My main difficulty with science is that I find it really hard to understand due to all of the foreign terminology. Participating in science is akin to learning a new language when adjusting to the common vernacular. Today at work, I engaged in one of my more awesome data-related discussions with Jen. We’d been going over the “big picture” of my paper, and near the end of our discussion, after we’d both been bravely using (or for me, attempting to use) all of the right jargon (flux, heterotroph, labile), Jen referred to a pool of available carbon as “bug plant food”. It was then that it hit me: science would be so much better if we’d give up science words and use everyday vocabulary to convey research. Isn’t that the point of science—to make it accessible to as many people as possible? I’ve started thinking of how best to express some of the terms currently in my life, and come up with a few suggestions below:
aromatic fractions: solidified onion ring (ie hard to eat!)
labile carbon: steak dinner with vegetables and a glass of milk
lignin: stale rice cakes
heterotrophic respiration: bug farts
autotrophic respiration: plant breath
Example of utility:
“The heterotrophic respiration decreased because of an increase in the relative proportion of the lignin to labile fractions.”
Translation: “The bug farting decreased because there was less of the delicious steak and vegetable dinner and instead, more of the stale rice cake option.”
That’s so much easier to understand.
Not so understandable is the emotional journey I recently completed in between parking my car and entering my house. As I pulled my hubcap-less and dirty Ford Taurus into my carport, I glanced into my neighbor’s kitchen window and saw her boyfriend cleaning some dishes. While a seemingly innocuous event, it in fact caused me to sigh with a twinge of jealousy. Jealous over her companion living in the same state as her, you ask? No, rather the sort of annoyed jealousy usually reserved for 21 year old girls to unleash when their roommate’s boyfriend is over all the time (sorry Carie, Kendra). The kind of annoyance that, in words, would be “Why is he over there all of the time. Why doesn’t he just go home?”
I immediately started to laugh at the absurdity of this feeling. Not only have I never met my neighbor, I only vaguely know what she looks like. She’s not MY roommate for crying out loud. OK, so he parks in a really inconvenient location in our carport that makes my car-driving life difficult, but should I openly sigh upon seeing him?
Place of joy and contentment:
The most beautiful traffic control box in the whole world:
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