Science communication
La Chimica per Tutti
“La Chimica per Tutti” (Chemistry for Everyone) is my principal project of scientific popularization. From when it started in september 2013, almost as a game, it became the force that allowed me to deepen and get interested in science communication. Click here to visit the website of the project.
This was made possible thanks to the love and support of all my viewers, That With Their advices and also their constructive criticisms leads to an appreciated and effective format. It is a giant leap forward from my first video, a white screen full of words and with an horrible sound taken from the PC, to the videos of today, recorded with professional cameras and apparatus, but it was a gradual improvement, and was gradual Also the evolution of the contents. If at the very beginning the channel was devoted only to university-level chemistry education, today it contains also videos for the general public, videos on science philosophy, beginning of life, and other advanced topics made accessible for everyone. I am expecially proud for the interview to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, that you can find here.
All this work was made without compromising scientific rigor and breaking all the classical rules for creators suggested by YouTube: videos much longer than the suggested five minutes and that always go to the deep of the topic, topics that are chosen not for being “trendy” but for being interesting, in my opinion, for my viewers; a language informal and direct, but never gross or dirty, populistic or alarmist. All these choices were the opposite of what you would expect for being viral, but they allowed me to have more than 18.000 subscribers and 1.500.000 views!
“La Chimica per Tutti” is also a website and Facebook page, with daily news and discussions on science and, of course, chemistry!
Chimicare
My collaboration with the non-profit association Chimicare started in october 2014 when Franco Rosso, president of the association, asked me to join their wonderful project. Chimicare gathers researchers, professors, professionals and teachers interested in improving the way in which chemistry is taught and diffused. What makes Chimicare so different from the many others projects in chemistry communication is the great professionalism, the attention to the relationship with the institutions and, overall, scientific integrity, that allows a high level communication very different from the trivial curiosities normally found on the web. As you can read from the articles I published with them (in Italian), and how you can see from a quick tour of their blog, all the articles are written in a very understandable way but they always go to the core of the topic, without limiting just to the very basics. This is very different from the great part of scientific blogs and news, that are always a continuous list of trivial, exaggerated or alarmist posts, but allowed Chimicare to have a strong relationship with the Italian board of chemists and the Italian Chemical Society. If you are interested in joining Associazione Culturale Chimicare, you will find all the informations here.
Conferences, collaborations, debunking and social engangement
From September 2017 I started collaborating with “Il Chimico Italiano”, official Journal of the Italian Council of Chemists, now National Federation of Chemists and Physicists. On the 13th October 2018 I was invited to the XVIII National Congress of Chemists, where I took part in a panel discussion on chemistry communication.
The 5th July 2018 I was invited to the XIII National Congress of Statistics organized by ISTAT, for a panel discussion on science communication in the new media.
In February 2017, for the RareDiseaseDay, I brought to the public the stories of five people affected by rare diseases. I asked them to focus on the human aspect of their condition, something that is not always properly taken into account.
My principal fields for science communication are web and social networks, but however I am active also on all the others media. One of the topic in which I am particularly interested is food science. At this regards, I have been live guest on the main italian public television channel, Rai 1, in TV show “Tempo e Denaro” of the 2/11/2016 (you can find it here), presented by Elisa Isoardi, to speak about salt and hypertension.
I was invited to speak on food chemistry and food hoaxes at two conferences for the general public organized by Italia Unita per la Scienza in 2015:
- Agricoltura e cibo: tra scienza e leggenda, Pisa, 3/06/2015
- La chimica nel piatto: bufale e verità di chimica quotidiana, Capiamo il Pianeta, Firenze, 24/05/2015
On the web, I continue to be interested in hoaxes and disinformation with my Facebook page, La Chimica per Tutti, and through some related YouTube videos, such as the ones on sodium bicarbonate as an antitumoral agent, white sugar or carcinogenic meat.