[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
so apparently we now live in a post
truth world now don’t worry I don’t
think that means the truth stop being
true but what it does mean is that no
one really knows who or what to believe
anymore and now modern science tells us
that the world is a very complex place
but it’s much easier and more attractive
to believe oversimplified statements
especially when scientists talk in
impenetrable language and use the
language of uncertainty but many of the
decisions that we make as individuals
and as a society involve science dietary
decisions environmental concerns the
list goes on and on so a scientifically
aware Society has the potential to be
healthier and better informed when
making democratic decisions which is why
it’s really important to communicate
science in a way that speaks to as many
people as possible without
oversimplification now I’m going to show
you the songs or a uniquely effective
way of doing this because they’re of
their ability to do five things so
firstly they can engage audiences they
can familiarize the complicated language
of science they can convey meaningful
understanding enhance memory and recall
and finally they can bridge the
perceived gap between the Arts and the
sciences so let’s start with engagement
now whether I’m in my role as a teacher
or an entertainer the first thing I need
to do is engage my audience which means
getting them to participate or have some
kind of emotional involvement with what
I’m saying so I’m gonna give you this is
the Wikipedia definition of DNA now how
many of you feel like you want to
participate in that probably not many
and I’m guessing most people when they
see this their only emotion is mild
terror so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna
put
the same information into a calypso for
within every little cell that’s in all
of us is a tiny little thing called a
nucleus but it’s the stuff inside the
really cars the bus it’s the stuff
details about is how to grow into us
it’s a very long and complicated
molecule but something so small is very
influential it will make you grow big
and strong and tall or if it’s like mine
it makes you hairy and small its DNA DNA
three little letters with a lot to say
deoxyribonucleic acid hey that’s DNA a
common little packets called chromosome
you get hop from your daddy and hop from
your mom it’s a double helix ladder with
a coat made from a nucleic acids and
it’s very long well the adenine pairs
with thymine guanine pairs with the
sides to see when you got to know pairs
you got a gene which will tell us cell
how to make a protein its DNA DNA three
little letters with a lot to say
a deoxyribonucleic acid he that’s being
[Music]
oh oh and every time a cell divides make
a replication every now and then there
is a mutation and a mutation because an
innovation and that might make a
situation like a baby being born with 11
toes or a blood disease are a massive
nose don’t maybe biz with your cousin
cuz you should know it multiplies the
chances that the defects show its DNA
the end a three little letters with a
lot to say deoxyribonucleic acid
hey that’s being maybe an A for DNA it
could make you crazy it could make you
gay it could make your hair fall all the
way it could make it blonde brown blue
or gray DNA or DNA it can make you want
to fight a one to pray it could make you
drop down dead today
oh that’s DNA
[Music]
deoxyribonucleic acid that’s DNA
so I’m I’m guessing you wouldn’t have
applauded if I just read the the
Wikipedia definition no but you did
applaud and that’s engagement you had a
positive emotional response
partly because I made you laugh and but
also because music directly effects our
emotions which is why it has such wide
appeal now even small children who don’t
get the jokes or understand the science
love that song I was backstage at a
science festival one time and a fellow
science communicator and very proud
father showed me a video of his
three-year-old daughter singing the
whole song from start to finish so songs
can be engaging enough to get
three-year-olds to say deoxyribonucleic
acid which is both very impressive and
very adorable and it brings us on to our
second point that three year old girl
was familiarized with the complicated
language of genetics in a really
non-threatening way now scientific
language can be a massive barrier to
engagement for scientists it’s very
useful it’s accurate it’s concise for
the rest of us it’s just confusing and
now even though she didn’t understand
any of the words this young girl is
going to come across them in school one
day and she’ll presumably be a lot more
comfortable than her friends who didn’t
have biochemistry in their nursery
rhymes so let’s move on to conveying
understanding now songs are actually
really good at this partly because you
can lay the information out as you would
in a textbook but the difference is in a
song you have to be much more economical
with your language and you actually
repeat the main point over and over
again in the chorus which makes the
explanation incredibly clear now I found
that writing lyrics is even better for
developing understanding of science
which is why as a teacher
I’ll get my students to write their own
science songs and now teachers might say
well that takes up too much extra time
but actually when teachers get students
to embed understanding they do
by getting students to explain topics in
their own words when you write a song
you do that multiple times for every
single line to find the one that rhymes
and scans perfectly now students often
