The public is more ignorent and scared than you think it is.

[baloonworld]

I had a statistics lecture course for the last 2 days, which made me quite sleepy. In addition we went to the St Mungo's (patron saint of Glasgow, no peer-reviewed publications) public lecture about lasers. Well, a bit public it was mostly civic dignitaries and suchlike, a bunch of students from the SUPA stats course, and academics from the surrounding universities (the guys giving the lecture were apparently quite good)

Explaining lasers to the layman is like explaining it to scientists, except you skip 3 slides and talk through the others very quickly.
They went on about the practical money-making uses and medical applications (the audience was, as I implyed, old and rich), as well as ludicrusly esoteric things like gravitational wave detection (none have been detected yet, which given the sensitivity of the devices, means that somthing interesting is happening to some neutron stars)

There were questions at the end. These started quite well with questions about their careers and what had been very exciting for them (non-liner optics).
Then some woman asked if the lasers in supermarket checkouts were dangerous.
The correct answer is of course, "Yes, if you inject them. Rubbing them into the gums isn't good either".

Are you scared of some Science? Can I help?

Comments

[almosthonest.livejournal.com]

Dear Mr. baloonworld

I was scared and concerned the other night - whilst reading the rather excellent "Hyperspace", by someone Japanese and intelligent - to discover that several Grand Unified Theories predict that even protons have a half-life. My question to you is: how still should I sit, to avoid triggering my own decay into pure radiation plus a few scattered neutrinos? Is there any skin lotion I can get that will slow down the ageing of my protons?

Thanks in advance,

A Concerned member of the Public.

[fourmyle.livejournal.com]

dear doctor baloonworld
i heard that some crazy american soldiers are allowed to use depleted uranium rounds. Isn't it dangerous for them to have them? What if one got captured? What if one blew up and caused a nuclear meltdown? Why haven't the government who we voted in stopped this?

yours
A concerned member of the public, o.b.e.

[malashaan.livejournal.com]

Dear Doctor
I am scared by the fact that the more I learn about science the more I realise how much I don't know. Can I therefore assume that if I continue to learn more I shall find that I know even less. Given this if the human race were ever to learn everything we would in fact find that we knew nothing, proving Socrates was right all along. From this hypothesis would it therefore be better for us to give up while we're ahead as it were?

Yours Impishly

John

[hotpork.livejournal.com]

Dr Balloooony

My pee-pee is green

Love
Hobbitx