Academician's popular science "swipe screen", the short video version of "One Hundred Thousand Whys", "circle fans", and physics "Grandma Wu" became popular... In the past year, the number of popular science short videos has grown rapidly——
"Physics is too difficult" is probably the feeling of many people in their student days. However, recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' 2022 New Year's Eve scientific speech has become popular on the short video platform. Gauge field theory, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, all the physical terms that sound difficult were transformed into easy-to-understand language, attracting 2.6 million netizens to watch. One of the speakers, Cao Zexian, a researcher at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "It is very meaningful to start the new year with a scientific speech with a high knowledge content." Previously, the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences shared researcher Cao Zexian's public class on a short video platform. video clips. One of the content of explaining electromagnetism in combination with long-distance relationship has received more than 2.5 million likes, and many netizens sighed: "Physics has become interesting."
For a period of time, major short video platforms have set off a popular science craze. Many professors and experts have turned into popular science anchors, using short videos as a medium to stimulate the enthusiasm of netizens to explore science. On November 25, 2021, the "Knowledge Inclusive Report 2.0 - Short Video and Knowledge Dissemination Research Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by Tsinghua University and Douyin shows that short videos of popular science are rapidly rising. Up to now, the cumulative number of knowledge videos on the Douyin platform alone has exceeded 6.6 trillion, the number of likes has exceeded 146.2 billion, the number of comments has exceeded 10 billion, and the number of shares has exceeded 8.3 billion.
"From entertainment to knowledge, the active upgrade of the content industry is helping the online society to form a 'knowledge fashion' of seeking knowledge, learning knowledge, and respecting knowledge." said Chen Gang, director of the Department of Film and Television Media, School of Art and Media, Beijing Normal University. .
1. The mission of popular science is to "lead people in"
Short gray hair, often wearing a vest, novel experiments, concise and neat speech, this is the first impression of netizens on Wu Yuren, a retired professor of Tongji University.
On short video platforms such as Douyin, millions of fans affectionately call her "Grandma Wu" and fall in love with experimenting with her.
A while ago, the Shenzhou 13 manned spacecraft was successfully launched.
Many children also began to wonder: how did the rocket fly to the sky?
In order to answer this question, Wu Yuren specially shot a video. By blowing up the balloon, everyone understood that the speed of the rocket's flying comes from the reaction force of the rocket's combustion; and then the downward spray experiment of liquid nitrogen was used, so that children can intuitively Feel how much fuel it takes to break the first cosmic speed.
Wu Yuren has been insisting on science popularization for 16 years.
"Physics is very interesting, but many students are afraid of being tested." She said that she just wanted to tell the children how to learn physics.
"The mission of popular science is to let people let go of their resistance to advanced disciplines, to lead people through the door, and to bridge the cognitive gap between science and the public," said Chen Gang.
The real name of "@Infinixliang's popular science daily" is Zhang Chenliang, the deputy editor-in-chief of "Museum" magazine and the director of "China National Geographic" Fusion Media Center.
On November 14, 2019, he posted the first video on Douyin, opening the road to short video popular science.
Since then, he has successively opened columns such as "Natural History from a Distance", "Flowers, Plants, Insects and Fishes Around You", "Liang Kee Chasing the Sea", and "Network Heat Transfer Biological Identification".
The video series of "Online Heat Transfer Biological Identification" has now been viewed 1.28 billion times.
His short popular science videos cite scriptures and classics, and he will also ask professionals such as ant experts and otter researchers to appear on the scene.
In addition to professionalism, calmness, directness, and distinctive personality are the characteristics of Zhang Chenliang's popular science.
Because of his slightly square face, slightly smaller eyes, and slightly wrinkled brows, he kept refuting rumors about the Water Monkey. Netizens dubbed him "Master Tibetan Fox" and "President of the Water Monkey Rumors Refusal Association".
