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Re: [Phys-l] ingenious? or just perverse?



For what it is worth, it is considered part of the charm of the show that they don't always find the most optimal solutions or that their investigations are always the most scientific.

The show wishes to promote the idea that it is possible for relatively normal people to do some science and engineering. They are rough and ready, like most people out there. They are under tight time pressures, partly because of how the show is filmed, but also to cause them to make mistakes like normal folk would have done.

Whether this succeeds in making viewers more scientific in their outlooks is debatable, but it certainly does a better job than most so-called science and nature shows which don't spend any time giving reasons why we know what we think we know. The comic strip xkcd has a great comic on the subject <http://xkcd.com/397/>. As an aside, if you haven't been reading this math, science, and love strip, you are in for a treat.

I don't advocate a historical approach to the teaching of science (I was a history and philosophy of science major) because it tends to dramatically rewrite what really happened. Nonetheless, I think that forcing students to confront the results of experiments as a motivation for new models is a strong way to excite students as well as making it easier for them to understand theories.

Zeke Kossover