“The dream is Vegas. “Don’t make fun of me,” said Kate Biberdorf, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, US, “but it would be a live show in Vegas where it’s a science show.”
That is not a typical aspiration of someone who teaches chemistry to undergraduates. For Biberdorf — better known as Kate the Chemist — that dream is part of her goal to capture the fun of scientific exploration and to entice children, especially girls, to consider science as their life’s calling.
She’s thinking of a big spectacle, like the long-running magic shows of David Copperfield at MGM Grand or Penn & Teller at Rio Las Vegas. “If we can convince people to go to science shows when on vacation,” she added, not entirely convinced herself.
For now, her efforts have focussed on television and publishing, not Vegas. Over the past few years, she has written two books of science experiments to try at home, a science book for adults and, with Hillary Homzie, a children’s book author, a series of novels starring a younger, fictional version of herself.
Biberdorf, 36, has appeared on NBC’s Today, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and other programmes with demonstrations of colour-changing chemicals, magnetic slime and, very often, chemical reactions accompanied by bright, loud bangs. For a deeper dive into science, Biberdorf is looking to star in a television show or two of her own.
One of the ideas she and her collaborators are pitching is “Science Unfair”. “It would be more like the kids who hate that and don’t want to do the science fair,” Biberdorf said. “We’re trying to get them together and make them do a little competition. At the end of each segment, hopefully, they will like science.”
The other pitch, on the back burner for now, is “Blow My Stuff Up”, which would combine therapy and pyrotechnics to help people recovering from a failed relationship or other unhappy experiences.
“There’s a therapist there as well, so they’re actually working on healing and moving forward in their lives,” Biberdorf said. Then, she would satisfyingly dispose of objects emblematic of the troubles that the people have put behind them.
An episode might follow someone who had long suffered driving an unreliable junker of a car. “They finally got a new car, they just want to blow up their old car,” Biberdorf said, “and we can do that with a bunch of pyrotechnics. So I am absolutely stoked about that.”
Growing up in Portage, Michigan, US, just south of Kalamazoo, Biberdorf got hooked on chemistry because of an enthusiastic teacher in high school, Kelli Palsrok.
“Honestly, ever since I was 15, I knew I wanted to be a chemist because of her,” Biberdorf said. “My dream, truthfully, is to be her for the next generation of kids.”
As a graduate student at the University of Texas, she studied catalysts for potentially speeding up Suzuki-Miyaura coupling, a reaction commonly used in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
There, she found that she did not like laboratory work. In addition, pure academia was a difficult place for her. “I didn’t want to be in that environment,” she said. “I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.”
Her current job at the university is as a professor of instruction — all teaching and no lab research. In 2014, when she started, she was teaching two undergraduate chemistry classes, and she went to her boss asking if she could do more.
“We created an outreach programme called ‘Fun with Chemistry’,” she said. “I was supposed to go to two elementary schools a semester. That was the deal.
The programme turned into something much more popular, with many more schools asking her to visit. “I interacted with something like 16,000 students that first year,” she said. That, in turn, led to monthly appearances on We Are Austin, a morning show on the local CBS station.
A few years later, a thousand miles away in Los Angeles, US, Glenn Schwartz noticed. “I found Kate’s website, and I looked at some videos, and I simply contacted her,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz, who is now Biberdorf’s manager, said she possessed a winning mix of credentials and personality. Although there are many people posting science videos on YouTube, “Kate was obviously different,” he said.
Biberdorf is planning a road tour of chemistry shows next year, conducting her experiments and science entertainment at performing-arts centres across the country.
She does not have her Vegas show yet, she said, but “we have some connections with Penn & Teller.” (The magician duo, Penn Jillette and Teller, are also clients of Schwartz.)
“Maybe,” Biberdorf mused, “I can kind of sneak in there somehow and do something fun with them.”
NYTNS
