Overachieving makes for sleepless nights...but results in cool stop motion video!

This blog has made me totally rethink how to go about trying to explain complicated ideas to people.  Thinking back to the beginning of the semester, I have to laugh at how I almost wore it as a badge of honor that I could speak this language known as science.  What I learned this semester is that most of the world does not speak, nor do they want to speak this highly complicated and often intimidating language.  I know exactly how frustrating it can be when people talk to you in a language you don't speak.

I took violin lessons for 12 years, starting when I was 8 years old.  Many of those years were with one of the most inspirational figures I have ever met.  Her name was Korina, and she was part of the nationally renown Veronika String Quartet.  To make a long story short, the quartet was from Russia, and they were all very Russian.  Korina was trained under the disciplined lifestyle that the Soviets were renown for.  This needless to say caused some friction with American student because we didn't find it appropriate to practice the instrument 8 hours every day.  She was a wonderful teacher none the less.  Being from Russia though, her native language was Russian.  She was always good at explaining what needed to be done to me in English, but she was also good at switching to Russian when talking to the other quartet members about me.  I remain convinced to this day that they made a lot of jokes at my expense that I will never know about... My point is that speaking a different language is often speak around those they don't want to communicate with.  Korina wanted to talk about things she didn't want me to hear (probably the truth about how bad I was), but scientists often use their language to speak above the audience.  They get a weird kind of kick out of it, which I know because I have done it.  Nothing makes a nerd feel better than sounding smarter than somebody else, just like athletes like to show off their abilities on the field.  Just like with athletes though, nobody likes a ball hog.

Ok, so now I am on a tangent.  The reason that I am bringing this up to you is because the end of the semester is coming near.  A couple more posts and this blog project will be complete as far as the class goes.  I started out excited at the beginning of the semester.  Starting a blog, I though I would have the perfect way to just write out all the basics of nuclear power.  That would fix everything as people would read the facts and everybody would be educated on the basics of nuclear power...well as it turns out, when people don't care you aren't going to get them to read anything!  I just had a friend ask me to proof read a paper for a class and I couldn't even finish it because I didn't care.  It is an absolute truth.  Blogging has been an excellent medium for me to get the information I feel important out there so people can see it.  I even like to think that some of my posts have been mildly entertaining.  The fact that people have to put work into reading the blog post in the first place is very limiting to my ability to communicate.

I was very excited when we were given a chance in another one of my classes to do a public outreach project about nuclear power.  I have learned so much in this class about communicating scientific information that I wanted to apply to other mediums.  Reading a book called "Don't be Such a Scientists" by Randy Olsen particularly interested me in film.  When a friend in the class suggested that we do a stop motion film for the project, a flood of ideas came over us about communicating the basics of nuclear power.  I have to admit that this has been the most involved project of my life, but it is by far the school project that I am the most proud of.  The video is a little long, but we cover most of the basics about nuclear power in a relatively short period of time.  In essence, this video summarizes the technical information that I have tried to give up till now.  For those of you following my blog up till this point, I would love to hear if the video is better at conveying information than my writing.  Anyway, without any further adieu, I present to you a look at nuclear power in stop motion!  Enjoy!  Oh, by the way, turn your volume up nice and loud.  The levels are a little soft, but the song is awesome!