The dream is Vegas.
“Don’t make fun of me,” said Kate Biberdorf, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, “but it would be a live show in Vegas where it’s a science show.”
That is not a typical ambition of someone who teaches chemistry to students. for dr. Biberdorf — better known as Kate the Chemist — makes that dream part of her goal to capture the joy of scientific research and entice children, especially girls, to consider science their life calling.
“When I’m happiest is when I’m on stage sharing what I love,” she said.
She thinks of a big spectacle, like David Copperfield’s long-running magic shows at MGM Grand or Penn & Teller in Rio Las Vegas. “If we can convince people to go to science shows when they’re on vacation,” she added, not quite convinced.
For now, her efforts are focused on television and publishing, not Vegas. In recent years she has written two books of science experiments to try at home, a science book for adults and, starring Hillary Homzie, a children’s author, a series of novels starring a younger, fictional version of herself.
On television, she’s already become something of a contemporary update of science popularizers like Bill Nye the Science Guy or Donald ‘Mr. Wizard” Herbert.
You may have seen her.
dr. Biberdorf, 36, has appeared on NBC’s “Today,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and other programs showing demonstrations of color-changing chemicals, magnetic slime and, very often, chemical reactions, accompanied by bright, loud bangs.
During a “Today” show segment in 2019, she, along with Craig Melvin, the show’s news anchor, and Dylan Dreyer, the meteorologist, forcibly tossed buckets of hot water into liquid nitrogen, immediately engulfing them in bursts of billowing white vapor. .
The three, dressed in lab coats, goggles and protective mitts, emerged a little frozen.
“You didn’t tell me it was going to explode in my face,” exclaimed Mr. Melvin.
“This is a thundercloud,” explained Dr. Biberdorf out.
The TV appearances are only a few minutes long – long enough to show some “wow” chemistry, but too short to contain more than just casual mentions of the how and why of what happens.
For a deeper dive into science, Dr. Biberdorf to star in one or two TV shows of his own.
One of the ideas that she and her collaborators are pitching is ‘Science Unfair’. Imagine a reality TV contest along the lines of Food Network’s “Worst Cooks in America,” but with students bombarding their science classes.
“It would be more like the kids who hate that and don’t want to do a science fair,” said Dr. Biberdorf. “We’re trying to get them together and have them do a little competition. Hopefully at the end of each segment they will now like science.”
The other pitch, on the back burner for now, is “Blow My Stuff Up,” which is said to combine therapy and pyrotechnics to help people recover from a failed relationship or other unfortunate experiences.
“There’s a therapist there too, so they’re really working on healing and progressing in their lives.” said Dr. Biberdorf. Then she would satisfactorily dispose of objects that are symbolic of the problems people have left behind.
An episode could follow someone who has long suffered in driving a dodgy, junk car. “They finally have a new car, they just want to blow up their old car,” said Dr. Biberdorf, “and we can do that with a lot of fireworks. So I’m absolutely excited about that.”
Both of Dr. Biberdorf’s parents are psychologists and her sister is a therapist. “It kind of brings the two worlds together,” she says.
Sizzles – demo videos showing snippets of what the show could look like – have been shown to several networks.
Raised in Portage, Michigan, just south of Kalamazoo, Dr. Biberdorf is addicted to chemistry because of an enthusiastic high school teacher, Kelli Palsrok.
“Honestly, since I was 15 I knew I wanted to be a chemist because of her,” said Dr. Biberdorf. “My dream, frankly, is to be her for the next generation of kids.”
Ms Palsrok remembers young Kate as “pretty much the same as she is now,” she said. “Always enthusiastic about chemistry and science. Very all round learner. I liked the practical stuff.”
But the field of chemistry was not always welcoming to Dr. Biberdorf. “You are judged by your appearance,” she said. “And I look a certain way and I dress a certain way.”
That is, she wears heels, skirts and lipstick.
“I lean towards my feminine side,” she said. “But that’s just because I like it, and I feel like I’m at my best when I’m presenting that image.”
She added, “It’s also very important to me that younger girls can see that side of a scientist.” She said that women who attend her lectures have expressed appreciation for it.
