'CORONA CITY'- ‘Learning Science in Doses’

I was home after taking my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine when I received the call- “Would you like to learn science in doses, appukuttan?”, she asked. I was taken by surprise ! In fact, I was awakened. The week was coming to a close and one which had been physically demanding for me (long hours of sitting idle at home also consumed a lot of energy, they say :P). I was slowly drowning into the night sky when the call came to the rescue. I dragged myself to the chair and started listening to her with my curious cap on !

“I am a teacher, researcher, innovator, writer and scientoonist communicating science in doses.” I took a few seconds to process that (how can she manage to do all that, while I would just sit thinking all day!) and asked her what she meant by scientoonist.

“Scientoonists are people who use creative methods such as comics and cartoons to explain science”, she explained. The words ‘COMICS’ and ‘CARTOONS’ sent my dopamine levels on the run. All I could relate those words to were ‘Tom’ chasing ‘Jerry’ around the house and ‘Calvin’ questioning ‘Hobbes’ about the existence of life itself ! This was different and I wanted to know more. Without any second thoughts I told her I wanted to learn ‘SCIENCE in DOSES’. But how do you learn science in doses?

“Science consists of ideas, information, research and experimentation. So you will learn all of these in doses through my ‘BIOTOONS’, which is biology cartoons. You will be entering a territory of jargon-less & comic-full science explanation that will blow up your rote-learning DNA”, she exclaimed !

My rote-learning DNA was already blowing up and this wasn’t even the first dose. I really wanted to learn more. I asked her how I can be a part of the learning and unsurprisingly, she had an answer !

“I am building a creative science communication community that thinks differently, explains creatively, translates uniquely, and communicates simply! Appukuttan, if you have it in you to let your creative juices flow, then you can be a part of the community too”, she said.

I started counting the number of times that I had been creative in my life. From finding a way to open the airtight tiffin box, to creating a sprinkler using a water bottle, I had been a curious creative kid :D. And that made me an eligible candidate to join the science communication community. Thus began the journey of ‘APPUKUTTAN’ learning ‘SCIENCE in DOSES’ ! Amen!

PS: Scienceindoses is a science communication initiative by Dr. Parvathi J.R., Coordinator Research Promotion-Somaiya Institute for Research and Consultancy (SIRAC), Somaiya Vidyavihar University.