Different conceptions of pop physics

[AndreasC]

I was thinking about pop physics lately and everything that is wrong with pop physics (and pop science in general). I think most people here understand that pop physics is generally not really informative at all. Most of pop physics regards highly theoretical, cutting edge physics that has absolutely no connection to the experience of people.

Usually, the only takeaway people get is "quantum mechanics is weird and I don't understand it" or "black holes are super big and I don't understand them". It's as if it makes people understand less, not more. Some programs that do this aren't as bad. For instance PBS Spacetime deals a lot with highly theoretical subjects, however my personal perception is that it's not badly done, and you can actually learn something from it. However, they're still very removed from experience and stuff that people can grasp.

I believe pop physics can do a lot better than that. And thankfully it does seem like some youtube content creators are doing better than that, but not so much the big popularizers. I feel like shifting focus away from these hard to grasp concepts that cause confusion, it should focus more on describing things that people are familiar with. Like, most people have no clue how magnets work. How does glue work? Why do some things conduct electricity and others don't?

These are very simple questions that most people have no clue what the answer to these questions is. And starting from these things, one can easily expand into other interesting subjects. Like what Coulomb explosions are, their uses in industry and the possible connection to jellyfish nematocytes. Or magnetotactic bacteria, which blew my mind when I learned about them. There's no shortage of interesting subjects to talk about which don't involve confusing people with string theory and Schrodinger's cats, and they can be every bit as or even more exciting than what is usually shown.

Besides, you can only hear about Schrodinger's cat so many times before it becomes boring. As an added benefit, the average person won't think physics has nothing to do with the "real" world any more, and we'll get a lot less cranks shoehorning physical concepts they misunderstood in places where they don't fit.

What are your opinions on the subject?

 

[phinds]

I think you misunderstand the POINT of pop-science. It is entertainment, not education. It exists to sell soap (and stuff).

You want it to be educational, but far fewer people will pay to be educated than will pay to be entertained.

 

[AndreasC]

I think you misunderstand the POINT of pop-science. It is entertainment, not education. It exists to sell soap (and stuff).

You want it to be educational, but far fewer people will pay to be educated than will pay to be entertained.

Some YouTube channels are fairly successful actually offering education as well as entertainment. Ostensibly pop science is edutainment, it's both, not one or the other. And my point is that I don't think doing it the other way is less entertaining. As I said, you can only hear about Schrodinger's cat so many times before it gets boring.

Like, I genuinely think a lot of people would be very interested in something like that, especially if it had the production value the rest of the pop physics programs get.

 

[BillTre]

1) I think the idea is to use entertainment to attract an audience, which you can then educate in a cryptic manner. Thus getting around cultural dis-attractions.

2) Hey, everyone loves (and doesn't) Schrodinger's Cat.

3) More seriously:

3a) I am not entirely clear on what popular physics is:

• something not in a textbook?
• some video on the internet/TV?
• hollywood movies?
• someone not a lettered physicist talking about physics?

Its not hard to think of exceptions for each of these.

3b) I think that it is a good thing to improve someone's understanding of the world (through science) to any degree possible.
Not all of these improvements in understanding have to extent to high level physics (or whatever else might be getting explained) to be beneficial.
Many basic aspects of biology can be explained to the benefit of many without going into molecular biological details. Those can be explored later by the more interested.
Physics is the same.

3c) I like your idea of using everyday phenomena to draw people into some scientific explanation. Very Nice.

3d) You sound mixed in your opinion of popularizations.
Some good, some bad.
In my expectations of variability, this does not surprise me at all.
Individual capabilities will result in a diversity of output quality.
Motivations will also vary (as said @phinds).

The Life Aquatic (movie) displays several variant motivations of science explanation, comedically (at least that's how I see it).
It's a parody of Jacques Cousteau, who was both quite a popularizer and a serious STEM person (among other things, invented SCUBA (self contained underwater breathing apparatus)).

 

[Klystron]

IDK. While I certainly share the OP's content criticism, I learned much science from reading and studying books; especially textbooks and ancillary reading materials written by professionals, both paper and electronic. Videos and filmed lectures certainly own a place in education and entertainment; but do not replace study.

In my experience with reading books and watching videos, different learning modes come into play. Books require mental visualization skills that videos supply directly. Reading requires recognizing and relating new terms and expressions that might be missed or misheard while passively listening to an audio track.

Good discussion. One more mention of that stupid cat allegory and ...IDK.

 

[Keith_McClary]

Coulomb explosions

Never heard of them. Is there an explanation better than Wikipedia that doesn't require knowledge of electrodynamics?

