Scence Television: Anybody Else Worried?

This is my second attempt at posting this (it's as I've already said, I'm having a really hard time figuring this forum out).

Anyways, I watch a lot of science television, and I'm frequently perturbed by how much they either get wrong, or fail to communicate clearly.

In my original attempt to begin this thread, perhaps the mods thought my mention of the name of a specific science television presenter might invite legal retaliation, so I bow to their superior judgement in that regard.

But, in more general terms, is anyone else here as dissatisfied with the current state of science television as I am?

 

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No, please, name names. No one here is worried about legal action. This isn't England.

 

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Well, just to be on the safe side, I'll describe statements without naming names.

Last night, I watched a program(me) dealing with gravitation, in which the presenter, although he took an extremely long period of time to get to the point, In fact, it seemed to me that his statement was so confusing that a sane, intelligent viewer could easily have thought he'd heard him state the opposite of what he was actually saying. He began by saying that gravity was not the same everywhere in the universe (and I wish I had a video of me rocketing up from my chair and screaming "WHAAAA????" at the top of my lungs). He then went into a rambling monologue at the end of which he finally spat out the fact that he was actually referring to gravitational pull in terms of earth's gravity at sea level = 1g, which, he correctly pointed out, meant that in the space of different planets, that planet;s gravitational pull is going to be proportional to the planet's mass. It seems to me that, in the same amount of time he took to potentially confuse the heck out of his viewership, he could have explained the mutual attractivity of the attracting mass and the attracted mass, which, given the weakness of gravitation across space, diminishes to the tune of the inverse square of the distance between the two objects. Thus, he could easily have explained to the general public one of the simplest, yet most profound, equations in all of science. Instead, he chose to over-simplify, in a way which undermined his attempt to get the truth across to the general public.

Does this answer your question?

 

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Probably the Discovery Channel. As much as I like science programs, I have to pass on their pitiful offerings, it's usually a lot of speculation and computer graphics without much substance.

 

Wrong, my friend. This was the Science Channel, from which one should have the right to expect better.

 

"A view of part of an algorithm chalked on a board. The camera slowly pans out until the whole board can be seen, the view is held for five minutes as a guy with glasses and long hair tied back carries the numbers from the board into his mind-sight to dwell on a potential solution. Ten minutes later, he states in television fashion 'Good evening to the show, tonight's interesting physics education will astound all of you once we've figured out which part of this algorithm is actually the important and abstract part that people can't solve', with that he turns back to the board and start's looking through a satchel for a slide ruler."

Unfortunately, Television tends to be more about entertainment than education, they might get it in the wrong order, they might put more effort into the entertainment but at the end of the day they deal with those that watch television, not scientists that are busy working out how to write a whitepaper who don't get the chance to watch the "idiotbox/googlebox" etc.

 

I'm a total layman. I haven't taken any science classes (not outside of high school anyway). I never even took algebra in high school. I just got done watching the first season of "Through the wormhole". I wasn't impressed. I've seen some physics documentaries that were pretty impressive and helped me to understand things better. But those are few and far between.

Edit:

Then again, Theres a lot of shit on TV. I guess I'd rather see shows like these than shit like Seinfeld or American Idol...

 

Whether American Idol has talented people or not, its still shit. Utter and complete. I don't think there's anything wrong with watching TV to be entertained, but I'd rather see people watching half cocked science shows to be entertained than the other shit which compromises about 99% of programming. Which I will agree, includes news.
And by Seinfeld, I kind of meant sitcoms in general...

 

That was what I liked about Mythbusters...when I had a tv and we had cable...

It's science made cool...and they blow up stuff. I like it when they blow up stuff.

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Televised mind control

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I have no idea what that show was or what it was about, but honestly, telling people "gravity on Mars is not the same as gravity here on Earth" will, in general, improve people's scientific understanding of gravitation.

And would have lost 90% of his audience. Most people do not understand the term "inverse square" and would vehemently disagree that gravity is "weak."

