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posted by mrpg on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the very-cool! dept.

Dance Your PhD's 2018 Winner Mixes Superconductivity and Swing Dancing:

Pairs of swing-dancing electrons do the Lindy Hop in "Superconductivity: The Musical," the winning video for this year's geektastic Dance Your PhD contest. Pramodh Yapa, a graduate student at the University of Alberta, Canada, beat out roughly 50 other entries for the interpretive dance based on his master's thesis, "Non-Local Electrodynamics of Superconducting Wires: Implications for Flux Noise and Inductance."

The Dance Your PhD contest was established in 2008 by science journalist John Bohannon and is sponsored by Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Bohannon told Slate in 2011 that he came up with the idea while trying to figure out how to get a group of stressed-out PhD students in the middle of defending their theses to let off a little steam. So he put together a dance party at Austria's Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, including a contest for whichever candidate could best explain their thesis topics with interpretive dance.

Science kicked in a free one-year subscription as a reward. It was such a hit that Bohannon started getting emails asking when the next such contest would be—and Dance Your PhD has continued ever since. There are four broad categories: physics, chemistry, biology, and social science, with a fairly liberal interpretation of what topics fall under each.

Over the years, the quality of the videos has improved a bit—Bohannon recalled the first year's winning video just had a postdoc chasing after a couple of graduates to demonstrate mouse genetics—as have the prizes offered. The overall winner now gets $1,000 (a princely sum for most grad students), along with a bit of geek glory, with the individual category winners snagging $500 each.

Videos of all the winners can be found at https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/aaft-wsa021119.php


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:26AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:26AM (#803300)

    stressed-out PhD students in the middle of defending their theses

    If they are defending theses that means they are masters (not PhD) students:

    The main difference between a thesis and a dissertation is when they are completed. The thesis is a project that marks the end of a master’s program, while the dissertation occurs during doctoral study.

    https://www.bestmastersdegrees.com/best-masters-degrees-faq/what-is-the-difference-between-a-thesis-and-a-dissertation [bestmastersdegrees.com]

    This entire thing is a fraud at levels beyond what I first imagined.

    sponsored by Science magazine

    This explains it. Science is one of the worst science tabloids, only recently were they forced to allow actual methods sections into the appendix.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @03:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @03:22AM (#803322)

    it depend on the education systeme! Here both master and doctor have to write what is called a thesis but the PhD thesis has to bring new knowledge to that science while the master thesis is there to show mastery of a subject. The master thesis is in the 80-120pages range while the PhD thesis is usually in the 300-500pages range

  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 19 2019, @06:24PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday February 19 2019, @06:24PM (#803589) Journal

    If they are defending theses that means they are masters (not PhD) students

    Not necessarily. Per Merriam-Webster [merriam-webster.com], the definition of thesis: "a dissertation embodying results of original research and especially substantiating a specific view." And there's this usage note: "In many fields, a final thesis is the biggest challenge involved in getting a master's degree, and the same is true for students studying for a Ph.D. (a Ph.D. thesis is often called a dissertation)."

    As someone who has actually not only earned graduate degrees but has advised theses and dissertations, I can tell you the nomenclature is not consistent from school to school or even from department to department. Some places universally use the term "dissertation" for Ph.D., while other places avoid it and use "thesis" (or even "document"). Some people even feel the word "dissertation" is somehow pretentious, and all such documents should be called "theses." (I don't agree, but I know people in academia who hold that view.)