When sharing his creative experience, Zhang Chenliang said that the video platform is a place that can generate inspiration, "Some background music or a certain meme or a mantra can make me stunned. Absorbing the ideas is extremely useful for popular science. Only the videos released are likely to be liked by the public.”
In the popular science video on the Douyin platform, the most liked one is from "@Doctor Cao of Intensive Medicine Department" "Sudden death news keeps appearing, it only takes six minutes to face cardiac arrest, teach you real life-saving techniques".
In the video, Dr. Cao demonstrated the steps of cardiac resuscitation in a family scene in 6 minutes, and received 2.73 million likes and 230,000 retweets. Many people commented: "I have watched it many times, I hope it will not work, but I must learn it. "
According to the "Report", in the Douyin knowledge video comment area, there were 1.36 million "learned" emotions and 2.54 million "understood" joys.
Chen Changfeng, executive deputy dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, believes that these figures are the satisfaction of users for being able to learn different types of knowledge at extremely low time, space and economic costs without leaving their homes, and they are the result of the rising knowledge attributes of short video platforms. Representation of a decline in recreational properties.
2. The difficulty of popular science lies in "general", and it is the ability to listen to it and want to hear it
In June last year, the State Council issued the Outline of Action Plan for National Science Literacy (2021-2035), proposing to deepen supply-side reforms, promote innovation in the content, forms and means of popular science, improve the knowledge content of popular science, and meet the needs of the whole society for high-quality science. science needs.
Let advanced science enter the homes of ordinary people, what "secret weapons" do these popular science celebrities have?
One word Wu Yuren likes to say is "fun".
Chaos pendulum perpetual motion machine, small model of Stirling's heat engine, Newton's pendulum, pointer electroscope, Fresnel lens... In addition to these small devices and small models specially used for physical experiments, the "treasure box" in Wu Yuren's "treasure box" "Toys" are all kinds of - in her hands, eggs, drying racks, coins... daily necessities may be transformed into experimental equipment.
The reporter learned about cosmic rays while watching Wu Yuren's popular science video. In the video, Grandma Wu held up a bamboo broom with her right hand and stroked her left hand from the broom handle to the end of her whiskers. The trajectories of mesocosmic rays are like broomsticks, from energy concentration to fading and dispersing.
"The construction and development of a country is inseparable from the improvement of the quality of the whole people, and it requires more in-depth study and useful science popularization." This is Wu Yuren's original intention of doing science popularization.
Wu Yuren told reporters that when she taught the "University Physics" course at Tongji University, she found that many students still had obvious fear of physics. Even students majoring in physics may only be good at doing physics problems, but not True love of physics, lack of curiosity and desire to explore, no light in the eyes.
"I'm afraid because I don't understand enough; I don't understand because I lack curiosity." Wu Yuren said that the popular question-based education is obviously unworkable and counterproductive.
Different from face-to-face teaching with students in the classroom, in the video, Wu Yuren needs to "translate" complex physical principles in easy-to-understand language within a limited time, and accurately convey it to the public.
"The most difficult part is the creative planning script in the early stage, and this part of the work relies on the inspiration and wisdom of 'Grandma Wu'." The team members said, fortunately, "Grandma Wu" has many ideas and "brain holes". And he is not afraid of hardship and tiredness, and he often goes around together with young people.
In fact, the difficulty of popular science is not in "science", but in "generalization".
Wang Pinxian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is a marine geologist. Three years ago, Wang Pinxian, who was over 80 years old, completed the task of diving in the South China Sea three times in nine days.
Not long ago, Wang Pinxian became popular on major platforms with videos of popular science marine knowledge.
"By making a video, millions of netizens can learn marine knowledge. The bullet screen of a blockbuster, like rain, looks spectacular and exciting."
"Many scientists are not 'science experts'." In Wang Pinxian's view, first, because of the division of arts and sciences in the past, some scientists lacked literary literacy, making popular science works unattractive; in addition, science originated in Europe, and many scientific works in Chinese were written by Foreign languages have been translated many times, which has also led to the "copying and copying" of popular science works, lacking originality and sacrificing accuracy.
