Skip to main content

Alom Shaha - five way interview

Alom Shaha was born in Bangladesh but grew up in London. A science teacher, writer and filmmaker, he has spent most of his professional life sharing his passion for science and education with the public. Alom has produced, directed and appeared in a number of TV programmes for broadcasters such as the BBC, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and the Nuffield Foundation. Alom has represented his community as an elected politician and has volunteered at a range of charitable organisations. He teaches at a comprehensive school in London and writes for a number of online and print publications. His new book is Why Don't Things Fall Up?

Why science?

Honestly, because I had a couple of great teachers at school who made it make sense and come alive for me and, perhaps more importantly, made me believe it was something I could do.

Why this book? 

It’s the book I’ve been wanting and meaning to write ever since I had my first book published over a decade ago. Teaching and 'communicating' science has been the basis of my working life for 25 years or so and being asked to write this book provided an opportunity to do something which I had always found too intimidating to attempt before – summarise and explain the 'big ideas of science' alongside a discussion of key issues from the history and philosophy of science and science teaching which I consider important.   

Why do you think so many people appear to find science a turn-off?

I think it’s partly down to how much 'science capital' people have to begin with, for example whether they grow up with parents who have a positive attitude towards science and who expose them to science from a young age in the same way most parents expose their children to art, music, literature. Teachers also make a huge difference – surveys consistently show that scientists often credit their science teachers for sparking or fuelling their interest in science and leading them to their subsequent careers. Without good teaching, science, like any other subject studied at school, can be dry and boring, especially to young people who may not be exposed to science in any other context. 

What’s next?

I have two young children, aged 5 and 6, and looking after them is really my main priority. I also teach two days a week at a comprehensive school in London. In the little time I have left after meeting those responsibilities, I hope to continue writing. My first work of fiction, How to Find a Rainbow: A Reena and Rekha Story, will be published in February next year. It’s a picture book for young children about two young red panda sisters who go on adventures in the Himalayan jungle in which they live. I’m hoping it will be the first in a series – each story sees the two sisters to discover something about how the natural world works, for example, in How to Find a Rainbow, they work out how rainbows are formed. 

What’s exciting you at the moment?

My youngest daughter has just started reception in primary school and my eldest is in Year 2. Watching them grow and develop is one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever had. Like pretty much everyone I know, I think AI will change the world in ways we cannot even imagine, so I’m excited and fearful of this in probably equal measures…


 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein,  but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...
Post a Comment
Read more

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...
Post a Comment
Read more