find these topics kind of teach these
tasks kind of tedious and it feels like
jumping through hoops for no reason but
when you’ve got a song not only do you
have a bit of music to brighten up the
atmosphere you also get a useful product
they get their own catchy revision song
that they have ownership over and it
turns out it’s not just me and my
students that can learn from songwriting
even world experts can learn from the
songwriting process I recently wrote
songs with five of Oxford University’s
leading academics and this is us
presenting them live on the streets of
Oxford to the public now when they went
through the songwriting process they
were forced to clarify and refine their
explanations so much so that some of
them actually gained new insights into
their research by doing so so let’s move
on to enhancing memory and recall melody
rhythm repetition and rhyme all improve
the encoding and retrieval of
information which is why advertisers use
jingles and why non literate cultures
have for thousands of years used songs
to pass knowledge from one generation to
the next and all of these things
engagement language learning memory and
understanding have direct links to
education so why not have songs that
encode the learning of the entire
curriculum songs that teachers can use
in their lessons and that students can
listen to on headphones in their own
time so this is one of the things I do
and I call them psy tunes so what I’m
gonna do is I am going to teach you
about Newton’s three laws of motion now
and the words will be on the screen so
if you want to sing along please do
a person just official there’s many
types we’re knowing a boss to change an
object’s shape at speed are where it’s
going you found three laws of will
describe is completely feds
you to one the net new street would have
cause that’s Newton’s three huge one
described now when he object might
behave when all its forces balance out
in each and every way inside the staying
still are moving at a steady rate in the
same direction till the forces on his
change it means that if I threw a ball
here comes to us trees
used to describe our motion changes with
a force we know instinctively it changes
speed changes force bigger objects need
a bigger push to make them move it
forces double accelerations of all 2rm
peoples and may you could say
mathematically that once known as u2
anthems Newton 3 Q 3 describes effects
of forces come in twos when you push up
on a thing it pushes back on you always
directly opposite and always the same
size it’s reason that cementum is
conserved when things collide means I’m
pulling up the earth as much as it pulls
down on me that’s what’s known as
Newton’s third or sometimes even three
so if all your forces balance you’ll
maintain velocity Federation and force
applied increase proportionally for
every force an equal one will lack the
poles and
then an su-22 that’s okay let’s move on
to bridging the and I’m gonna put this
in inverted commas the gap between the
arts and the sciences
now the perceived gap between the Arts
and Sciences prevents many people
identifying with scientific thinking an
identity is really important
particularly to teenagers who are
choosing their identities in life and
their academic paths now for too long
science has been seen as the cold
impersonal opposite to the creative and
caring arts now that’s a false dichotomy
you don’t have to be one or the other
and there are a lot of overlaps can you
imagine if Einstein violin teacher had
said you know what Albert I think you
need to leave that science so we can
nurture your creative brain he never
would’ve used that creative brain to
discover new physics because discovery
is in part a creative process
now also if you’re someone who cares
about the world’s problems science is a
great way to solve many of them so there
you go now songs can speak to the people
who were put off by this myth and help
them put their prejudices aside for long
enough to see the human side of science
in 2014 I did a project with the
Wellcome collection in London working
along some alongside some sexual
behavior researchers and these young
people here and what we wanted to do was
get them to do a little research project
and then write songs about the process
and about what they found the problem is
young people don’t read the small print
and they all thought they’d come just
for a songwriting workshop so when I
told them that they’d be doing science
they were a bit disappointed and nearly
all of them had given up science in
school and in fact one of them had given
up on school completely so they were
like this is going to be boring
but they because of the songwriting they
went with it and in the end they
actually conducted a survey of over 400
members of the public and they wrote a
dozen songs about science but what was
best for me was that discussions they’d
had with the researchers was so
interesting and different for the
researchers that it actually inspired
their future research studies in this
way the young people actually made a
contribution to science and this really
brings home the way that songs can
re-engage the disengaged and help them
see science as relevant so by
brightening classrooms developing public
understanding re-engaging the disengaged
and connecting researchers with the
public song’s not only can spread
awareness of science but can help
researchers be a more aware of the needs
of society
so songs can really democratize
knowledge and help the complex ideas of
science be less intimidating next to the
oversimplified statements of the post
