Look Around You!

The Look Around You programme was produced in 2002 and 2005 by the BBC and makes a brilliant mockery of self-teaching programs from the early to mid-1980s, the sorts of programs that were shown here in the US on PBS stations and required you to send away for a workbook through which you would follow along as the program ran.

The first season had eight ten-minute episodes, and the second season had six thirty-minute episodes. The episodes ranged in topic from water, calcium, maths, brain, and computers. The humor is bone dry but certainly present, and the science is atrociously wrong throughout.

In this premier episode, I particularly recommend skipping to...

• 6:17 - calcium molecule (including triple helix) and the dread Helvetica Scenario
• 8:00 - the refining of calcium from 6 tonnes of teeth per day
• 9:22 - the return of the Helvetica Scenario
• 10:10 - a very weird thing (whose name I can't figure out) on a pillow
• 12:20 - the nonsensical reaction between calcium and sodium chloride to form Thompson's oil
• 13:10 - calcium oxide vapor's paralytic properties
• 13:30 - the effects of helium gas upon calcium - using a ping pong ball to demonstrate that the calcium pile hasn't really disappeared after the helium exposure at 2.5 quorums per second - showing calcic image misplacement
• 16:20 - the differences between calcium and intelligent calcium
• 20:42 - some advice about calcium

It's tough to get full episodes online, but DVDs can be purchased.

Most of the clips on YouTube are much shorter than the one I've embedded above....check them out after the jump...

Fundamentals of Science: Heat versus Temperature

Heat and temperature are not the same thing.

Man, if I could get 100% of my students to understand that distinction, I would feel like my themochemistry units were fairly successful.

Yeah, there are other details here and there, but really, that's a pretty big idea right there. Heat and temperature are not the same thing.

Serious Eats just put out a cookbook under their The Food Lab label, and one of the introductory chapters - specifically the one dealing with this heat/temperature distinction - is available for free online.

They, of course, focus on what that distinction means for cooking...

The article goes through the methods of heat transfer: radiation, convection, and conduction.

They also discuss some differences in cooking vessel material, specific heat and heat capacity, and relevant reference temps (for freezing, boiling, and germ killing). Plus they describe an experiment to show the difference in energy transfer rates between water convection (a pot of cold water heating to boiling) and air convection (a 200 Fahrenheit oven), both of which are tested with your hand and a thermometer.

From the article's finale...

To sum up:

• At a given temperature, denser materials generally contain more energy, and so heavier pans will cook food faster. (Conversely, it takes more energy to raise denser materials to a certain temperature.)
• At a given temperature, materials with a higher specific heat capacity will contain more energy. (Conversely, the higher the specific heat capacity of a material, the more energy it takes to bring it to a certain temperature.)

Rainbow Fire Halloween Jack-O-Lantern

You know where you shouldn't get your science advice? Pintrest...and Facebook...and I'll add in Tumblr, too.

Yes, a pumpkin flaming with green fire would be pretty stunningly cool. The thing would terrify every little kid passing by...which is the goal of every Halloween, of course.

But the pumpkin would require the use of methanol.

Methanol is, as I have said a number of times before, bad...dangerous...deadly...

No good can come from attempting this demonstration, folks. I'm especially worried about the notes at 1:50 that says 'The colored flames last several minutes. If you want to keep it going, you'll need to add more alcohol.' DON'T DO THAT. Even if the flames look like they're out... Even if the pumpkin is still hot, it can catch the methanol fumes on fire as you go to refill your flaming, autumnal ball of death.

You might not die, but you might wish you had.