Practice I: The Class
As you can probably guess from the title, this class was all about practicing. But practicing what? Basically, this class had us practice all the theoretical concepts we learned during the fall semester. Instead of simply reading about pathos and eye contact and pejorative language, we were now presenting written, verbal, and visual science communication pieces that put those concepts into real-life contexts.
Practice I: The Final
The main final for this class was a collaboration between the science communication students and some master’s students in biology. Each SciComm student was paired with a bio student, and together they worked to create a 5-7 minute presentation on the research the bio student is doing for their master’s. The talk was supposed to be in the style of a TED Talk (i.e., minimal slides) and focus on developing the bio student’s ability to communicate about their research to a non-specialist audience.
I was really lucky that I already knew my bio student before the project. We have the same advisor for our master’s research, even though our research topics are totally different. The topic she is researching is…
Biomining
Mine waste is made up of finely-crushed rock and metal pieces the smelting process missed. This mine waste is then dumped in a designated area. However, as more and more mine waste is dumped in one area, it causes detrimental effects on the environment in that area, like poisoning the water in nearby lakes and rivers. Ideally, we would like to extract those leftover metals in the mine waste so they cannot pollute the environment.
|
This Sudbury "tailing pond" is where the mine waste is dumped. Notice the stark contrast between the surrounding trees and where the mine waste is.
Photo courtesy Laurentian University. |
In biomining, microorganisms are released into the mine waste. Once there, these microbes separate the metals from the waste, even the smallest metal specks. By relying on microbes, we not only save a lot of time and money by avoiding the smelting process, but microbes can extract way more metal than the smelting process ever could.
|
A bunch of different microbes are extracting iron from the rock.
Image courtesy Laurentian University. |
Below is the video I made with my bio buddy, who I think did a wonderful job. 😊
You rock, Arielle!
A briefing note is a short paper meant to quickly and effectively inform a decision-maker about an issue. Usually you hear the term ‘briefing note’ in the context of government, where politicians do not have time to read extensive articles on every issue they could possibly vote on. Instead, the politicians have their aides create briefing notes for them, so the politicians can then have at least a general knowledge of the issues at hand.
We could choose any topic we wished, and so I decided to do my briefing note on the recent nuclear negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the United States. I had a lot of fun researching this topic, and below is the briefing note I created!