The Physics Video Procrastination

PhD progress has been slightly approximate in the last few weeks. In moments of research slumps, I usually end up reading PhD comics just to help me feel like I'm not alone. Either that or I'm pottering around with the side project I accidentally signed up for. Whatever the distraction, the particle physics PhD is procrastination at its finest. I'm going to explain how a free day out badly backfired.

It started with an email

There's a constant barrage of emails into my inbox. People advertising events, asking for assignment help, announcing success, announcing failure... yawn. There's even an emailing list that shares amusing links, such as Doge Weather. Most emails get a quick scan and binned, but one caught my eye. A free trip to a public engagement training workshop in London?! Naturally, I signed up. A few weeks later I was walking on Whitechapel Road - the £60 Monopoly street that no one wants, heading towards the workshop at Queen Mary University, London.

The workshop was open to physics PhD students from the entire South East Physics Network (SEPnet). So it started with meeting what felt like an endless supply of SEPnet physicists. After that the day unfolded in a peculiar fashion. Within an hour it was clear that I had signed up to make a fully fledged physics public engagement project... Huh?

That was me.

The coffee-fuelled hours that followed were broken only by a free lunch and an "Outreach Officer" with sandwich tourettes... well, that was my diagnosis.

That was the Outreach Officer.

And ended with a "plan"

So my chosen method of public engagement is video, and by September I need to have made one or more physics videos. Unfortunately that's as far as my project plan's got. To save time on filming and editing, perhaps I could go on Jezza... "You may be my mother, but do you know what my research is about?!" ... but that doesn't solve the less-than-adequate plan. I like the videos by MinutePhysics and Veritasium that I mentioned in The YouTube VT Round. But I need to think of something new. So please get it touch and let me know: What would you like to see in a physics video?

p.s. I'm hoping that my video making skills are better than my drawing ones!