Ten Hundred Words of Science

Complex scientific concepts explained using only the thousand most used words in the English language. Can you meet the 'up-goer five' challenge by describing your job and research? Try the Up-Goer Five Text Editor and submit your entry below!

Inspired by xckd.

Facilitated by Theo Sanderson.

Compiled by Anne Jefferson and Chris Rowan.

“My job is to fix places where too many people have changed the land from one kind of place into a new kind of place where the living things that once were there can no longer do well. I can do this by killing the green things that should not be there and making fires to make the wrong living things stay away. Then I find out what living things will grow well in the place and bring them back. Sometimes it is hard to find out what kind of living things were in this place before there were so many people changing the place. To find out, I have to ask old people and look at old pictures. I can find out how often there were fires there in the past by looking at bad parts of wood that show when the fires happened. Also, I can find out what animals and green things were there long ago by looking for parts of dead things. Then I will know what kinds of living things I should put back in the place I am fixing. Once the right green things live in the place I am fixing, then the flying animals and four legged animals and six legged animals come back. They are happy to live in this place now because they have the right things to eat and everything they need to live there. It can be a long and hard job to fix a place so it is much more like it was long ago. Because people have changed so very many places, people who have jobs like me can find lots of work.”

— Carol Jefferson, restoration ecologist
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