truth world and I’d like to finish with
a song now about one of the most complex
bits of physics there is the Higgs boson
and I write this song when I was asked
to play the first ever comedy night at
the Large Hadron Collider where it was
discovered and I wanted to make the song
both understandable for the public that
were invited but also give the
scientists some things to think about so
the Higgs boson was originally predicted
to solve problem ear problems in the
fundamental equations of physics because
they were what physicists called
asymmetrical now in a very simple term
that means the equations weren’t very
pretty and no one knows why but the
prettier and the more beautiful and
elegant the equations the better they
seem to fit with reality now for me this
means that theoretical physics is
basically based on a subjective idea of
beauty
so theoretical physicists are actually
some of the best artists I’ve come
[Music]
now the superstitious fear a broken
mirror while scientists choose
rationality and yet the one thing that a
physicist can simply not abide is when
nature shows a broken symmetry so if
you’ve ever tried to weigh a ray of
sunlight you’ll know that it’s a very
tricky thing to try for the photons in
the ray of light of massless unlike the
particles with mass that go to make up
Uri so it seems the standard models
asymmetrical should all have the same
and so there needs to be a field that
will only be revealed by its boson and
the Higgs will be its name only exists
between the findings by Hadron Collider
it’s a hell of a way to go hunting for a
Higgs
now when they’d finished all their
calculations the only way to solve the
mystery was to accelerate some protons
watch as they collide in the biggest
machine that ever was built in all of
history in need in 27 kilometers of
tunnels 100 meters need some Alpine
hills
it took 111 nations working in codes cuz
it’s the only way they’d ever pay the
bills they’re looking for the boson
giving best to matter the monomials of
it exist the way the finest PI Hadron
Collider is a hell of a way to go
hunting regs now hunting for a Higgs
amongst the debris of collision is like
looking for a needle in a haystack made
of needles when the needle that you’re
looking for is an invisible sort of
needle that very quickly changes into
other types of needle so you need a big
computer to sort through all the needles
and do the necessary number crunching
needed to determine if a Higgs like
needle needed to be there and the simile
has been taken much too far they’re
looking for the boson given mass to
matter
the model only holds and it exists the
way the find is by Hadron Collider it’s
a hell of a way to go hunting for a
Higgs yes it’s a hell of a way you go
hunting for anything at all but
[Music] [Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
so apparently we now live in a post
truth world now don’t worry I don’t
think that means the truth stop being
true but what it does mean is that no
one really knows who or what to believe
anymore and now modern science tells us
that the world is a very complex place
but it’s much easier and more attractive
to believe oversimplified statements
especially when scientists talk in
impenetrable language and use the
language of uncertainty but many of the
decisions that we make as individuals
and as a society involve science dietary
decisions environmental concerns the
list goes on and on so a scientifically
aware Society has the potential to be
healthier and better informed when
making democratic decisions which is why
it’s really important to communicate
science in a way that speaks to as many
people as possible without
oversimplification now I’m going to show
you the songs or a uniquely effective
way of doing this because they’re of
their ability to do five things so
firstly they can engage audiences they
can familiarize the complicated language
of science they can convey meaningful
understanding enhance memory and recall
and finally they can bridge the
perceived gap between the Arts and the
sciences so let’s start with engagement
now whether I’m in my role as a teacher
or an entertainer the first thing I need
to do is engage my audience which means
getting them to participate or have some
kind of emotional involvement with what
I’m saying so I’m gonna give you this is
the Wikipedia definition of DNA now how
many of you feel like you want to
participate in that probably not many
and I’m guessing most people when they
see this their only emotion is mild
terror so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna
put
the same information into a calypso for
within every little cell that’s in all
of us is a tiny little thing called a
nucleus but it’s the stuff inside the
really cars the bus it’s the stuff
details about is how to grow into us
it’s a very long and complicated
molecule but something so small is very
influential it will make you grow big
and strong and tall or if it’s like mine
it makes you hairy and small its DNA DNA
three little letters with a lot to say
deoxyribonucleic acid hey that’s DNA a
common little packets called chromosome
you get hop from your daddy and hop from
your mom it’s a double helix ladder with
a coat made from a nucleic acids and
it’s very long well the adenine pairs
with thymine guanine pairs with the
sides to see when you got to know pairs
you got a gene which will tell us cell
how to make a protein its DNA DNA three
little letters with a lot to say
a deoxyribonucleic acid he that’s being
[Music]
oh oh and every time a cell divides make
a replication every now and then there
