We’re proud to feature an article from Steve Cohen, an STC-PMC member and creator of “The History of Chemistry” podcast. Steve’s latest book is O Mg – How Chemistry Came to Be – check it out!  FYI, I own Steve’s science travel book, America’s Scientific Treasures, and it’s a must-have for uncovering our country’s scientific places. Thanks for the article, Steve! Rob

From childhood on, I have drawn cartoons. I also have PhD in chemistry. Shortly before the COVID pandemic, I began writing and drawing a graphic history of chemistry. The project lasted two and a half years, well into the pandemic, and was published last year as O Mg! How Chemistry Came to Be, by World Scientific.

While technical communicators generally think of their work as instruction manuals, webpages, or help files, writing about scientific topics is another form of technical communication. Chemistry is especially well-suited for illustration. Consider molecular structures, chemical reactions and
their mechanisms, and laboratory apparatus, all provided in diagrams in textbooks and research papers. Therefore, a history of chemistry in a graphic format—a popular literary form now—seems apropos.

I call chemistry the invisible science:
(1) Chemists study invisible things: atoms and molecules.
(2) Many chemists, especially women, were written out of scientific papers and even general chemical history.
(3) Finding a chemistry book for the non-expert in a bookshop is difficult. Fewer than 3% of all science titles in a bookstore are chemistry-related.
For these reasons, chemistry itself needs an advocate among the general public.

To continue the momentum after the book was published, I decided to delve deeper via a podcast, “The History of Chemistry,” into chemistry topics that I glossed over in a short book. Speaking of scientific topics is also technical communication. The target audience is the interested layperson. Chemistry is loaded with reactions, mathematics describing the reactions, and technical terms and ideas requiring explanations, all of which present severe challenges for the technical communicator in a purely verbal setting.

The technical aspects (recording equipment and sound engineering) I already knew. I read up on designing podcasts, and bought usage rights for snippets of music for the “theme,” and developed a unique catch-phrase at the end of every episode: “Brave the elements!” I used my graphic knowledge to invent a logo via Photoshop, for use on podcast apps. The average length per episode is 20 minutes, which is about all my voice can handle in one take at a microphone.

My modus operandi is to present overarching ideas of chemistry with no mathematics and little technical jargon. For example, I do no balancing of equations, and no math beyond an occasional ratio. I have not used that chemical word that freaks out students, the “mole.” Rather, my method is to relate the evolution of chemistry to local events, history, arts, culture, and politics. For example, you may know of Alexander Borodin, the composer whose music was incorporated into the musical “Kismet.” His occupation was chemist, and he was a friend of Dimitri Mendeleev, who invented the Periodic Table. You may have heard of Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel. He also was a chemist who helped the British Government win World War I, and used his influence to gain Israel’s independence. You have heard of President Herbert Hoover, but did you know that his was a mining engineer by trade, and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, was a geologist who knew Latin? They together translated the classic Renaissance work De Re Metallica into English—and is still the definitive English version. All these factoids, and many more, I incorporate into my podcast.

To bridge the humanities-science gap in my podcast, I invite experts to talk of a topic that relates to chemistry for a few minutes. I include an expert on Biblical Hebrew to chat on metals in the Hebrew Bible; an art-history professor to chat about scientific art in the 18 th century; a brewer to chat about pH and beer-brewing; a writer of classical program notes to talk on Alexander Borodin’s life; an English professor to chat on Holocaust survivor, chemist, and writer Primo Levi; and more.

I pull no punches: I talk of pollution, chemical warfare, and sexism in chemistry departments. These topics show that chemists are a product of their times. There are over 60 episodes with dozens more planned, covering prehistoric times to the present, hosted at Buzzsprout (https://thehistoryofchemistry.buzzsprout.com) but available on most apps. Listen Notes rates it in the top 10% of all podcasts, Apple rates it 4.1 out of 5, Podbay ranks it #3, and Chartable lists it as #6 of all US Chemistry podcasts.

When we talk of technical communication, remember that technical subjects like science itself need to be described in an unambiguous, understandable way for laypeople. There is a reason that Carl Sagan, Rachel Carson, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson have a following. With scientific misinformation so easily transmitted around the globe, science communication, a form of technical communication, is needed more than ever.

Chapter nominations are on the horizon. Typically we ask you to think of someone who you may think will be interested in running for an elected office. This year, we want YOU to think about running for an elected role within the chapter for 2023 – 2024.

When considering leading an organization, one typically thinks of someone else who could do the job. Why? Maybe it’s because you don’t think you have the skills to do the job or you do not have the confidence to do the job yourself. Whatever the reason, if you ever thought you could do it better than you have already thought you can contribute to the success of the chapter. But why have you not stepped up?

3 Reasons Why You Think You May Not Run

1. You are always juggling work and life balance.
2. You do have a single minute open in our daily schedule.
3. You don’t have the leadership know-how.

If you answered “yes” to any or all of these statements than you could hold the qualities to be a wonderful leader. But if you are worried about the time you have available to conduct the duties of President or Treasurer, then check out our website for more information. With a dedicated Council your conceived time availability can be greatly diminished.

3 Reasons You Should Consider Running for Office

So I just finished the Dan Heath book Upstream. Rarely is a piece of non-fiction such a page turner. The author pulls from industries such as technology, education, criminal justice and healthcare to demonstrate how folks have solved problems “before” they become problems.

In many cases, the key to the upstream mindset is data. Lots of data. Hidden in that data is often the cause of the problem an organization is trying to solve.

This is where we come in. Technical communications professionals have become data rich. The tools we employ can capture user behavior data via search queries, content preferences, and more. These vast data sets can help the organization anticipate user’s concerns and provide answers in online help, user guides and other assets – before the customers even ask the questions.

We need to remind departments, and even senior executives, is that this data can shape our help content to anticipate user and operator challenges. Our content has the potential to go way beyond the basic “how do I get started?” questions. When we consider the entire customer experience, we can build “precision” help content that can remove the friction from almost every customer experience:
– A Help Center that encourages more users to self-educate, putting less stress on our customer service team;
– A user guide that makes it easy for operators to deepen their relationship with our company’s products; ensuring product loyalty and continued use.

We need to remind our senior executives about the value of this “customer experience” data to help build deeper, more meaningful customer relationships.

That’s why the technical communication community has expanded to include functions such as customer experience managers, product designers, content architects, and others.

So let’s remind our senior executives that technical communicators can improve the success of a wide variety of projects: product launches, process improvement projects, website launches, new hire training, etc. We go beyond the activities of documenting proper product usage. We can serve as user advocates, and bring an upstream mindset that prevents costly issues down the road from ever happening.