Best non-professional science magazine

[Dida]

I want to get a magazine in the area of popular science. I have good math and science background but not a scientist. The magazine should not be too much of an academic journal, but should not be totally dumped down either. Area of interest is most physics. I am considering one of:

- Scientific American
- Discover
- Popular Science
- Smithsonian

Any experience with these?

 

[Cutlass]

I've subscribed to Discover and Popular Science for years. You aren't going to get science in any depth. But you get a non-professional overview of a lot of subjects.

 

[GoodGame]

For about the price of subscribing to all that you could join the AAAS as a "student" and get Science magazine online.

Smithsonian is pretty decent. I might pick up a Scientific American once in a while, at least a special issue.

This and this are essentially free. If you search for the name of a major university and "science" there's usually a semi-annual print/online magazine that describes current research at the university; those are usually free too.

There's also The New Scientist and Science News which might be a little challenging, but also maybe more insightful.

There's probably a few others, like house magazines for general science-based fraternities. AAAS just happens to be the biggest, oldest, most well-known (at least in the USA).

 

[GinandTonic]

New Scientist FTW.

 

[emzie]

Scientific American is fantastic. I'll vouch for it.

 

[stormerne]

I recommend an offshoot Scientific American Mind. Bimonthly. It's the only one I've ever subscribed to and paid out my own money for.

 

[uppi]

For about the price of subscribing to all that you could join the AAAS as a "student" and get Science magazine online.

The news section of Science and Nature are actually quite good to stay current on the hot topics in science. The articles there are written for non-specialists and shouldn't be too hard to understand. That stuff is about one third of an issue (at least it is for the one issue of Nature I have at home). In theory the research papers in those journals should be written in that way, too, but in practice this is impossible.

I like the news section of Nature more, because Science is too US-centric for my taste. But Science might be cheaper to get.


For physics, there is the publication Physics (http://physics.aps.org) from the APS, which is free to read online and tries to "spotlight exceptional research". The content is quite close to the actual research, so the articles can be quite hard to understand for someone without training in physics. But it might be worth a try for some articles.

 

[NetGear]

Science and nature obviously. As for other non peer reviewed, i like what sciam usually covers.

Everything mentioned so far is pretty good though.

 

[wilycoyote]

Peer-reviewed journals are not enjoyable to read. I must read a couple for my career and it took me a couple years before I could, without getting headaches and wanting to burn the journals. Now they are more readily understandable, but journal articles are far too technical to be good reads.

 

[El_Machinae]

Scientific American is less dumbed down than Discover, if that helps.

Scientific American is less dumbed down than Discover, if that helps. It's still merely a science magazine, and not a science journal (of which, I'd recommend Nature).

If you read Scientific American regularly, you'll become informed on theory, which is nice.

 

[History_Buff]

I'm a big Discover fan myself.

 

[GoodGame]

Peer-reviewed journals are not enjoyable to read. I must read a couple for my career and it took me a couple years before I could, without getting headaches and wanting to burn the journals. Now they are more readily understandable, but journal articles are far too technical to be good reads.

The key to reading them is to skip the technical info it isn't critical info; it's there mostly for reproducibility. Most of the interesting reading is what they say they proved and what evidence they actually show.

 

[uppi]

The key to reading them is to skip the technical info it isn't critical info; it's there mostly for reproducibility. Most of the interesting reading is what they say they proved and what evidence they actually show.

Although this is true, it doesn't help much for articles in high-impact journals. There the technical details needed for reproducibility are either extremely short or have been banned to the methods section and/or supplementary information. Usually the paper has already been condensed to the most interesting stuff.

The problem is that the claim and the evidence are described in very technical terms. If you are not familiar with those terms, you'll get lost very quickly. When I try to read a biology paper, I don't even understand the introduction, because there are just too many words with unknown meaning for me.

 

[Glassfan]

I recommend an offshoot Scientific American Mind. Bimonthly. It's the only one I've ever subscribed to and paid out my own money for.

Excellent choice. I also read Natural History and National Geographic.

 

[peter grimes]

My mom buys me Discover every year, even though I've asked hercto stop. It's garbage. You're better off buying the New York Times every Tuesday for the science section.

The problem I have with Discover is that they are writing for about a 6th grade audience (no offense intended towards any 6th graders here). The writing glosses over the elements that matter in a story and focuses more on future-porn.

Please don't give their advertisers any more eyeballs. Oh yeah, their advertisers are things like the Franklin Mint, goldbugs, and imitation diamond hawkers.

That should tell you something....

 

[emzie]

Hey man, Franklin Mint made pretty cool die-cast cars.

 

[Takhisis]

New Scientist FTW.

This for general science and a lovely feedback section, unless you want to get even more profound (doesn't sound like it from your PM) and get Science or another sophisticated journal.