Explain it to me like I’m 10
In 2012, the creator of the xkcd cartoon Randall Munroe unveiled Up Goer Five — a detailed diagram of the Saturn V rocket, annotated using only the most common 1,000 (sorry, “ten hundred”) words in the dictionary.
It was a viral hit, as was the follow-up book, Thing Explainer (2015), and it produced an intriguing reaction from the science-communication community, who are among the most enthusiastic of Munroe’s many fans. First, there was a burst of people trying to explain their own fields using the same constraint. Then came the backlash.
“Condescending”, wrote one science blogger. “By talking down to our audience, we risk alienating them, and reinforcing the common preconception that scientists consider and hold themselves apart from non-scientists.” The great science writer Carl Zimmer criticised the craze (not the cartoon) for encouraging the idea that there was anything useful in the constraint. The craze was, he argued, a disheartening waste of time for any scientist trying to figure out how to explain their field to a lay audience, because they might wrongly conclude that it was hopeless to try.
Well, maybe. Up Goer Five is tremendous fun but more puzzling than pellucid. The typical three-year-old can recognise 1,000 words, and there is nothing particularly clarifying about trying to explain something complicated while limiting oneself to the vocabulary of a three-year-old.
