"Dance Your Ph.D." Finalists Announced

sciencehabit writes "Science has announced the 12 finalists for its annual "Dance Your PhD" contest. Among the finalists are dances about nanofibers and explosions, fusion implosions at the National Ignition Facility, and the science of tornadoes. A panel of esteemed scientists, artists, and educators are judging the finalists now to choose the winners. The winners and audience favorite will be announced on 3 November.

and it's not a joke

[frovingslosh]

It's so great to realize these people are going to get real Ph.D. s

This can show the value of basic science

[nbauman]

Perhaps if Rep. Paul Broun and Todd Aikin saw this, they would realize the value of basic science.

What a waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny as hell. You can't "waste time". You always have more time until you die. And after that you won't care. People _ALWAYS_ do what they want with their time. These people want to dance their Ph. D. s. You want to read slashdot. They might consider that as "wasted", because they don't understand what you get from it. The same amount of time goes by no matter what(excluding very high speeds here) you do.

If you(and everyone else) had a tap that runs forever, with neverending water, and you don't wash

Architecture

[Anonymous Coward]

Please let one of them be an architecture student...

Not entirely frivolous

[Krishnoid]

In a way, this helps connect scientists and the layperson:

• It's associating a very familiar visual form with frequently abstract, difficult-to-visualize topics in a way that makes scientific results (I'm stretching here) a little more accessible to the layperson
• The layperson can see that scientists who live in their brains and lab much of the time also express themselves in a universal human way
• For the scientists, it has them consider their research and work in something other than the classical scientific context. While many scientists have artistic talents, in a way this has them consider something functional and concrete in a more aesthetic form. You could say that artists do this when representing reality in an abstract way; this is similar, except with the reality here being otherwise inaccessible to human senses and experience due to its size, speed, location, etc.

Re:

[DerekLyons]

It's associating a very familiar visual form with frequently abstract, difficult-to-visualize topics in a way that makes scientific results (I'm stretching here) a little more accessible to the layperson

You're stretching a looong way - light years. I watched those videos, and all they look like is a bunch of random people randomly moving and randomly dancing. When you actually add the needed narration... the dancing becomes distracting.

need to get ready for a life on daniceing in the

[Joe_Dragon]

need to get ready for a life on dancing in the street to get the coins and cash to pay off your student loan or to at least show years of no paper income to get out of them.

Dynamo hmmmmmm

[paiute]

Dancing about science is like cooking about music.

Damn.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Among the finalists are dances about nanofibers and explosions, fusion implosions at the National Ignition Facility, and the science of tornadoes

No PhD-in-sexology finalist? Damn.

Re:

[nbauman]

No PhD-in-sexology finalist? Damn.

There was the sperm competition among brothers and female mate selection in chickens.

Hey Ballmer ...

[PPH]

... sit down!

and the science of tornadoes?

[Truth_Quark]

Aw come on, that's clearly cheating. The choice of topic was clearly influenced by the applicability of dance moves.

Nice chicks

[nbauman]

I mean, this should do a lot to improve the unfair gender imbalance in STEM.