CHEERS, PROF!

AN ITEM in a recent Science magazine, Vol. 338, 9 November 2012, had a great opening line: “Biodiversity has driven doctoral candidates from Trinity College Dublin to drink.”

Trinity College Dublin was founded in 1592 through a charter from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Below, the library at TCD looks to be a magnificent place. The Book of Kells is one of its treasures.

Having once been a doctoral candidate, I can appreciate the students’ libational motivation. What’s more, these innovative thinkers came up with societally engaging responses: They printed up a series of beermats on topics in their specialty, distributed the beermats to 10 local pubs, and then followed up in the pubs with neat 3-minute mini-lectures on the topics.

Each is a mini work of art. This one celebrates Ireland’s own coral reefs. Images from biodiversityinourlives.com.

I like the gentle means of education. Ireland, one beermat notes, is home to 2000 square km of cold-water reefs. It deftly puts this in perspective: “Equal to the size of over 200 billion of these beermats.”

As part of the project, the students have set up a website, www.biodiversityinourlives.com and also a Facebook page, BiodiversityInOurLives. Each beermat contains a bar code (this time, matching the American vernacular) linking to the website. Maybe everyone else in cyberspace knew this already, but I can report that scanning an image of a beermat on the computer screen works just fine.

A most appropriate topic: At least four bees to the pint.

Initially, the beermats went to nearby pubs frequented by TCD students and professors. Then they expanded things to working-class pubs, the idea being to share their message with a wider audience at other “locals.”

This beermat links river chemistry with optimal brewing.

“At first, they gave us the strangest looks,” said doctoral candidate Erin Jo Tiedeken, “but one of the bartenders phoned up and said his buddy in another pub wanted some of our beermats.”

Another good message: Know your own limits—and please quell that trumpeting!

In time, students plan to expand the project, printing an additional 20,000 beermats distributed to 20 more pubs. They’re expanding the mini-lecture series as well.

There’s excellent precedent for mixing academe with libation. Mathematician Howard Eves used to offer entertainments in his specialty at local coffeehouses during his time at the University of Maine, 1954-1976. These evolved into his six-volume Mathematical Circles series. These books are charming, listed at both Amazon.com and ABEBooks.com. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2012