My dream is Las Vegas.
“Don’t make fun of me, but it’s going to be a live show in Las Vegas, a science show,” said Kate Biberdorf, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
It is not the typical desire of those who teach chemistry to undergraduates. For Dr. Biberdorf, well known as Kate the Chemist, her dream captures the joy of her scientific exploration and invites children, especially girls, to see science as a call to life. Is part of her goal.
“I’m happiest when I’m sharing what I like on stage,” she said.
She envisions big sights like David Copperfield at the MGM Grand and Penn & Teller’s long-running magic show at Rio Las Vegas. “I wish I could convince people to go to a science show on vacation,” she added, but she wasn’t completely convinced.
For now, her efforts are focused on television and publishing, not Las Vegas. Over the past few years, she has written two scientific experiment books to try at her home. Science books for adults And with the children’s book writer Hillary Homzie, A series of novels Starring my young fictional version.
On television, she’s already like a modern update to science favourites like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Donald Mr. Wizard “Herbert.
Perhaps you have seen her.
Dr. Biberdorf, 36, starred in NBC’s “Today.”Late show with Stephen ColbertAnd other programs will demonstrate color-changing chemicals, magnetic slime, and often chemical reactions with bright, large bangs.
“Today’s show segment In 2019, she, along with show newscaster Craig Melvin and meteorologist Dylandlayer, forcibly dumped a bucket of boiling water into liquid nitrogen and immediately caught it in a swirling eruption of white steam.
The three, wearing lab coats, safety goggles, and protective mitts, were a little frosty.
“You didn’t tell me it would explode on my face,” Melvin exclaimed.
“This is a cumulonimbus cloud,” explained Dr. Biberdorf.
The TV appearance lasts only a few minutes — long enough to show off the “wow” of chemistry, but more than just giving a reference to what’s happening and why. It’s too short to include.
To dig deeper into science, Dr. Bibeldorf is looking to star in her own television show or two.
One of the ideas she and her collaborators are proposing is a “scientific companion.” Imagine a reality television competition alongside Food Network’s Worst Cooks in America. However, some students are bombing in science classes.
“It will be like kids who hate it and don’t want to have a science fair,” Dr. Bibeldorf said. “We’re trying to put them together and let them compete a bit. At the end of each segment, we hope they like science.”
Another suggestion for backburners so far is “Blow My Stuff Up”. It combines treatment with fireworks to help people recover from relationship failures and other unfortunate experiences.
“There are also therapists out there, so they are actually working on healing and progress in their lives,” said Dr. Bibeldorf. Then she will satisfactorily dispose of the symbolic objects that people have placed behind them.
The episode may follow someone who has long struggled to drive an unreliable car junker. “They finally got a new car. They just want to blow up the old car,” said Dr. Biberdorf. So I’m absolutely happy about it. “
Dr. Bibeldorf’s parents are both psychologists and her sister is a therapist. “It brings together two worlds of a kind,” she said.
Sizzles — a demo video showing a snippet of what the show looks like — is shown on various networks.
Growing up in Portage, Mississippi, just south of Kalamazoo, Dr. Bibeldorf became obsessed with chemistry thanks to his avid high school teacher, Kelly Pallock.
“Honestly, I’ve always wanted to be a chemist thanks to her since I was 15,” said Dr. Biberdorf. “My dream for her is, to be honest, to be her for her next generation of children.”
She said Pallock remembers the young Kate “almost the same as it is now.” She said, “I’m always enthusiastic about chemistry and science. A very well-balanced student. I loved practical things.”
However, the field of chemistry does not always welcome Dr. Bibeldorf. “You are judged by your appearance,” she said. “And I have a particular perspective and a particular outfit.”
That is, she wears heels, skirts, and lipstick.
“I’m leaning on the feminine side,” she said. “But that’s because I like it, and when I present that image, I feel like I’m doing my best.”
“It’s also very important to me that a young girl can see that side of the scientist,” she added. She said a woman taking her college class thanked her for it.
