Well, it’s almost the end of the morning, I’ve just finished one set of tasks and about to move on to another and I thought I’d sit down and chat with a cup of coffee. This morning has largely been about three different outreach-type tasks. I hope to spend the entire afternoon on Physics research. I’m an optimist.
Here’s the shape of this morning:
At 7:00am I checked my email and found that an editor at a magazine was looking for something different from what I initially wrote in response to a question of hers about art and science. I’d spent some of the evening before writing something and sent it along, adding a couple of sentences at the end as a sort of final thought. Of course, she liked the last two sentences and not the rest so much (it was not getting directly at what she wanted me to speak to). So, a bit crestfallen, I tried again. In fact, I had indeed spoken to the issue, but had sort of buried it a bit. So I spent some time scraping away the unnecessary and bending and reshaping the text. Amazing how long that takes when you’ve got a word limit. I sent it along eventually. I’m not sure it is actually as good as what I wrote last night in terms of literature, but it is more to the point of what their feature is about, and so in that sense it is better. From the response I got back, it seems to be more like what they’re looking for now. I’ll tell you more about it when it appears… it’s all about a personal take on the interaction between art and science as far as inspiration goes, with a single piece to illustrate it. It’s the picking of a single piece that was the true difficulty. Took me days to decide. In the end, I had to make some hard choices indeed. I actually enjoyed thinking about the issue though. Sort of re-invigorating. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts about the matter in the comments. I’ll come back to this once the piece appears – if it does.
At 10:00am I called a television production company to talk about a new TV show for one of the well known channels that makes science programs. I’d spent some time in the back rooms of our teaching labs talking to two of our teaching lab professionals (Joseph Vandiver and Angella Johnson) about what things we might have available to illustrate some of the physics principles this show tries to bring out, and the purpose of the call was to have a teleconference with the program makers about what concepts I can help them bring out for their show, using interview and these demos as show and tell. It was a good meeting. They explained what they were looking for and I explained some physics and what I can do to illustrate that physics. We shoot next week. Should be fun. Some further time was spent tracking down mundane details needed for the associate producer to start setting up all the logistics of the shoot, from permission forms from USC to parking and so forth. I’ll tell you more when I can.
At 11:00am or so I discovered a typo in an equation I’d earlier in the morning quickly sent off by email to another TV producer for another show at another channel. (There’s any number of these companies in Los Angeles.) I’d quickly sent it by way of illustration, but realized I should be more careful in sending things, since you never know what might get used by accident. I corrected it, explained the equation, and sent on a nice diagram that a physicist might draw alongside that equation. Seems that they are planning to use the equation in some sort of fancy graphical way in the show as the narrative goes on. Should be nice. We exchanged a bit of email about CGI issues for the show as well.
Ok, time-consuming? Yes… But all in a good cause, I tell myself.
-cvj
