Illustrating science for all
A former medical physicist uses comics to explain scientific knowledge to children and adults,
Imagine that you can understand the basic theories of relativity and quantum mechanics by simply reading funny comics created by professionals.
Li Jianlong, who has a doctorate in theoretical physics, has dedicated himself to promoting scientific knowledge, especially frontier technology, via comics that can be understood by children.
“To impress readers and promote scientific knowledge in a simple way, you need to talk about the ins and outs of a happening and how it — an invention, formula or incident — solves an urgent problem,” says the 36-year-old, who lives in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
He has over 1.43 million followers on Sina Weibo.
“It’s essential to put oneself in the children’s shoes and spread knowledge in a thinking pattern that they can understand,” he adds.
Once, a 6-year-old asked Li why living plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Instead of talking about the complicated process of photosynthesis, he asked the child what his favorite food was. Li then elaborated that when a plant is hungry, it needs to eat its food — sunshine, carbon dioxide and water. “Just like you need to have enough food to grow taller, so does the plant.”
Li started to popularize science in 2009 via articles and speeches, but the effect was limited as people found it hard to understand abstract knowledge. It was not until 2016 that the idea of doing so via comics struck him.
As more fans subscribed to his WeChat account, he was encouraged to quit his job as a medical physicist in a hospital in 2017 and established the Sheldon Science Comic Studio.
Sheldon is his English name, after Sheldon Lee Cooper, a fictional character in the CBS TV series The Big Bang Theory. Li chose the name because both have degrees in the same subject and low emotional quotients.
Li is responsible for the process of creating comics, from selecting a topic and reading related material to scriptwriting. He describes his ideas about specific drawings, including details, to illustrators who then work on them.
Domestic science institutions cooperate with the studio to promote their latest research results among the public.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has halted the studio’s work. However, Li now has the time to shift his focus to science popularization among primary school students and preschool children rather than adults.
“It’s more difficult to promote scientific knowledge among adults, who are less willing to accept new things and whose thinking patterns are already fixed,” he says.
“Children are more curious about the world. But they don’t have as many choices as the adults due to their limited capability of reading. Why not offer them some interesting and informative comics?” he says.
The book Sheldon Science Comics on Animal’s Social Lives by Li and illustrator Su Lanlan was published by Beijing United Publishing Co Ltd in September. The English version will also come out overseas. The book introduces habits and characteristics of various animals, such as giant pandas, kangaroos and sloths, via funny drawings.
“I love the funny book. I can learn many things about animals,” says Qian Ying, a grade-one student from Nanjing, Jiangsu province.
The 6-year-old brings the book to class and shares it with her classmates, who are also attracted by its content. Her mother, Song Yang, also reads the book and discusses it with her, to foster a parent-child relationship.
“Science books for children can be in many forms, such as 3D. They should arouse children’s interest, with simple language and funny styles, and the content should be scientifically correct,” Song says.
Li says children are naturally interested in animals. When parents tell children stories and fables, they often talk about cute animals.
“The current science books for children are a bit preachy. My aim is to first draw their attention and then tell a story that can give them more scientific knowledge.”
Li has read zoology theses to sift out the knowledge that he wants to present in a book. Then, he needs to rack his brains to figure out an excellent story to share the knowledge with his readers.
For example, while the male emperor penguins are hatching eggs at home, it’s the female’s responsibility to go out to search for food. It takes as long as four days for some to return. Then, they would vomit up the fish to feed their newborn baby.
It’s an interesting story when demonstrated in drawings. When the baby penguin asks the mother why the fish tastes stale, just like it’s been made four days ago, the mother simply answers: “I just vomited it up.”
Li has finished a new set of comic books for children, introducing frontier technologies such as quantum theory and gene editing, which is yet to come out and fill a gap in the market.
“While adults have various ways to know about frontier technologies, most children’s books only introduce scientific knowledge that’s at least half a century old,” he says.
“Many writers of children’s books are not experts in science, and authors of frontier-science books usually consider only adults as their readers.”
Some adults show interest in science after reading or watching sci-fi novels and movies. But in their school days, they might have found physics and chemistry boring.
Li says it is important to create that interest among children and teenagers and the “traditional spoon-feeding education won’t make it”.
Li became interested in comics as a child. He says he tries to imitate drawings by renowned Taiwan cartoonist Tsai Chih-chung.
“The biggest difficulty is that I have to do all the ‘translation’ work — to paraphrase the seemingly ‘dull’ scientific knowledge in a simple and understandable way for a layperson,” he says.
“It’s very energy-consuming. Besides, when it comes to new scientific research, you need to study a lot to understand it first.”
Li says a lot of jargon is used in the field of theoretical physics. “It’s like people from different countries speak their own languages. It’s more difficult to ‘translate’ abstract things into comics.”
Li and his team have also done well in science popularization among the public.
In 2013, the Tsung-dao Lee Science and Art Lecture Fund of Shanghai Jiao Tong University was founded to promote the integration of science and art. It holds an annual competition to select excellent artworks from around the world, with a scientific theme each year assigned by Lee, the US Nobel laureate in physics.
Li’s studio started producing videos explaining the contests’ scientific themes in 2017. These are broadcast at the site to enable visitors to understand the artworks.
“It’s a great honor to be part of the program,” Li says. “It’s terrific that the public can know about science via art.”
In October 2018, after the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was announced, Li and his team took less than four hours to create comics to explain the winning scientists’ discovery of a cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. The comics got over 10 million views online.
“I had to learn about the winning discovery from scratch and task my mind to figure out how to use a familiar metaphor to explain the principle,” says Li, who has used comics to explain Nobel Prize wins since 2016.