{"id":1896,"date":"2022-12-19T10:35:07","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T10:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurorasaurudev.wpengine.com\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2023-04-18T10:42:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T10:42:19","slug":"small-words-big-ideas-up-goer-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.aurorasaurus.org\/?p=1896","title":{"rendered":"Small Words, Big Ideas: Up Goer Five"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Diagram<\/a>
Dr. Sarah Gibson of the PUNCH mission<\/a> discusses her complex science using, in her words, \u201csmall words, big ideas.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every community of practice evolves its own vocabulary, and scientists and science communicators often rib themselves for how jargony STEM can be. In the late 1970’s, tech film narrator Bud Haggert created the affectionately cheeky “<\/span>Turbo Encabulator<\/span><\/a>“, using plausible but made-up jargon to make this classic engineering sketch incomprehensible. Engineers have delighted in <\/span>recreating<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>updating<\/span><\/a> it since, simulating how jargon can get in the way of understanding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly 40 years later, cartoonist and former NASA engineer Randall Munroe took the opposite approach in his <\/span>xkcd<\/span><\/a> webcomic “<\/span>Up Goer Five<\/span><\/a>“. He humorously explained the Saturn V Rocket in quite literally the simplest of terms: the 1,000 most common English words. Scientists enjoyed the idea so much that a number of conferences began to have “Up Goer Five Challenges.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) <\/span>conference<\/span><\/a>, the Up Goer Five Challenge: Making Big Ideas Simpler by Talking About Them in Words We Use a Lot <\/span>asks speakers to present short scientific talks<\/span><\/a> using the <\/span>same thousand words<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n