Billions and Billions
May 6th, 2009 by excimer
[1] This just made my day. Every episode of Carl Sagan’s series Cosmos is free to watch on Hulu.
Cosmos had an enormous impact on me when I first watched it when I was in 5th grade or so. I credit it for dragging me into science in the first place, for making me curious about how the outside world works, and especially for making me obsessed with the stars- an obsession that lasted for many years when I was little, and one I only got over when I started studying chemistry. Cosmos tackled a huge variety of subjects, from (obviously) astronomy to evolution to even advanced mathematical concepts such as what a 3D projection of a fourth spatial dimension would look like. Sagan had a gift for communicating ideas in ways that anyone could understand, and Cosmos was a huge inspiration for me.
Looking back, it made me realize something. When I first watched Cosmos on TV (my mom videotaped them when they were on PBS), it gave me a sense of wonderment and awe at how little I knew about the universe and gave me a hunger for knowledge. This was almost immediately thereafter squashed by my middle school science classes, where rote memorization of facts and coloring pictures of leaves or something without understanding what we were doing was paramount. I hated science in middle school- I thought it was a stupid, meaningless bore, except when Bill Nye was on. Bill Nye was awesome, but I think I liked Bill Nye mostly because it gave me a rare chance to learn about science without responsibility or the dread that I’d have to regurgitate the information at some point later. It took me until my senior year of high school to start enjoying science again, when I was a student aide for the AP chemistry teacher and I got to make solutions and prep all sorts of crazy demos, by myself, in the office behind the classroom.
Cosmos, I guess, gave me the initial curiosity and drive to understand how the world worked, while school beat the fun out of learning those things. Small wonder I didn’t start to really like science again until I was allowed to just do sciencey things on my own again. I guess it’s only significant cause I never really thought about it until I started watching Cosmos on Hulu again.
[1] It’s worth noting that the term “Billions and billions” wasn’t coined by Carl Sagan, but rather by Johnny Carson doing an skit parodying him. Sagan, ever the wit, adopted it as his own after he became associated with it.
I hated science until high school! I remember doing a science fair project on crystal growth in fifth grade and getting a C minus on it. Apparently crystal growth isn’t science (even though it’s an integral part of my research now).
Never watched Cosmos. Maybe I’ll give it a try.
But crystal growth isn’t a science… it’s part voodoo, part pagan ritual, part post-Nietzsche futilism.
A student recently pointed out the crystal growth technique
1) Carefully prepare your solvent/vapour diffusion.
2) Place crystal vial in the freezer.
3) Abandon all hope.
Hmmmm. I always preferred slow evaporation at RT (with concomitant abandonment of hope).
Bill Nye is awesome!
Cosmos is one of the greatest things television has ever seen.
It’s hard to believe that it is, what, 30-something years old? When you watch it today, it just seems so damn relevant to what we need getting through to the public today. And you need to watch it very carefully, and know quite a bit about science, to pick up the subtle bits that are scientifically outdated today; it stands the test of time very well.
I own the remastered DVD set; I highly recommend purchasing it
My husband and I both watched Cosmos as kids.
Our own children listen to Are We Alone. It’s a podcast rather than TV, but still covers a variety of topics and is funny. Even my 7yo laughs at some of the jokes.
Who knows, maybe when we have some extra time (ha!) we’ll sit down with the kids and watch Cosmos, too.
He gave the commencement speech at Illinois when I finished my Ph. D. (1990). The only thing I still remember from it was that he told us to be on the lookout in the coming years for the “Pale Blue Dot” photo from Voyageur 1.
a 3D projection of a fourth spatial dimension
is a Schlegel diagram. Organikers do it all the time, albeit one click down 3D to 2D. It is the basis of software assigning a systematic name from skeletal connectivity. If one had a 2D Schlegel diagram in which two lines could not be prevented from crossing (a K(5) molecule, from Kuratowsky’s theorem), automated nomenclature assignment would crash or spew nonsense. It does,
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/chiral2.gif
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/chiral3.gif
C_27H_28
A bonus: The chiral central carbon (point group T, not Th or Td) and the four identical chiral carbons to which it is attached cannot have their stereochemistry labeled by any existing structural scheme – R/S, P/M, Delta/Lambda, etc.
Schlegel did it all in German, Ueber Projectionsmodelle der regelmässigen vier-dimensionalen Körper, Theorie der homogen zusammengesetzten Raumgebilde. Perhaps he gave paired Bandwurmwörter lectures – one with all the tortured noun phrases, then a recitation of all the verbs. (Go ahead, make some sense out of Rhabarberbarbarabarbarenbar.)
Long time reader, first time poster.
I too love what PBS does for young minds, hell, I still spend some time watching it.
However, Bill Nye is a no good dickbag. Why, you ask? I’ll be happy to explain.
Like a good chunk of you, I was nerdy from a young age. In highschool this meant math team. (and WYSE, scholar bowl, etc.) A perk of being on these teams was extra outings. One of these extra outings was U of I engineering open house. There was a massive poster session over several buildings on campus and Bill Nye was one of the judges. We spent most of the day running around Champaign proper, dining and dashing, and perusing Bogart’s. We were making our way back through campus, dodging in and out of buildings to avoid walking around them. Our group (8 of us) turns a corner to see Bill Nye, his man-servant (a 7 foot tall Polynesian), and two individuals presenting a poster. HOLY SHIT, we all thought. Nerd God. Being the only one of the group with guts, I began to walk toward Bill. His man-servant interfered. “Bill Nye is really busy, no he won’t sign your autograph” Childhood hero destroyed? check. There were 10 people there. That is 30 seconds of autographs. He couldn’t give us 30 seconds. F*ck Bill Nye.
Post script. Later that day we saw him in a room with about 300 people in it. I had one of the girls in the group get her camera out. I rushed him, put my arm around his neck and smiled. He didn’t smile. Dick.
Well, someone does sound like a dick in that story, but it’s not the person you think.
This show was one side of Carl Sagan, the showman. In that, he struck/ strikes some as arrogant or smarmy. But Carl was a very human person with a very self-effacing sense of humor and a real knack at connecting with people. I was lucky enough to collaborate with his group as they tried to simulate the red goo that is thought to occur on the Saturnian moon Titan. These tholins were pure crap to play with, but Carl was a nice guy who happened to be a very good scientist.
I always enjoyed the soundtrack on that series, especially the end of episode music, so much so that I bought the soundtrack.