“You can look as you like, but you can still immerse yourself in science as much as possible,” said Dr. Biberdorf.
However, it does not fit the stereotype that many scientists have about women as scientists.
“I don’t think people will look at me.’Well, that’s a smart woman,'” said Dr. Bibeldorf. “So when I’m attending faculty meetings, conferences, etc., the first I know that the three sentences need to be clear and accurate. “
As a graduate student at the University of Texas, she researched catalysts to potentially accelerate the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling, a reaction commonly used in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.
There she realized that she didn’t like working in the lab. Moreover, 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 soon as possible.”
Her current job at university is as a professor of education, all education, no research in the lab. When she started in 2014, she was teaching two undergraduate chemistry classes, and she asked her boss if she could do more.
“We created an outreach program called’Fun with Chemistry’,” she said. “I was supposed to attend two elementary schools in the first semester. It was a contract.”
The program has become more popular and more schools have asked her to visit. “I interacted with something like 16,000 students in that first year,” she said. “In my opinion, it was nuts.”
As a result, I will be appearing every month on the morning show “We Are Austin” at the local CBS station.
A few years later, Glen Schwartz of Los Angeles, a thousand miles away, noticed. He was a spokeswoman for Bill Nighy, but the two had separate businesses about five years ago. Schwartz wondered: Is there another Bill Nighy there?
He searched for about a year before meeting Dr. Bibeldorf.
“I just found Kate’s website, watched some videos, and contacted her,” Schwartz said. “Really, I was looking around her looking for someone like her, and I was fortunate enough to actually find her.”
Schwartz, now the manager of Dr. Bibeldorf, said she has a winning combination of qualifications and personality. Many people post science videos on YouTube, but “Kate was clearly different,” he said.
“The thing about appearing on TV is that you can’t teach someone to like it,” he added.
Bill Nye the Science Guy doesn’t mind sharing the spotlight of science TV. “Kate will be Kate and Bill will be Bill,” he said in an interview.
Nai said their goal is the same: to intrigue children in science. “It is the people who are watching over us that we want to succeed and change the world,” he said.
(Mr. Nai is still on TV. His latest series, “The End Is Nye,” will premiere on the Peacock Streaming Service on August 25th.)
The science of television has required a very different kind of research from the Suzuki-Miyaura joint experiment conducted by Dr. Bibeldorf.For example, she had to understand How to blow up the cake We celebrated our host’s birthday at last year’s Wendy Williams Show.
Safety, fire, normal types of explosives and toxic chemicals were not allowed in the studio.
“So what did I do?” She said. “I took liquid nitrogen and put it in a jar of soda and put it in something, and it exploded like that. This is a bomb. But they don’t know that. Therefore, the term I didn’t use it. I said it was vapor pressure. But that’s the way to rotate it, right? You need to understand how things are said so as not to scare people. “
After a year and a half of distance learning for a pandemic, she returned to the auditorium in the spring semester. “I can talk a bit about how the Covid test works,” she said. “There are many real applications.”
She is planning a road tour of the chemistry show next year, conducting experiments and scientific entertainment at performing arts centers across the country.
“We are now trying to understand logistics,” she said. For a demonstration like an exploding birthday cake, she wondered, “How do I get it from place to place?” “Are you rebuilding the exploding birthday cake every time, or what can you reuse?”
If the whims of the show can captivate the audience, she can dig into her books to provide more detailed explanations and still entertain chemistry to those who are not yet familiar with the jargon. I want
“I use as many analogies as I can,” she said. “I talked about the marriage of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively as a way to explain the salt metathesis reaction, and that works for my age group. I don’t know what I’m talking about. There may be people, but we need more scientists, so it’s a way to get the Millennial and Gen Z crazy. “
She hasn’t held a Las Vegas show yet, but “I have some connections with Penn & Teller,” she said. (The magician duo Penn Jillette and Teller are also Schwartz’s clients.)
“Maybe,” Dr. Beaverdorf meditated, “Somehow I can sneak in there and do something fun with them.”