Geology rocksla Geología con música (Heavy Metal) entra

Abstract

In 2015, Manuel González and Natalia Ruiz created the “Astrocopla”, a new entertaining and funny way to popularize science among the general public. These are song covers of the traditional Spanish copla with lyrics referring to the most current research in astrophysics. From then onwards, this new format has revealed as a very efficient popularization tool, being much in demand by society to increase their knowledge about the secrets of the Universe. This success led us to try its usefulness in the popularization of Geology, which is usually perceived by the lay public as one of the most unapproachable and unknown among the traditional sciences. Therefore, any educational and informative novelty that can help change this perception of Earth Sciences is more than welcome. Thus, we decided to try this new format in the best possible forum, the scientific monologues of the Zientzia Club conducted in 2018 and 2019, which are organized by the University of the Basque Country within the Science Week / Zientzia Astea. The format we have conducted is very simple: a short presentation explai- ning the most relevant geological concepts that the show is about, culminated by a song that reinforces them. Heavy Metal, in particular Power Metal, has been chosen, because it consists of short and repetitive choruses, which allow us to repeatedly highlight the main scientific concept or the geological Keywords that we expect the public to internalize. Moreover, one of the novelties included is the use of live piano music on the stage by Jone Mendicoa. In these two years, we have versioned three well-known songs within the scope of Heavy Metal and we have achieved a direct interaction with the public, which has chanted the choruses and accompanied the music with palms, making very favourable comments regarding our show, both personally and through social media. In conclusion, covering well-known songs with geological lyrics has revealed as a very useful tool for the popularization of Geology that can be taken as a role model in other similar events of popular science.