For all of you nerds out there, I came upon a fascinating series on the History Channel this weekend that I had a hard time turning off. It is called The Universe and the episodes that I saw talked about all of the planets individually as welll as meteors and their impact on the earth, and the galaxy and super massive black holes. I don't know where films like this were when I was in school but I don't remember the ones I saw in science class being nearly as interesting. If they had maybe I would have had a much more useful and lucrative science degree instead of nearly useless communication degrees.
Tonight at 8 they are showing The Universe: Beyond the Big Bang which looks to be one of the better episodes:
Interviews with the world's leading physicists and historians are woven together with animated recreations and first-person accounts to explain concepts such as the formation of galaxies, the creation of elements and the formation of Earth itself.
(I am still trying to figure out who is giving a "first person account" on the Big Bang but I am definitely intrigued!)I love this stuff because it is so interesting to me that people have figured this out and yet is hard for me to even grasp the concept of infinite space and other galaxies and so on. So if you have some free time tonight, give it a watch.
i'm glad you pose the question of the first person account as well. because, uhh, yeah.
ReplyDeletebtw, i left my towel (blue chamois like thing) hanging by the bbq. do you think i could recover that via you?
Oh yeah, I think I left my green towel there too.
ReplyDeleteOh, and there could totally be first person accounts for the formation of elements. At least...the last few anyhow. It's a weird wording for the two lists of things, so who knows.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing is that whenever they try to spice science up for the lay people, they end up dumbing it down with anthropomorphisms and inaccuracies. Ah well, we have our great public education system to rectify those errors, yeah?
I have both of those items. Adam yout towel is at my apartment, I will bring it tonight if not for anything more than getting strange looks from people and Ed my mom is brinin your blue towel thing to work today so I will bring it tonight as well.
ReplyDeleteAs far as dumbing it down goes, I don't see a problem with simplifying extremely complex information so they lay person can understand it. If they were to present the information the way they would to other scientists I wouldnt understand anything and I think even a rudimentary understanding of a concept is better than no understanding at all.
Oh, I agree completely, the only way to win over the public to something as complicated as much of the sciences are is to make it so they can understand them. It's just that often times, the people producing the products don't know much about science themselves and don't make enough consultations with those who do.
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