Digression -

At one point in my life I was a parachute test jumper who tested new parachute rig designs and methods. I've made over 6000 jumps as a stuntman, skydiving competitor, researcher, instructor and fun jumper. I've built my own parachute rigs. I've learned a lot about how parachutes work (and more importantly in what ways they sometimes _don't_ work) how they fly, how to design them and how to maintain them.

For example, one of the things that's pretty cool about ram-air parachutes is that they work the opposite of how an airplane works. In an airplane, you lower the aileron on one wing to turn away from that direction. Lift on that wing increases, it rises, the other one drops, lift acts to pull you towards the dropped wing, and you turn.

On a parachute, you pull a control line to lower one trailing edge of the parachute - and you turn TOWARDS that direction. The explanation has to do with the inherent roll stability of the parachute and the lesser yaw stability; lift does its thing like usual but drag plays more of a role than it does in an airplane, and something called adverse yaw causes the wing to turn in the opposite way you'd expect it to. There are also some interesting details; in some parachutes, a small deflection of the trailing edge WILL cause it to turn like an airplane (i.e. away from the dropped trailing edge) until a critical angle is exceeded, at which point adverse yaw takes over and you turn towards the dropped edge.

All of which is cool. But it would be a very big mistake to try to teach first-jump students that. They need to know "pull left to turn left" even if the reality is much more complex than that.

So yes, sometimes you have to oversimplify depending on your audience. If I had a class of one, and that one person was a pilot and an aeronautical engineer, I might hit on some of that. But for 99% of the people out there, that's way too much information. They need to know the basics.

 

Name names. Was it BBC Horizon? Your description sounds a lot the like the Brian Cox episode where he asks: "What on Earth is Wrong with Gravity"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0Xd7_ciNQ

 

Pinwheel:

It WAS Brian Cox (you get extra credit!!!), but it wasn't the show/programme you're referring to. It's his new show/programme entitled "Wonders of the Universe" (where's he from, anyways? He sounds his vowels in the Northern style,and yet he doesn't trill his non-prevocalic, non-preliquid "r" the way the Beatles do (I'm a Yank, so the Beatles are pretty much my only source of info regarding the Northwestern dialect)), and it appears in the US on the Science Channel.

Still, he's way ahead of all the presenters who present positive errors, as, so far as I know, he hasn't yet done.

 

the only programs i watch on TV when i watch TV is science, history, and documentaries.
all of the TV i watch is at friends and neighbors houses so i don't have much control over what is on.

 

yanks do not spell program as programme.
the only ones i am aware of that do that are british and australians.

 

This is a post I'm trying to delete, but can't figure out how so to do.

Could a Mod/Admin PLEASE delete this for me????

 

I do, unfortunately, agree with you that such a presentation would improve most people's knowledge of gravity, as the such is famously experienced in the presence of large attracting masses. But what it actually, and famously, illustrates is the phenomenon of mass, and not gravitation per se.

I'll start up a new thread under the Physics category to discuss this point further.

NO KIDDING!!! On another forum, I famously got into trouble with a guy who famously argued in favo(u)r of some idiotic piece of pseudoscientific crap called the "Growing Earth Theory", which famously argues against the idea of plate tectonics by famously positing the idea that the Earth was once much smaller in volume than it once was, and that the consequently lessened force of gravity upon the surface allowed the gigantism famously observed amongst the major fauna of the period famously known as the "Pangea" period. When I famously pointed out to him that gravitational attraction famously applies as the inverse square of the distance from the attracting body's center/centre of mass, which means that the Earth's gravitational pull on the surface would have been much GREATER had the Earth a smaller volume back then, he challenged me by famously asking me why I was so "hung up on that inverse square of the distance thing". At that point I cut off all contact with him.

Once again, I'll create a new thread under "Pseudoscience" just in case anyone famously wants to continue discussion on this point.