There are some sites from actual scientists and mathematicians:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/

https://www.syfy.com/tags/bad-astronomy

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/

https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/

 

[AndreasC]

I am not entirely clear on what popular physics is:

Well, by pop physics I mean the attempts to popularize physics to a wide audience, especially by means of articles written for lay people, videos, programs, etc.

You sound mixed in your opinion of popularizations.
Some good, some bad.
In my expectations of variability, this does not surprise me at all.
Individual capabilities will result in a diversity of output quality.

Right, but you can distinguish an overall tendency or focus. My impression of that focus is that it is misguided.

 

[AndreasC]

Is there an explanation better than Wikipedia that doesn't require knowledge of electrodynamics?

A Coulomb explosion happens when you strip a lot of electrons off of a molecule in a material, usually because of a very intense electric field. When you separate molecules and electrons, the electrons repeal each other, as do protons. The result, if the repealing force is strong enough, is that the material explodes into plasma. It is interesting because it actually shows up in places you wouldn't really expect in nature. For instance, there is evidence for Coulomb explosions being the mechanism behind sodium exploding in water.

 

[AndreasC]

Videos and filmed lectures certainly own a place in education and entertainment; but do not replace study.

Definitely. But I'm not expecting pop physics to be hardcore education. However, they can be edutainment, and offer people some basic conceptual understanding of interesting things. Kind of how people used to watch tons of documentaries about dinosaurs. They didn't make you into a palaeontologist but people learned a lot about the history of earth, how these things are discovered, what palaeontologists think prehistoric creatures looked like, how they evolved, etc. In contrast to that I believe most pop physics is much less informative because the subjects it focuses on confuses people.

 

[DennisN]

On the positive side (and generally):

If popular science can inspire young people to 1) begin to like science and/or 2) perhaps in the future choose a scientific career, then it's a good thing, in my opinion.

(It wasn't so in my case, though, I started to like science when physics was introduced in elementary school.)

 

[f95toli]

In contrast to that I believe most pop physics is much less informative because the subjects it focuses on confuses people.

This might be true, but they also happen to be the subjects people are interested in. A lot of people watch/read pop-sci not because they are interested in science for its own sake or because they want to learn something; but because they want to -very understandably- understand "the nature of reality" and some extent "the meaning of life". Hence, there are good reasons for why there is a LOT of overlap with philosophy and religion in terms of the topics pop-sci deals with.
Now, if you want to know more about our current understanding of how the universe "works" you can't really avoid QM,SR and GR even if those topics are impossible to understand properly from a pop-sci book.

 

[AndreasC]

but because they want to -very understandably- understand "the nature of reality"

Then they are doing a horrible job at that because no one comes away from them understanding the nature of reality any better, if not worse.

Now, if you want to know more about our current understanding of how the universe "works" you can't really avoid QM,SR and GR even if those topics are impossible to understand properly from a pop-sci book.

You don't have to avoid QM or SR or whatever, but you also don't have to focus on the aspects that make no sense to people. Going back to the magnets example, you can use a lot of simplifications of quantum mechanics and SR to explain their properties so that a layman can understand. Don't believe me? Here is a video doing just that:

I think this is a good model of pop physics. And it teaches you a lot more about the nature of reality than Michio Kaku saying weird stuff about strings. But it's not at all the model bit productions follow, neither the stuff you find in pop Sci articles.

And it's not like you have to stick with very "boring" or "usual" subjects such as magnets, you can go pretty wild with it, as long as you are talking about stuff that people can grasp and connect to experience instead of endless wild speculation.

 

[phinds]

Well, by pop physics I mean the attempts to popularize physics to a wide audience, especially by means of articles written for lay people, videos, programs, etc.
... My impression of that focus is that it is misguided.

Once again, you are confusing reality with what you want things to be. Pop science is not at all misguided, it is quite well guided to being entertaining, which is its entire reason for existence.

 

[AndreasC]

Pop science is not at all misguided, it is quite well guided to being entertaining, which is its entire reason for existence.

Reason to whom? And what do you mean by "entertaining"? The video I linked to had around 2.5M views, that's a lot of people, and I guess these people did find it "entertaining". If someone just wants to be entertained without being informed they can watch a movie, they don't have to watch a pop physics program. If you're watching a pop physics program then you're expecting to be entertained, but you are also expecting to be informed. Otherwise you really don't need it to be pop physics. You can ditch the physics and just listen to pop. This is even more true for pop physics articles which don't even have the colorful CGI etc going for them.

 

[epenguin]

... Jacques Cousteau, who was both quite a popularizer and a serious STEM person (among other things, invented SCUBA (self contained underwater breathing apparatus)).

Today I learned that Scuba stands for...