Living media: The Way Things Work videos

Our family enjoys David Macaulay books, from Cathedral, Castle, and Underground to The Way Things Work; soon we will have The Way We Work on our home science shelves, too.

The Way Things Work introduces basic science concepts, often using brief stories involving mammoths. It then has wonderful illustrations of all sorts of inventions that operate based on the concept introduced. (See my review on the Shelfari widget.)



The book has an accompanying video series. We recently borrowed the Electricity DVD from the library. Instead of just being a reproduction of the work, the video is actually an expansion of the mini-stories introducing science concepts.

If these were books they would be excellent living science books. Instead they are great animated science tales. My kids keep asking to watch them, so we'll be renting more soon!

NatGeo on Pandemics tonight

Tonight NatGeo presents Swine Flu: The Science of Pandemics at 10pm EDT.

You can bet my DVR is set for it...

Living Science--literature v. mulitimedia

I have commented before about how limited the living science literature field really is. If you want a nature story, or a biography you're in luck, but beyond that you will have trouble. That's why I like to feature good living science literature here.

Interestingly, while discussing this topic on Julie's Living Math Forum Yahoo group, she noted how hard it was to find any biographies of mathematicians. It seems math is full of concept readers, where science is lacking, and science is full of biographies, where math is lacking. Both, of course, have their share of text books.

While I am not giving up on science literature by any means, I have discovered that it is much easier to find wonderful science multimedia and web sites than literature. I have mentioned some of them here, and will continue to do so.

A related topic came up on the MEP board in the context of being unable to advance in science because of a lag in math. Living science multimedia is one good way to continue learning science without the math intensity of a science curriculum.

NatGeo's Known Universe

Known Universe premiered this month on the National Geographic Channel. If you missed it, I suggest you find out when it will air again.

It's a three part series: The Biggest and the Smallest, The Fastest, and The Most Explosive. It covers topics like the time-space continuum, the Big Bang, black holes, meterorites, gravity, and much more. It can be intense at times with some discussion of the likelihood of future dooms-day scenarios, but mostly it is filled with lots of great physics and astronomy presented in a clear and engaging program.

Robert Krampf

Krampf.com is a wonderful science gem. You will find not only experiments, but great videos, too. These are not the fast, flashy, gross, loud, or otherwise more-noise-than-science type videos. They're informative, interesting, and funny! He does not in any way water down concepts, yet he does not dry them out, either.

While you do need to pay $20 for an annual subscription he has a lot of free material as well, including some of the videos. You can subscribe to his weekly experiment newsletter, too, and view a long list of experiment ideas. I find it well worth the money.