Science Writing Workshop

One of our recent pledges was to run a series of "how to write about science" workshops, designed to help kick-start careers in science journalism; and we're already working on our first such workshop.

TWDK have teamed up with the UK's largest student space society, UKSEDS, to offer a science writing workshop aimed at university students. In a hands-on session lasting from 10am til 4pm, we will cover all the basics you need to get you started in science journalism including:

• Language use – technical science writing is very different from popular science writing. This activity covers how to get your tone right, tailor your writing style to different audiences and age groups.
• Picking a story – regular writing needs inspiration, but how do you find suitable topics? This activity covers how to find and read press releases, and practice choosing which ones are suitable for you to build upon.
• “Good” vs “bad” science writing – what makes a piece of science writing good, or bad? We look at some common mistakes and pitfalls, and discuss how to identify and avoid them.
• Writing from a science paper – published science papers are a common starting point for science journalists, but understanding them can be tricky if you’re not a specialist in that area. Learn some tips on how to read papers to extract the key points you need, and practice writing summaries of a number of real papers in a variety of topics.
• Editing articles – no first draft will be perfect, and articles always need to be edited. Often this will be done by somebody else, and editing other people’s work can help you understand both the process and alternative styles that may strengthen your own writing.
• Starting a blog - how to get started in the world of science blogging; setting up your own blog or joining a network both have their own advantages. We look at guest blogging, common sites, what you need to set up your own blog and some useful tools.

Four Space Science Videos

A few weeks ago we announced that, through our partnership with Sheffield Hallam University, four teams of media and games design students had worked with us to adapt some of our previously published space science articles into animated videos. Since then, we've been releasing the videos through our YouTube channel. All four videos have now been released, so here's a quick round-up of the four.

The first of these was about the NASA space mission "New Horizons" which is currently en route to Pluto, based on Pluto's New Horizons by Peter Ray Allison. The video was created by a team of four students (Ryan Stewart, Jake Samson-Roberts, John Teo and Jason Vickers), who decided to use a similar "live animation" style as our previous video Why do we sleep?

The second group chose to animate Why are the planets so different?, by Adam Stevens. This group consisted of five students (Renny Nascimento, Will Pritchard, Clark O'Connell, Rachel ? and Romy Nelson). Their chosen style was to use stock motion with a 3D overlay which they produced using 3DS Max and Adobe After Effects, producing an 8-minute video with 5 sections.

Sheffield students make TWDK science videos

We issued our challenge through the university's Venture Matrix™ scheme.

Earlier this year, we set students from Sheffield Hallam University a challenge - to take one of our published science articles, and turn it into a video. Four groups of media students took up the gauntlet, and over the next few months the students created four very different videos.

The students had a total freedom of choice regarding which of our articles they chose, and the style they would use to make the video. Our only condition was that each group choose a different article.

TWDK past, present and future

At this time of year, it's customary for a company to reflect on what it has (or hasn't) achieved over the past year, and to plan out how it wants to move forward for the next twelve months. 2013 was indeed a special year for Things We Don't Know, as it was the first full year in which we existed! We're certainly very proud of everything we've achieved so far.

In 2012, our highest monthly visitor count to our articles was just under 2,500 (November). In October 2013, saw more than three times as many visitors. That's still a low number compared to what we want to achieve, but for a website that doesn't advertise anywhere (yet) we're rather happy with that.

Of course, our published articles are just the tip of the iceberg - we've been busy doing a lot more behind the scenes.

TWDK founder Ed Trollope, presenting his vision on stage in Berlin. Photograph by Gerhard F. Ludwig

New collaboration - Odyssey magazine

It's been a bit quiet on the TWDK blog since our very successful World Space Week series, which as usual means we've been working on something big! We have some great new features coming soon, and we won't give away too many spoilers just yet but as a hint we've just created the Things We Don't Know YouTube channel!

One thing we will reveal however, is that we've started working with American science magazine Odyssey. Their focus is on explaining science to kids with regular features like "Ask Dr Cyborg", and will have a special feature in January about "Unsolved Mysteries of Science". We're happy to announce that TWDK have been acting as consultant editor for the issue, and we have been collaborating on some material which will go live on the TWDK site in December. Watch this space!

For more information about partnership opportunities with Things We Don't Know, please contact us at partnerships@thingswedontknow.com

Life as an intern at TWDK

Ever wonder what it's like working for Things We Don't Know? Our physics intern Johanna had this to say about her first week with us over the summer...

This week has been a bit mind boggling, but very fascinating too.

Physicist Johanna Blee worked for us for two months over the summer, on an internship we offered through our partnership with SEPnet. Photo ©TWDK.

Having met with Nick Evans - Professor of theoretical high energy physics at Southampton - I began looking at the equations and laws that govern particle Physics and the open questions that occur from them, and then gravity which in itself is one big question! This led to many complex ideas. These include the idea that as observers we are forcing the world around us to change. This work also led me to appreciate how often in Physics answering a question creates further questions. For example, proof of the existence of the Higgs boson has led to the question "how do particles actually get their mass"?

Summer Physics Internships 2013

Happy Easter from the TWDK team! If you've been following us for a while now then you will probably remember Jon Cheyne, who wrote a number of articles for us last summer while he did an internship with us through the South East Physics Network (SEPnet).

So it is with great pleasure that we can announce we will be hosting another two physics interns through our partnership with SEPnet this summer, and we've already received a lot of really great applications. We'll be holding interviews and making our decision over the next few weeks, so you can look forward to some more great posts from June onward by our new interns!

New science communicator

We had a tremendous response to our new science communicator internship, launched in partnership with SEPnet, and we're happy to introduce you now to the latest addition to our team: Jon.
Jon is studying physics at Queen Mary, University of London, and is already hard at work converting the complexities of the universe into simple English. He's also going to write some guest posts on this blog over the next few months, talking about his experiences working with us. We hope he'll be nice!
If you're a student or recent graduate, and you'd like to hear about paid internship or volunteering opportunities with us, get in touch by sending an email to our recruitment team.

TWDK joins the Venture Matrix

We're very happy to announce that Things We Don't Know is now a member of Sheffield Hallam University's "Venture Matrix™" scheme. The scheme aims to improve the enterprise skills and develop the employability of students by giving them the chance to tackle real-life challenges.

This now means we have a team of 7 students at SHU who are helping us create our initial content and test out the beta website. This will be a great help to us at TWDK, and we hope the students will very much enjoy the experience, gain some valuable skills and learn a lot too!

Science Communicator from SEPnet

February is off to a great start for TWDK!

We have been selected by SEPnet (a consortium of seven world-class universities in SE England) to join their summer internship scheme. This means we will be selecting a student from one of those universities in the next few months, to work with us during the summer as a Science Communicator.

We're all very excited about this, we strongly believe we will also be of use to SEPnet and look forward to working together regularly.