It is crucial that scientists are able to communicate their science. These tools and instructions were used by FLEET researchers to develop and distribute stories about new papers. We see this as a three step process:
- Step 1: Answer the prompts on this page to help you frame your article
- Step 2: Write the article
- Step 3: Distribute the article
Step 1: Prompts
The first thing to do is write a few notes like this:
How would you explain the paper in just one or two sentences to a few different audiences:
- Someone without a science education past high school – or your uncle at the family BBQ
- Someone with only a little knowledge of the relevant physics (say, a chemist or an astronomer)
- A physicist in your exact field
Why this work is important/interesting…
- big picture: eg, will help in FLEET’s search for low-energy exciton transistors because…
- smaller picture: other researchers in my field will use this result to …
- I personally found it really interesting/exciting because …
Explain the study in brief, bullet form, eg:
- The challenge was ABC
- We decided to approach this component differently
- We demonstrated that ABC produced XYZ
- That worked, because…
- Therefore we could do ABCXYZ
- Theory and experiment agree
What next? Think about industry (etc) applications: Who else (eg, industry, or other researchers) can use this discovery?
> Download a handy Word doc to capture your answers to these prompts