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Re: The Mechanical Universe



Not to beat a dead horse, but my sense of the videos was that most of the
concepts and mathematics were presented as if by magic, with very little
good development. I think the hype it got far exceeded the actual product.

I think you are judging them too harshly. They came orders of magnitude
closer to fulfilling promises than Carl Sagan did with his "Cosmos"
series, and with lots less money and more science per hour of product!
The comparison is apt; educational television is not easy, competing as
it does for the attention of an audience which, however well motivated,
is still unconsciously wedded to judging what is on the screen partly on
the merits of its production values. I think that Hume and Ivey's
"Frames of Reference" is a work of great art and pedagogic value, but
today's Philistine students just laugh at the clothes and language. When
we show it to a class today we are trying to feed vintage champagne to
nascent Joe and Jane Sixpacks. You can't fight contemporary culture.

I like "The Mechanical Universe" productions for some of their features,
but they should probably be used as supplements to a course, accessible
to the students who want to see them on a library basis. I think that it
is not a good idea to try to use long segments from them in a lecture.

I think the best feature of TMU is James Blinn's animations. They are
outstanding. In one particular case I will have to say they changed my
way of thinking about a physical concept! I have never liked the
depiction of electric and magnetic fields in the conventional two
dimensional manner seen in textbooks. Blinn's three dimensional fields
are wonderful!

The audience shots are ironic. They are, of course, partly B-roll over
David Goodstein's lines, but I think they are also meant to make physics
more "inclusive", featuring as they do students of various genders,
races, and degrees of nerdity. It is ironic because Caltech is probably
the most exclusive undergraduate institution in the country. They don't
admit dummies, an elitist admissions policy if there ever was one. It
also bothers me that they use the *same* B-roll audience shots over
again, perhaps another sop to PC - they're conspicuously recycling.

Leigh