is a mutation and a mutation because an
innovation and that might make a
situation like a baby being born with 11
toes or a blood disease are a massive
nose don’t maybe biz with your cousin
cuz you should know it multiplies the
chances that the defects show its DNA
the end a three little letters with a
lot to say deoxyribonucleic acid
hey that’s being maybe an A for DNA it
could make you crazy it could make you
gay it could make your hair fall all the
way it could make it blonde brown blue
or gray DNA or DNA it can make you want
to fight a one to pray it could make you
drop down dead today
oh that’s DNA
[Music]
deoxyribonucleic acid that’s DNA
so I’m I’m guessing you wouldn’t have
applauded if I just read the the
Wikipedia definition no but you did
applaud and that’s engagement you had a
positive emotional response
partly because I made you laugh and but
also because music directly effects our
emotions which is why it has such wide
appeal now even small children who don’t
get the jokes or understand the science
love that song I was backstage at a
science festival one time and a fellow
science communicator and very proud
father showed me a video of his
three-year-old daughter singing the
whole song from start to finish so songs
can be engaging enough to get
three-year-olds to say deoxyribonucleic
acid which is both very impressive and
very adorable and it brings us on to our
second point that three year old girl
was familiarized with the complicated
language of genetics in a really
non-threatening way now scientific
language can be a massive barrier to
engagement for scientists it’s very
useful it’s accurate it’s concise for
the rest of us it’s just confusing and
now even though she didn’t understand
any of the words this young girl is
going to come across them in school one
day and she’ll presumably be a lot more
comfortable than her friends who didn’t
have biochemistry in their nursery
rhymes so let’s move on to conveying
understanding now songs are actually
really good at this partly because you
can lay the information out as you would
in a textbook but the difference is in a
song you have to be much more economical
with your language and you actually
repeat the main point over and over
again in the chorus which makes the
explanation incredibly clear now I found
that writing lyrics is even better for
developing understanding of science
which is why as a teacher
I’ll get my students to write their own
science songs and now teachers might say
well that takes up too much extra time
but actually when teachers get students
to embed understanding they do
by getting students to explain topics in
their own words when you write a song
you do that multiple times for every
single line to find the one that rhymes
and scans perfectly now students often
find these topics kind of teach these
tasks kind of tedious and it feels like
jumping through hoops for no reason but
when you’ve got a song not only do you
have a bit of music to brighten up the
atmosphere you also get a useful product
they get their own catchy revision song
that they have ownership over and it
turns out it’s not just me and my
students that can learn from songwriting
even world experts can learn from the
songwriting process I recently wrote
songs with five of Oxford University’s
leading academics and this is us
presenting them live on the streets of
Oxford to the public now when they went
through the songwriting process they
were forced to clarify and refine their
explanations so much so that some of
them actually gained new insights into
their research by doing so so let’s move
on to enhancing memory and recall melody
rhythm repetition and rhyme all improve
the encoding and retrieval of
information which is why advertisers use
jingles and why non literate cultures
have for thousands of years used songs
to pass knowledge from one generation to
the next and all of these things
engagement language learning memory and
understanding have direct links to
education so why not have songs that
encode the learning of the entire
curriculum songs that teachers can use
in their lessons and that students can
listen to on headphones in their own
time so this is one of the things I do
and I call them psy tunes so what I’m
gonna do is I am going to teach you
about Newton’s three laws of motion now
and the words will be on the screen so
if you want to sing along please do
a person just official there’s many
types we’re knowing a boss to change an
object’s shape at speed are where it’s
going you found three laws of will
describe is completely feds
you to one the net new street would have
cause that’s Newton’s three huge one
described now when he object might
behave when all its forces balance out
in each and every way inside the staying
still are moving at a steady rate in the
same direction till the forces on his
change it means that if I threw a ball
here comes to us trees
used to describe our motion changes with
a force we know instinctively it changes
speed changes force bigger objects need
a bigger push to make them move it
forces double accelerations of all 2rm
peoples and may you could say
mathematically that once known as u2
anthems Newton 3 Q 3 describes effects
of forces come in twos when you push up
on a thing it pushes back on you always
directly opposite and always the same
size it’s reason that cementum is
conserved when things collide means I’m
pulling up the earth as much as it pulls
down on me that’s what’s known as
Newton’s third or sometimes even three
so if all your forces balance you’ll
maintain velocity Federation and force
