A program I can get on TV On Demand in HD is "Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections". I find it very interesting. Richard Hammond goes around the world to look at very big engineering feats, like an aircraft carrier or the Sidney Opera House, and looks at the engineering which makes it possible. What's cool is that he finds the inspiration of the engineering solutions, and looks at the technologies which came before it and gets them demonstrated in entertaining ways so we get the basic principles. For instance the aircraft carrier uses technology connected to a boomerang, gyroscope, reverse osmosis, Tower Bridge, hydraulics accumulaters...
I'm impressed with Hammond's energy, he seems willing to go anywhere and climb anything to make a good program. And the little things too: For example, he pronounced Sidney Opera House's Danish architect Jørn Utzon's name in good Danish, not something many journalists would care to take the effort to learn.
Interview. YouTube videos.
... It's very much a show for the males... every time there is an explosion or something gets destroyed 'in the name of science', they make sure to film it from several angles and to show them all. :-)
Pretty odd that he was "allowed" to be that close to the site of impact...and GROSS!! RAW chicken pieces flying...ALL OVER the place!! YUCK!! :-/
ReplyDeleteScience is sometimes really gross, but this is a rather harmless example. Too many people have still illusions about scientists ...
ReplyDeleteI remember Bert Brechts "Galileo Galilei". Somewhere at the end Galilei says something like (sorry, if my ad-hoc translation is not adequate):
"If I had sustained and not abjured, we would have had the chance to develop an ethical code for scientists. But now, the best we can hope is a clan of inventive dwarfs doing all for money."
I love doing science, but sometimes I feel ashamed about what people do in the name of science. My own experiences like that were the reason why I stopped working in a research institute and started as a freelancer, many years ago.