The spirit breathes where it wants

It would be interesting to announce a competition to create fundamentally new formats for popularizing science. Offhand, it would be possible to introduce in the yellow press the column “gossip chronicle from the life of scientists” (“The famous ichthyologist Z. was recently seen in the company of the batrachologist A. - should we expect new hypotheses about fish coming to land, or is this just a romantic date?” ). Or print a paragraph from a physics textbook (“collect the whole topic and get a free lunch”) on every tray liner at a fast food restaurant. Or line up at Sberbank not according to the order of appearance (or the impudence) of the participants, but according to the results of the answer to a short test: whoever doesn’t know anything means that he doesn’t have the habit of spending his time effectively, so let him wait.

I’m experimenting a little myself, trying to popularize things in places not designated for this. Recently, for example, I quite successfully advertised “The Extended Phenotype” by Richard Dawkins in the LiveJournal community ru_childfree (where people who have already decided that they do not want children communicate, but are still interested in the public’s opinion on this matter) - I added the book under the “science” sauce biology explains why those who have already raised a younger brother or sister do not necessarily have to have a child.” Well, in general, of course, I’m wondering where else we can include popularization so that its victims would be those who did not plan this at all.

The recently released film “I Declare War” about a child with cancer did not live up to my hopes for popularization. You still need to watch it - firstly, it is a great story about the life of a family, and secondly, half of the proceeds from the rental are transferred to the Gift of Life foundation - but there is almost no medicine there, and it would be better not to have it at all, because Russian the translation is absolutely terrible. The hero has a tumor in the “right posterior cavity of the brain” (in the ventricle!?), and it is being treated with autoplasty (?) of the bone marrow.

But while I was upset about the fact that popularization was not found anywhere, I found a website on the Internet: eruditi.ru. The project is completely new, and therefore the implementation is still lame on all fours, but the idea is great. This is a way to kill time online, play a computer game, make sure you are smarter than everyone else, and if you’re lucky, also learn something new.

The site contains several thousand questions. Mold is... (viruses; bacteria; plants; fungi). The list of Indian tribes does not include... (Apaches; Kambeba; Yanktons; Sarmatians). Pi... (2.72; 1.41; 3.14; 1.73). The discovery is that people compete not with the computer, but with each other. Two site visitors receive ten identical questions; the one who gives the most correct answers (or gives them faster) wins. The points received for correct answers are, in any case, summed up and displayed in the overall user rating, so that they want to play again and again in order to rise above everyone else.

The questions are very different. This is good: everyone can feel educated (or uneducated, which is even more important). There are completely primitive ones - to answer, it is enough to be a native Russian speaker; There are highly specialized ones - you need to be actively interested in, for example, military history; mainly at the level of the school curriculum and books like “one hundred facts about...”. It is absolutely impossible to win (or lose) all the time - for this you need to be equally well versed in all areas of knowledge, from chemistry to cinema.

The main drawback of the site today is the obvious lack of an editor or proofreader. Perhaps by the time the column is published, the developers will already be ashamed, but so far the accompanying text is terribly touching: people write about the lack of education of modern youth, while getting confused in cases and placing commas without any logic.

But the game itself turned out to be interesting. You definitely need to spend a few evenings on the site if you plan to take the Unified State Exam: false answers are similar enough to the correct ones to develop the habit of reading the questions carefully and comparing options, and doing all this quickly. I don’t plan to take anything, but the ability to think quickly is useful in any field. So, if I were holding a competition of popularization formats, then in November I would give first place to a computer time eater - an activity no worse than others, as it turned out.

Anastasia Kazantseva