“You can look however you want and still stay in science as much as possible,” said Dr. Biberdorf.
But that doesn’t fit the stereotype many scientists have of women as scientists.
“I don’t think people look at me and say, ‘Well, that’s a smart lady,'” said Dr. Biberdorf. “So I know that when I’m in faculty meetings or conferences or something like that, my first three sentences have to be articulate and accurate.”
As a graduate student at the University of Texas, she studied catalysts for potentially accelerating the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling, a reaction often used in drug production.
There she discovered that she did not like lab work. Moreover, the pure academic world was a difficult place for her. “I didn’t want to be in that environment,” she said. “I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.”
Her current job at the university is as a professor of education – all teaching and no lab research. When she started in 2014, she taught two undergraduate chemistry classes and went to her boss asking if she could do more.
“We’ve created an outreach program called ‘Fun with Chemistry,'” she said. “I would go to two primary schools per semester. That was the agreement.”
The program turned into something much more popular, with many more schools asking her to attend. “I had contact with about 16,000 students that first year,” she said. “It was crazy, in my opinion.”
That, in turn, led to monthly appearances on “We Are Austin,” a morning show on the local CBS station.
A few years later, a thousand miles away in Los Angeles, Glenn Schwartz noticed. He had been Bill Nye’s publicist, but the two went their separate ways about five years ago. Mr. Schwartz wondered: Is there another Bill Nye?
He searched for about a year before meeting Dr. Biberdorf encountered.
“I found Kate’s website, and I watched a video, and I just contacted her,” said Mr. black. “Truly, it was me looking around and looking for someone like her. And then I was really lucky to find her.”
Mr. Schwartz, who is now the manager of Dr. Biberdorf said she possessed a winning mix of credentials and personality. While there are a lot of people posting science videos on YouTube, “Kate was clearly different,” he said.
He added, “The thing about being on TV is you can’t teach someone to be nice.”
Bill Nye the Science Guy doesn’t mind sharing the science television spots. “Kate becomes Kate and Bill becomes Bill,” he said in an interview.
Mr Nye said their goals were the same: to intrigue children in science. “It’s the people who look at us that we want to succeed and change the world,” he said.
(Mr. Nye is also still on television. His latest series, “The End Is Nye,” will premiere on the Peacock streaming service on August 25.)
Science on television requires a type of research that is very different from the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling experiments Dr. Biberdorf did. Last year, for example, she had to figure out how to blow up a cake during ‘The Wendy Williams Show’ to celebrate the presenter’s birthday.
For safety reasons, fire, the usual types of explosives and toxic chemicals were not allowed in the studio.
“So what have I done?” she said. “I took liquid nitrogen, put it in a soda bottle and put it in a thing, and it exploded like that. Which is a bomb. But they don’t know that. So we just didn’t use that terminology. I said it’s vapor pressure “But it’s a way of turning that around, right? You have to figure out how to say things so you don’t scare people.”
After a year and a half of remote teaching due to the pandemic, she returned to the lecture hall in the spring semester. “We can talk a little bit about how Covid tests work,” she said. “There are many real-world applications.”
Next year, she’s planning a road tour of chemistry shows and performing her experiments and scientific entertainment at performing arts centers across the country.
“We’re just trying to figure out the logistics now,” she said. For a demonstration like the exploding birthday cake, “How do I get that from place to place?” she wondered. “Am I rebuilding my exploding birthday cake every time, or what can I reuse?”
If the din of the shows can intrigue audiences, she hopes people will delve into her books, where she can provide more detailed explanations while still making chemistry interesting for those unfamiliar with the jargon.
“I use analogies as much as possible,” she said. “I was talking about Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s marriage as a way of explaining double replacement reactions. And so that’s something that works for my age group. Maybe there are people who don’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s a way to hook the millennials and hopefully Gen Z, because we need more scientists.”
She doesn’t have her Vegas show yet, she said, but “we have connections with Penn & Teller.” (The magician duo, Penn Jillette and Teller, are also clients of Mr. Schwartz.)
“Maybe,” mused Dr. Biberdorf, “I can somehow sneak in there and do something nice with them.”