This is a collection of writing samples, ranging from science journalism, to hands-on tutorial instructions, to copy for a museum exhibit.

Tutorial Writing

I’ve written quite a lot of tutorials on how to make things, most of which involve electronics. While this isn’t exactly the same as science writing, tutorial writing and science journalism share the common goal of breaking down complex concepts into easy to understand nuggets of information. Writing electronics tutorials aimed at a general audience involves explaining how circuits work in an accessible way, just like you would do if making a YouTube video about electronics concepts in physics.

The best example I can give of this is a DIY synthesizer project I did a few years ago:

• The project home page explains the background, for context

• The ‘LEARN’ page explains the maths and electronics behind the project, and is the closest recent example I have to creative science writing.

Science Writing

From 2010-2011 I wrote for Euroscientist, the science news section of the European research organisation Euroscience. The website is now defunct but the following articles can still be read on the Internet Archive:

• “Getting closer to fusion power”, on the development of a fusion reactor in the south of France.

• “Utrecht staff and students say no to physics cuts”, covering the reactions of university staff to the firing of entire departments.

• “Dublin’s Science Gallery”, exploring the practice of conducting experiments in a public gallery instead of in a laboratory.

I also wrote for jIAPS, the journal of the International Association of Physics Students. These were written at undergraduate physics student level, so they include a bit more technical jargon than I would include when writing for a general audience.

• Neurophysics of Vision, on the use of visual illusions to study how we see.

• Quantum Computing, on steps towards making super-fast computers by harnessing quantum mechanics

Other writing samples

The science writing examples above are quite old, so here are a few examples of things I’ve written more recently:

• An excerpt from the introduction to my PhD thesis, explaining a bit about the interwoven history of textiles and electronics, and written in a less technical style than the rest of my thesis.

• An article I wrote recently for a kind-of-academic-but-not-really festival on algorithmic pattens in crafts and technology, aimed at an interdisciplinary art and technology audience.

• I wrote the copy for this museum exhibit on the invisible history of women in science, for an exhibition aimed at 15-25 year olds. I also did the research for the piece, identifying women in Irish science whose work has historically been underappreciated, and worked with an illustrator who produced a mural depicting the three of them.