As most of you already know,
Demystifying
the Expert is a program hosted by our own professors
Anca Constantin and
Klebert Feitosa that
is meant to introduce the public to science by combining comedy and education.
The event involves a guest speaker, who is an expert in their field of science,
and a group of local comedians who attempt to “demystify the expert”. There are
questions, games, trivia and improvised skits in the humorous event that makes
science fun. Some reminders of previous Demystifying the Expert events can be found
here,
here,
here,
here,
and
here.
 |
The expert, Chris Rose, comfortably flanked by the hosts
( left: Feitosa and Constantin) and the three comedians (on the right) |
On the Thursday of September 29
th, in
Taylor Down Under, was the first Demystifying the Expert
event of the year, run in conjunction with the comedians Shelby Imes, Macy
Pniewski, and Knick McKay of JMU's one and only comedy group “
New and
Improv’d”. As planned, and maybe also expected, the event managed to make learning about the research of
Dr.
Christopher Rose, a biologist, who works for the progression of animal species and the changes that occur over time.
Here is a little summary what went on, in case you missed the show:
The show started with a game of 20 questions, where the improv
group was supposed to attempt to figure out what exactly Dr. Rose studies in
his research by asking “yes/no” questions, though more was ultimately learned
about him as the night unfolded. It did not take long for the three members of
the improv group to determine that Dr. Rose studies amphibians.
 |
| The audience seems raptured... |
After discovering that Dr. Rose worked with frogs, one comedian asked, “Do you
cut them up?” This resulted in laughter from the audience.
Dr. Rose discussed how sometimes, they have
no choice but to kill frogs as the amount of tadpoles that can develop ranges
from 20 to almost 8000, which is far more than his lab needs or can afford for
the research. He nonchalantly described letting the small frogs die saying,
“Sometimes I just give them to the adults to do what they do with them,”
implying that he lets the adult frogs eat the unneeded tadpoles.
Eventually the topic of frogs in popular culture was brought up.
One comedian, Knick McKay, asked Dr. Rose,
“Are you familiar with the breakfast cereal Honey Smacks?” McKay then proceeded
to inquire if he had done research on the Honey Smacks frog, the mascot of the
cereal.
Dr. Rose was not familiar with
the Honey Smacks frog, though this joke resurfaced during a portion where the
improv students created a scene of Dr. Rose’s research lab.
A separate game involved guessing headlines related to amphibians. The
comedians and the expert were given a headline from the news with one word left
out and they had to guess the correct word to finish the headline. No one
guessed that a new species of ants were discovered after being vomited up by a
frog, but the comedians did manage to guess that toilet frogs are a problem for
Miami.
The third game that was played involved the comedians guessing the definitions
of different terminologies, or jargon, which had to do with Dr. Rose’s
research.
One of these terms was
punctuated equilibrium, which is when
species are at equilibrium, then a drastic environmental change occurs.
It is tied to evolution, which meant one
comedian said, “so we’re pretending evolution is real for tonight,” which
caused the audience to laugh.
Then, the New and Improv’d comedians acted out a scene based on a day in the
lab for Dr. Rose.
During the skit, the
comedians had to pull quotes from a bucket and incorporate them into the skit.
The quotes were lines from Gattaca, such as, “There’s no gene for fate”, and
“The only trip I’ll take in space is around the sun on the satellite here.”
Needless to say, the comedians had their work cut out for them, trying to
incorporate these lines, and they drew a lot of laughs from the audience.
Finally, we got to learn a little bit more about Dr. Rose and his life outside
of his research during a game of “Two Truths and a Lie”. Each comedian was
given a “fact” about Dr. Rose; two truths and one lie. They then had to guess
which statement was the lie.
One rather
interesting fact we learned about him during this game is that he was once
stranded on an island in the Arctic. Hmm, it seems that the identify of Prof. Chris Rose has been dissected...
This fun event tied in lots of information about amphibians, biology, and how
research in a scientific laboratory works, while being an entertaining and
comical experience. The turn out was great (~100 people), the audience being catered with cookies, drinks, and lots of laughter and joy.
Make sure you mark your calendar with the upcoming (only three left) dates (all Thursdays):
October 27, February 16, and March 30.
