Award-winning actor and director Alan Alda has a passion for science, and more specifically, how to help scientists better communicate with students and the public of all ages. He founded the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University for this reason, and created a yearly contest where scientists are asked to explain a concept so that an 11 year old can understand it. The Flame Challenge is judged by thousands of 11 year olds, and this year’s topic is What is Time? Alan Alda spent a few minutes on the phone with Dean Regas talking about how his love of science began, and his goals for this contest, in this month’s Looking Up.
