to deliver science equity is through science engagement: one-on-one interactions with the audience, pitched at their level and distributed across the continent. That’s the future for science communicators and that’s how I want to tell the stories of science.”

I’m unsure about what Dr Paul Willis means by this. Does he mean that all Australians should be able to read any journal article? Someone would have to pay for that and currently, most Australians would be unhappy if their tax was spent on this. Or should all the scientist out there communicate their science to Australia. If this is the way then how would we achieve this would there be a website that we all post to? Or do we have to hold talks every so often where we present our research to the people who are interested. My last question is how would we enforce this? Or would it just be a natural change that happened and included in everyone’s thoughts on science. If it is the second that would be a very slow change and might not happen at all. You are always going to get some people who don’t like communicating their research or who find it difficult.

I would like to ask Dr Paul Willis what he means by science equity and I think some other students in communicating science are also curious as to what he meant. I also know that science communicator Mike Seyfang also asked a similar question on his blog post ‘Trends for the modern StoryTeller.’ I will post later today if I find the answer and another long post is in the pipelines for today as well.

Emma

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