NYCC 2016: Matt Brady of "The Science Of" talks science and pop culture

Hey everybody, it's Dogg here for AIPT, here at New York Comic-Con 2016, and I'm standing with a guy that you probably know without maybe realizing that you know him

Founder of Newsorama, Mr. Matt Brady. Hi there. We're not here to talk about any of that. We're here to talk about something else. What was your panel about yesterday

Our panel yesterday was about the use of comics in teaching STEM, which stands for science

technology, engineering, and math. And so that's what I do now. I disappeared from Newsroma

I disappeared eight years ago from Newzorama. And since then I've been teaching high school science

I came from science and now I'm back in science. And I teach chemistry and physics and I do it with a lot of help

from comics and pop culture, examples and movies and movies, TV, comic books, everything I can find and get my students engaged in there

So you were a physicist before you were a comic book guide? Actually, I was..

I got my master, undergrad in biology, master's in marine biology, was working on a PhD in physiology

Way back when, and I started writing for Comic Fires Guide and Wizard and a few other places

and then that turned into writing with Mike Duran for Nizurama and working with him that eventually became Nuzerama

And went on for a good 12 years, and I'd always kind of thought, you know, be nice to get back into science and get back into teaching

And by the time that Newsorama was kind of, I was feeling it might be time to go

My wife had gone into teaching, and so she kind of blazed the trail for me and it just followed right along

All right And you got a for people who aren lucky enough to be in school making your classes you got a website now called the Science of Dotorg Did that kind of come from your teaching or was it vice versa

How did those two things in front each other? It was about two and a half years ago that my wife and I were talking

and I had always used pop culture examples, and I was always a big fan of, like, the Science of Star Trek

a lot of those different ones. And so he said, well, we very good

I really need to work on this and use it, pitch it at a classroom level

And so what we do with the science of.org is I write articles that are aimed at a high school

science level, which I feel is both appropriate for our students and the general American

reader I think is probably has an understanding of science at about a high school level for

good or fat. And so on the site, I write articles from things that will, I will use in class or I would assign

my students to try out and write me a piece about this such as Ant Man riding on Hawkeyes

Arrow. What would the acceleration be? We had to do some research and find out, well, what

kind of boat is he used? What's the acceleration? How fast is that arrow leave? And could you hold on

It's... Spoiler. Could Ant Man ride the arrow? He would be ant paced along there

Now, is that disappointing for your students? Is that kind of like a buzzkill or does that actually

That's a trick and that came up in the panel yesterday where some teachers are saying that

Just how do you get around killing the fun? And it's a tight line to kind of go back and forth on, but what I do is I make sure that they understand the science

And then we kind of bring in the examples like okay could this really happen Why or why not You explain to me is this something that could happen If this is something that could happen or something that couldn happen

you explain, show me and prove it to me, yes or no. And so they didn't use the Ant Man experiment, the Ant Man article in class

but they did use one with Iceman, for instance. Iceman, if he turns into solid ice right beside you

well, he has to let off a whole lot of heat. and that he has to go somewhere and it's kind of like a bomb and it goes off

And I don't think there's any of my students got any less fun out of Iceman

or said, oh, you ruined Iceman for me. But they understood the science of it and they thought they made it more enjoyable for themselves

Now some X-Men writer would actually think about that, that could be a great super power

It would be, but it would be kind of tough to pull back into continuity

Then why didn't he blow up all the time that he was doing that? Secondary mutation

Yeah, for sure. So do you see the science of as kind of like setting up lesson plans for other people in similar situations or is it more just raw

It's right now it's just articles that are we kind of put them out there as examples of ways to approach them

The problem with course with writing lesson plans and selling them or making available other teachers is it's copyright issues

And so what my wife and I try to do with this is not so much here do this, here do this, here's a lesson plan, here's a worksheet because that would be

that would start getting into legal... I don't think the company would call them gray zones

I think it would be very black and white legalized. But what we're trying to do is work with teachers

and get them enthused about this as well to reach students The idea that students don want to learn or students are interested in science we found that just that nonsense They really want to know this stuff but they got to understand it in a way that makes sense to me

And, it's relevant to have. Yeah, 30, 50 years ago, the idea of

well, this is the same science that puts men on the moon. Okay, that might have been enough to look

Now it's a lot tougher, and we have a lot of teachers that are still saying, this is the kind of stuff

that put men on the moon. That's great, but they don't speak that language

They speak fast and theories. They speak Justice League. They speak Batman versus Superman

And that's what looks at it. Okay. So where do you see all this going, your own personal lesson plans

and maybe the future of the science of, or everyone else? We'd love to broaden it out

We're hopefully going to talk with some companies about using characters and things like that in the future

but that's way down the road. We'd love to get it out there that we're team

Teaching in a more rigorous academic way, perhaps than some shows or some podcast that you see

Yeah, sure, of course. And really get the idea that, I mean, there are some important concepts to get out, but there are

also some important educational concepts, differentiation, scaffolding, approaching this for a population

that speaks English and that doesn't speak English as their first language

And so we'd like to broaden this out and make it more widely available, but in a more, in a

that's more true to the educational system and the educational method that were familiar

Okay. Well, we wish you all the luck in overall. Thank you so much

Keep it locked here for more. I cover it from New York Comic Con 2016 on AIP