Visit on April Fool

Today some college students visited the labs in our department. When they came to our lab, we explained to them about our kind of research and also demo to them on performing agarose gel electrophoresis, a routine, basic yet important technique in molecular research.
Yet, explaining the process is not easy as I thought. I was tongue tied and found it hard to express myself. Anyway, I tried my best to explain in the most layman term that I could, with the aid of gel tanks and trays and combs and get Wen Ni to demo to them how to load samples, and let them tried and visualize the gel under UV. I'm not sure how much they understand but i guess the fact that 'Seeing is believing' is still applicable.
This interaction reminds me of an article that I read saying scientists have the obligation to educate public on what science is, what research they are doing and what have they discovered. In other words, an obligation to make the knowledge 'known' or 'accessible' to public. But before one becomes a bridge between public and scientists, one has to be an expert in his/her own fields, to claim authority. No wonder publishing is important- you get your findings published, made known to the research community, and if the findings really make some important breakthroughs, they will reach out to the public. I guess Nobel Prize not only works to give accreditation to scientists who've contributed to the progress of science, it's also through this prize giving occasion that science attracts public attention so that people know what have scientists been doing.