Questions Raised are Questions Answered

Apologies all for not blogging last Friday (like any of you probably really care… four posts a week is probably enough to keep up with, I know its enough to write!) but I absolutely HAD to finish rereading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince so I could start on The Deathly Hallows on Saturday morning. I am happy to report I did, even though it took me until 1:30 in the morning to finish.

So after a full weekend of reading excellent work, I am now ready to return to my own writing projects.

I would like to point out, however, that Friday's issue of SLAC today was my second exclusive issue. All three stories were written by me. I am slowly taking over the office of communications…

Or so I thought until today when I don't have any stories appearing. But fear not, I am in the works on nine more, which is keeping me rather busy during the day.

I would like to take the opportunity, however, to answer a couple of questions from the Indiana University professor who is so kindly overseeing my project.

My stories, and all stories, on SLAC Today are written for a general audience who may or may not have any scientific background at all. SLAC has over 1500 employees, about 1000 of which are not scientists and might not have any scientific training at all. Writing scientific stories which the layman will completely understand is one of the most challenging aspects of my internship so far.

For example, a previous article about kinematic calculations of the expansion of the universe took about six drafts to get right. A more recent article about monitoring GLAST took about five drafts before I got all of the scientific jargon out of it. And then when I submitted it to the scientists to look over and approve, one of them put a lot of the jargon back in that I had worked so hard to remove, which brought about a discussion between my editors and myself about which terms should be left and what should be simplified. This is a delicate decision and often I agonize over only a few words for a whole half hour.

So how am I doing? Anybody out there with little or no scientific background, please take a look at the two stories I just mentioned and tell me if you understand it all. And if you don't what words, phrases, or ideas do you find troublesome? Let me know so I can do better next time around…