Wu Yuren, a 72-year-old retired professor from Tongji University, has been engaged in popular science education in physics for 16 years and is called "Grandma Wu" by netizens. Recently, she became popular on Kuaishou. After her retirement, she used the short video platform to popularize science knowledge about physics and demonstrate interesting physics experiments.
Wu Yuren, a 72-year-old retired professor from Tongji University, has been engaged in popular science education in physics for 16 years and is called "Grandma Wu" by netizens. After retiring from Tongji University, she has been committed to stimulating public interest in science in interesting ways.
Beginning in 2018, Professor Wu Yuren began to update videos on Douyin, teaching everyone how to operate physics experiments in the form of short videos. Up to now, the related content has been played more than 40 million times, and more than 800,000 netizens have fallen in love with the fun of doing experiments with Grandma Wu.
Professor Wu Yuren in the short video has silver hair and two tiger teeth when he smiles. In her hands, eggs, clothes drying racks, coins and daily necessities may be transformed into experimental equipment for conducting experiments related to mechanics and electricity.
Some time ago, the Shenzhou 13 manned spacecraft was successfully launched. Many children have also begun to wonder: How do rockets fly into the sky? In order to answer this question, Professor Wu Yuren shot a video.
By blowing up balloons, everyone can understand that the speed of a rocket flying into the sky comes from the reaction force of rocket combustion; and then using the downward spray experiment of liquid nitrogen, children can intuitively feel how much it takes to break through the first cosmic speed. fuel.
In addition to combining current hot topics, Professor Wu Yuren often uses science to subvert people's understanding of things we take for granted in our lives. For example, how long is one second? Most people may not have thought about this question seriously, but for children, it is an excellent entry point for them to understand the concept of time.
On the Douyin account @不 brush the question, Professor Wu Yuren introduced that the latest international definition of "second" is: the two hyperfine energies of the ground state of the cesium Cs133 atom located at sea level. Between stages, the transition oscillation in zero magnetic field lasts for 9192631770 cycles.
Thus, she introduced the "Beijing Time" adopted by our country, and left a family question: Why is the time service center of "Beijing Time" built in Lintong, Shaanxi instead of Beijing? More than 4,000 netizens Participating in the interaction in the comment area, some people were doing their homework seriously, "It is close to the geographical center of China, and the transmission error was minimized when publishing the time." Some people lamented their lack of physics knowledge, "From Cs133 onwards, every word I understand them all, but I can’t understand them together.”
Professor Wu Yuren will always patiently provide encouragement and affirmation to everyone’s different feedback. When a netizen's analysis makes sense, she will say: "Three-dimensional analysis, comprehensive", and also add some other background knowledge; when a netizen laughs at herself for not understanding, she will say: "It's good to know more about popular science." Yes.”
Because of her humorous science popularization style and easy-to-understand experimental design, many people fall in love with the Douyin account of “Science Grandma”. Some fans said: "When I was a child, the school taught me this way, and I became a scientist after all." Some fans also started taking their children to "take classes" to popularize science with the professor.
Professor Wu Yuren said that the reason why he named his popular science short video collection "Grandma of Science" was because many of his students now have children, and they always call him grandma when they see him. "Later on, everyone gradually started calling me that, making videos of me, asking me to do science popularization on Douyin, and calling me Science Grandma. I felt a little ashamed and couldn't live up to this. In fact, it was like running headfirst into Grandma Liu in the Grand View Garden, I am Grandma Wu who feels fresh and curious in the world of science.