Minor Assignment 63/19/2018 Sam Kean, in his book Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us, focuses on the creation of our atmosphere, and how it became the way it is today. He introduces this idea by stating that we have had many versions of our atmosphere throughout history. He then begins to present the different gases which have had a critical role in forming our atmosphere.
Although Kean is writing about a scientific topic, his audience does not seem to be the scientific community. This is evident by the fact that he often references basic level chemistry, instead of graduate or even college level content that many of people wouldn’t understand. Topics like the breaking of bonds and transition of electrons, that can be very intricate if you want them to be, are simplified down to one or two sentence explanations. This approach works well because his goals are not to teach anyone chemistry, but instead to supply them with the overarching view of our planets history in relation to the formation and dissipation of different atmospheres. He also adds a wealth of interesting historical stories that each relate to the gas he is currently discussing. Whether it be Nitrogen or Oxygen, each gas has a story along with it that allows people a deeper look into the history of gas and how it affects our planet. Personally, I particularly like the addition of historical stories in his book. It allows the audience to have breaks between the more scientific "textbook" sections, and makes the book an overall easier and more interesting read. There is a potential to add this technique to our final project, in that we can add our own personal stories in the site descriptions we write. This could help anyone reading the site to have a more personal look into what the different locations have to offer, instead of just the typical scientific information. I currently do not have any questions for Kean while he is here, but I would be interested to see his talk and hear what he has to say.
2 Comments
Elisa Kosinski
3/19/2018 08:22:38 am
Jacob -
Reply
Issy
3/19/2018 10:39:10 am
I agree with your perception of how he communicates more complicated information. I also thought it was interesting how he was able to sort of "story tell" in a way. I think this made his writing a lot more interesting and easy to follow. Specifically, the way he wrote about the elements and the specific story he followed them with.
Reply
Leave a Reply.AuthorSophomore Marine Biology Major, Roger Williams University Archives
April 2018
CategoriesAbout
The purpose of these blogs were to serve as a mode to turn in minor assignments for my Professional Writing Class. Many are responses to reading we did, and a couple are first drafts of various major assignments. |