applied increase proportionally for
every force an equal one will lack the
poles and
then an su-22 that’s okay let’s move on
to bridging the and I’m gonna put this
in inverted commas the gap between the
arts and the sciences
now the perceived gap between the Arts
and Sciences prevents many people
identifying with scientific thinking an
identity is really important
particularly to teenagers who are
choosing their identities in life and
their academic paths now for too long
science has been seen as the cold
impersonal opposite to the creative and
caring arts now that’s a false dichotomy
you don’t have to be one or the other
and there are a lot of overlaps can you
imagine if Einstein violin teacher had
said you know what Albert I think you
need to leave that science so we can
nurture your creative brain he never
would’ve used that creative brain to
discover new physics because discovery
is in part a creative process
now also if you’re someone who cares
about the world’s problems science is a
great way to solve many of them so there
you go now songs can speak to the people
who were put off by this myth and help
them put their prejudices aside for long
enough to see the human side of science
in 2014 I did a project with the
Wellcome collection in London working
along some alongside some sexual
behavior researchers and these young
people here and what we wanted to do was
get them to do a little research project
and then write songs about the process
and about what they found the problem is
young people don’t read the small print
and they all thought they’d come just
for a songwriting workshop so when I
told them that they’d be doing science
they were a bit disappointed and nearly
all of them had given up science in
school and in fact one of them had given
up on school completely so they were
like this is going to be boring
but they because of the songwriting they
went with it and in the end they
actually conducted a survey of over 400
members of the public and they wrote a
dozen songs about science but what was
best for me was that discussions they’d
had with the researchers was so
interesting and different for the
researchers that it actually inspired
their future research studies in this
way the young people actually made a
contribution to science and this really
brings home the way that songs can
re-engage the disengaged and help them
see science as relevant so by
brightening classrooms developing public
understanding re-engaging the disengaged
and connecting researchers with the
public song’s not only can spread
awareness of science but can help
researchers be a more aware of the needs
of society
so songs can really democratize
knowledge and help the complex ideas of
science be less intimidating next to the
oversimplified statements of the post
truth world and I’d like to finish with
a song now about one of the most complex
bits of physics there is the Higgs boson
and I write this song when I was asked
to play the first ever comedy night at
the Large Hadron Collider where it was
discovered and I wanted to make the song
both understandable for the public that
were invited but also give the
scientists some things to think about so
the Higgs boson was originally predicted
to solve problem ear problems in the
fundamental equations of physics because
they were what physicists called
asymmetrical now in a very simple term
that means the equations weren’t very
pretty and no one knows why but the
prettier and the more beautiful and
elegant the equations the better they
seem to fit with reality now for me this
means that theoretical physics is
basically based on a subjective idea of
beauty
so theoretical physicists are actually
some of the best artists I’ve come
[Music]
now the superstitious fear a broken
mirror while scientists choose
rationality and yet the one thing that a
physicist can simply not abide is when
nature shows a broken symmetry so if
you’ve ever tried to weigh a ray of
sunlight you’ll know that it’s a very
tricky thing to try for the photons in
the ray of light of massless unlike the
particles with mass that go to make up
Uri so it seems the standard models
asymmetrical should all have the same
and so there needs to be a field that
will only be revealed by its boson and
the Higgs will be its name only exists
between the findings by Hadron Collider
it’s a hell of a way to go hunting for a
Higgs
now when they’d finished all their
calculations the only way to solve the
mystery was to accelerate some protons
watch as they collide in the biggest
machine that ever was built in all of
history in need in 27 kilometers of
tunnels 100 meters need some Alpine
hills
it took 111 nations working in codes cuz
it’s the only way they’d ever pay the
bills they’re looking for the boson
giving best to matter the monomials of
it exist the way the finest PI Hadron
Collider is a hell of a way to go
hunting regs now hunting for a Higgs
amongst the debris of collision is like
looking for a needle in a haystack made
of needles when the needle that you’re
looking for is an invisible sort of
needle that very quickly changes into
other types of needle so you need a big
computer to sort through all the needles
and do the necessary number crunching
needed to determine if a Higgs like
needle needed to be there and the simile
has been taken much too far they’re
looking for the boson given mass to
matter
the model only holds and it exists the
way the find is by Hadron Collider it’s
a hell of a way to go hunting for a
Higgs yes it’s a hell of a way you go
hunting for anything at all but
[Music] [Applause]
Please follow and like us: