I love talking to kids about science. It's why I've brought Cell Press science into classrooms on numerous occasions and talked to cub scouts about power grids and engineering. It's why my kids and I do chemistry experiments, learn about genetics, and read about the research behind the Nobel Prizes. I love answering kids' endless questions stemming from their endless curiousity. It's why I share the best Cell Press video abstracts and many cool research stories at home, even with a kindergartener. I don't let the fact that the content and concepts are intended for adults get in the way of a good science story.

In fact, what I love about science is that it's often so simple and elegant once you get past the jargon. I love the challenge of translating seemingly complex ideas for an audience unfamiliar with the subject area and vocabulary, which also explains why I was headed for science journalism before a job offer from Cell Press set me on a 17-year detour (which I probably can't call a detour any more).

But how, exactly, does one make complicated science accessible to a lay audience, kid or otherwise?

I decided to search online to see what advice others had to offer. Disappointingly, I mostly found jokes and vague or dismissive tips involving avoiding the complicated explanations. The take-away message seemed to be that kids like farts and blowing things up.

Which is true, actually. But kids also like complicated, serious science; they don't want dumbed-down, oversimplified, and not-quite-accurate facts. It's the complications that make science so interesting.

Just ask the kids who participated in a live review event hosted by Frontiers for Young Minds, an open-access online science journal aimed at and reviewed by kids (check out this CrossTalk piece to learn how Cell Press is involved). The five kid panelists who participated in the event agreed that scientists writing articles for Frontiers for Young Minds shouldn't shy away from presenting the complicated details of their research. It's the jargon, not the concepts, that often gets in the way of comprehension.

In fact, according to Hakeem Oluseyi, research professor of physics and space science at the Florida Institute of Technology, one of the greatest mistakes teachers and scientists make when explaining science is to assume the technical detail is beyond the reach of their audience.

As the co-host of several Science Channel programs, including Outrageous Acts of Science and NASA's Unexplained Files, and two Discovery International programs, Oluseyi has experience translating complicated science for a lay audience.

OK, so how do you keep the details but get rid of the jargon? Here's what I've come up with on the basis of my own experience and the few tips I did find online

1. Imagine you're the audience

Taking on the audience perspective might not sound easy, but it isn't actually so different from what we do when we speak or write to anyone. For example, when I wrote about the time my family survived a lightning strike, I included many details that I didn't include when I told the same story to my mom. My mom already knows how old my kids are, that I have five of them, and that we had been camping at a remote campsite on a resevoir in Vermont. I didn't need to give her this background information in order to help her picture the events. It would have been ridiculous if I'd told her that "my 10-year-old son and I" could already hear the thunder as we neared shore in our kayaks.

Similarly, most of those reading my blog post would have been lost if I'd started with "Sam and I were almost at shore when we heard the thunder," unless I quickly explained who Sam is. In both cases, I had to filter my message for the target audience.

Telling science stories is no different. Is my audience going to know what a gear is, or could I call it a wheel with teeth carved around it? Can I talk about mitochondria without further explanation, or is my audience unfamiliar with any type of organelle, or even the word organelle? Explaining science to anyone outside your niche area of expertise—even a fellow scientist who works in a different field—requires putting the right vocabulary filters in place.

So pretend you're explaining the concept to someone you know—your mom, your nephew, your neighbor—someone who doesn't have all the vocabulary.

2. Get to know your audience

That's all well and good, but what if you don't know what words your audience knows?

If you're going to be giving a presentation to a bunch of middle-school students and you don't know any middle-school students, you need to rectify that. Find a friend or relative with a few kids you could test your message on. If you're not ready or able to do that, you could talk to them about anything—just hang out a bit and familiarize yourself with the age group you'll be addressing. Some of my colleagues have been amazed that I've been able to explain symbiosis to classrooms full of kindergarteners and talk with third graders about how the genome folds, but as the mother of five kids, I spend a lot of time getting to know my audience.



3. Use comparisons when possible

When I showed that video abstract about genome folding to third graders a couple of years ago, I was pretty sure they weren't going to understand why DNA needs to fold in the first place—possibly not even what DNA really is. Here's an excerpt from my post discussing how I shared such a complicated topic with kids:

Your DNA is the instructions that tell your cells what proteins to build. Even though hair cells and blood cells and brain cells have the same set of instructions, they don't make the same proteins or perform the same jobs in the body. It's kind of like when you get a new set of Legos whose pieces can make a dump truck, fire engine, or race car. If you want to make a race car, you follow one portion of the instructions and ignore the parts about dump trucks and fire engines. This video explores how cellular instructions are folded and how that might influence which parts of the instructions the cell follows (i.e., which genes are turned on). And even though those instructions would be 2 meters long if they were stretched out, they are folded up inside cells so small you need a microscope to see them!

When we're confronted with an unfamiliar subject or concept, it helps to have a familiar framework within which to fit the new information. Rao and colleagues, the authors who created the video abstract in question, knew this and used a great analogy as well: origami. Folding the same piece of paper in multiple different ways results in a wide variety of different origami creatures, just like folding DNA in different configuratons results in instructions for different proteins.

I imagine physicists must get pretty good at coming up with analogies. How else can anyone, even a physicist, begin to grasp the weirdness of spacetime? When The Guardian asked a bunch of physicists to explain the breakthrough detection of gravitational waves last year, every one of them turned to an analogy.

4. Using humor can be risky

If you get advice to sprinkle your presentations and explanations with random science jokes—don't. Even the best comedians don't appeal to everyone, and if you tell a bad joke, you're going to lose half your audience or worse. (See Adam Ruben's suggestion for a joke that is sure not to resonate with your audience.) If you know you're funny and lots of other people agree, maybe go for it—but personally, I leave the jokes behind.

5. Check for comprehension

There are several ways to get feedback about how well your message is getting through. Blank stares, wandering gazes, and out-of-control silliness are all signs that you've lost your audience. You can also ask directly, "Does that make sense?" Better yet, you can ask a question whose answer will reveal whether your listener has grasped the concept. For example, my 7-year-old recently asked me to explain interest charges, as pertaining to financial loans. If I wanted to check his comprehension, I could ask him who makes money on interest charges or how much interest he would have paid if I loaned him $5 and he paid me $1 for 8 weeks in order to pay off the loan.

6. Get excited!

In my first year of high school, I had a biology teacher who really loved plants. At least, he said he really loved plants, but his behavior didn't show it. He was the most unenthusiastic, boring guy on the planet, and therefore I thought plants were the most boring organisms on the planet. By extension, biology was the most boring subject on the planet.

Fortunately, later in high school I had a different biology teacher who really jazzed things up. She brought in current events, raised ethical questions, and—most significantly—allowed her voice to change pitch once in a while. I ended up majoring in biology in college, working for a publishing company specializing (until recently!) in biology, and acquiring a serious interest in foraging for wild plants (if you get me started talking about edible wild plants, it might be hard to get me to stop).

The bottom line? Science is exciting! Make sure your audience can tell you're passionate about it.