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Science 24 June 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5730, p. 1865
DOI: 10.1126/science.308.5730.1865c
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Figure 6 Mark Lewney, a U.K. patent examiner, knows how to make science sing. This month, Lewney (left) won a U.K. science communication talent contest modeled after American Idol in which more than 300 contestants riffed on scientific topics to a panel of academics and journalists. During one of the rounds of FameLab, Lewney explained "why spaceships on the telly are rubbish" (for one, they wouldn't make any noise in space), and described Orion, an interplanetary ship driven by atomic bombs that was proposed in the 1950s.

For his final performance, Lewney took up an electric guitar to explain how the harmonics of its strings create distinctive distorted sounds. "Ignoring the judges' advice about how to be a calm, authoritative TV presenter, I plugged my electric guitar into my amp and turned it up loud," Lewney says. Science writer Simon Singh, one of the judges, found the Orion presentation especially impressive: "He used only a frying pan as a prop and still got the audience excited."

Lewney earned nearly $3700 and a few television spots as well. Runners-up David Booth, an evolutionary biologist from Belfast, and Matt Wilkinson, a zoologist from Cambridge, each won about $1400.

CREDIT: IAN JONES/THE DAILY TELEGRAPH




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)