"The more big scientists teach, the better they can understand, and the more difficult it is for junior scientists to understand. Little scientists are afraid that if they say a wrong word, the reasoning will not be right, so they only dare to follow the script, while big scientists are more casual and free, because the principle is very simple. Maybe he found it." In Wang Pinxian's mind, the ideal state of popular science is, "One hour, just one mouth, and no auxiliary props such as PPT, staring and listening today, and wanting to come tomorrow, this is called skill."
3. In the new world of popular science, the quality of content is precious
The enthusiasm for short videos has been ignited, but problems such as content homogeneity and the proliferation of pseudoscience have gradually emerged.
Chen Rui, a young biologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is in charge of the Douyin account "Doctor of Zoology". He discovered early that the so-called "popular science" on the Internet is often full of mistakes and misinformation.
For example, he said, termites are not ants, but more closely related to cockroaches; amber must have been buried underground for tens of millions of years, otherwise it cannot be called amber.
Chen Rui felt the urgency of popular science every time he saw false information being spread on the Internet.
The "Report" pointed out that the content quality of short video knowledge needs to be further improved, and efforts should be made to solve potential problems such as excessive commercialization of knowledge videos.
Liu Chang, a professor at Communication University of China, agrees.
He mentioned that the diversified, all-round and high-level demand for knowledge has become an important part of the growing public demand for a better life.
The continuous deepening of short video knowledge fashion will benefit the long-term and healthy development of the entire Internet industry.
"For creators, the principles of originality and high quality should be emphasized, and creators should be guided to improve the quality of content creation. Especially for short videos of popular science, it is necessary to strictly review scientific content." Zhong Qi, a researcher at the China Institute of Popular Science, pointed out that short videos The platform can use incentive measures to encourage professional popular science institutions, professional teams and professionals to engage in the creation of popular science short videos, and accumulate a stock of high-quality popular science short videos.
"This also puts forward higher requirements for the platform." Chen Gang said that it is necessary to "do subtraction" by clarifying relevant filtering standards and establishing a scientific and efficient review system, and by cultivating more high-quality creators, strengthen the original knowledge content. Protection and other means to "add" to further increase the presentation of high-quality content.
At the same time, it is necessary to provide users with feedback channels to allow users to deeply participate in the construction and optimization of short video products.
In this new world of popular science, the voice for segmenting the population is getting louder and louder.
Zhong Qi introduced that at present, more than half of the mobile popular science users have a certain educational background. The audience of popular science has shown the characteristics of younger people and higher education, and the coverage has also expanded to white-collar workers, college students, business managers, humanities scholars, etc. .
"For such people, we usually use in-depth articles to satisfy their desire for knowledge, but at the same time, we cannot ignore the popular science needs of primary and secondary school students, the elderly and people with lower education." In Zhong Qi's view, primary and secondary school students have their own They use QQ to communicate instead of WeChat, and are fascinated by the two-dimensional culture... "If we use their thinking logic to produce popular science content and use their language to make popular science videos, the communication effect will definitely be multiplied with half the effort."
According to a survey conducted by the popular science team of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 40% of teenagers are interested in science, and 40% are potentially interested.
In the past, when children talked about their dreams, they said they wanted to be scientists, but now many children's dreams are to be stars and Internet celebrities.
In this regard, Chen Rui, a scientist, is a little embarrassed. It is even more urgent to sow the seeds of science in the hearts of more children.
"I believe that children are born with a curiosity about the world, nature, and life. This curiosity and thirst for knowledge are precious." Many parents left messages urging Chen Rui to update, saying that children would not read it. Video can't sleep.
"Children don't necessarily understand much, but they will continue to be curious until the day they understand."
(Our reporter Cui Xingyi)