To introduce the public to
science in a combination of comedy and education, Dr. Anca Constantin and Dr.
Klebert Feitosa host the event Demystifying
the Expert. The program brings together a guest
speaker, who is an expert in their field of science, and comedians from JMU’s
very own New &
Improv’d, who attempt to “demystify the expert.”
Questions, games, trivia and improvised skits all contribute to the fun as the
audience learns about the expert’s work. Podcasts for previous Demystifying the
Expert events can be found here on
SoundCloud!
On
March 29, 2018, the final Demystifying the Expert event for the spring semester
welcomed Dr. Barbara Reisner from the Department of Chemistry as our expert for
the evening, and in a change of scene, we had the great pleasure of hearing her
at Pale Fire Tap Room in Downtown Harrisonburg. The podcast for her show can be found here!
The members of JMU’s New and Imrpov’d who participated
in the event were: Alex Jacobs, a senior communications and philosophy major, Marian
Duffy, a sophomore art-or-something-related major, and Drew Holt, a junior
marketing major.
The
first game that the comedians played in order to determine what the expert
studied was twenty questions. Each comedian took turns asking Dr. Reisner yes
or no type questions to help them deduce what area of science she studies. After a few questions, our comedians
discovered that Dr. Reisner works in the chemistry department, and more
specifically, inorganic and materials chemistry.
The
second game was the fill-in-the-blank game, during which the comedians guess
words that complete titles of articles that relate to Dr. Reisner’s research.
These
articles might not have seemed like they had much in common, with topics about
superconductivity, meteorites, virus imaging, and greenhouse gases, but Dr.
Reisner explained how each related to her work in the nano-scale. In particular, one aspect of the work she does
allows us to manufacture superconducting materials, and another allows us to
essentially trap greenhouse gases in another type of material.
Next
was the jargon game during which the comedians guess what certain acronyms
mean or terms that are used in daily life but have a different meaning in
the expert’s field. Here, the comedians did well in guessing the more technical
meanings of the Dr. Reisner’s jargon, with some words being clarified for those
who had taken chemistry courses before.
Among the words were bomb, oven, and glove-box, with more foreign words
like zeolites and diffraction.
Finally,
the audience got to learn more about the Dr. Reisner outside of his life as a chemist
with the Two Truths and a Lie game. During this game, the comedians and
audience learned that, Dr. Reisner has kept very active her entire life, from participating
in numerous sports in her high school career to singing in numerous choirs
throughout her life to being an active advocate for the development of a new
high school in Harrisonburg. While she
might not have beers created by herself at the Tap Room, one of her party
tricks for parties involves spelling with the periodic table, which she very
quickly demonstrated with her own name and those of our hosts.
The
final event of the night was the skit in which the comedians played out an
imagined day in the life of the research lab of Dr. Reisner with some mandatory
quotes relating to chemistry and its reactions from movies and books like The Martian. The skit involved much work
with small and dangerously powerful reactions to clean our ecosystem of
greenhouse gases, some burgeoning romance between the lab assistants and Dr. Reisner
quickly flipping from admonishment to advocacy, and a deep questioning of the intrinsic
nature of the field, and of life itself.
It was a final recap of all that the audience, and the comedians, had
learned in a brief but fantastical way.
We look forward
to seeing you at the first Demystifying the Expert event for the fall semester at
7:00 PM on Thursday, October 11, 2018, in our usual location at Taylor Down
Under, the first floor of Madison Union!
