tangent
10-27-02, 18:10
Rough Science
http://www.pbs.org/weta/roughscience/
Take a botanist, a physicist, a marine biologist, a chemist and a biologist – give them some basic tools and simple materials and give them tasks to complete. The tasks often involve building an enabling technology. For example, to make insect repellent requires building steam distillation apparatus, to build a compass requires making a primitive battery to magnetize a needle, making photographic film requires extracting iodine from seaweed then a electrolysis apparatus to make silver iodide which is photosensitive.
For the camera they used the bottom of a broken bottle as a lens. The group is given 3 days to complete 3 tasks in a relatively primitive environment.
Surviving the Iron Age
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/surviving_ironage/
A group of reenactment people live together for 3 months using iron age skills – building kilns, making pottery, smelting iron, blacksmithing, weaving cloth and gill nets, making fishing traps, plowing fields, making mead, and so on.
Very neat stuff!
-t
http://www.pbs.org/weta/roughscience/
Take a botanist, a physicist, a marine biologist, a chemist and a biologist – give them some basic tools and simple materials and give them tasks to complete. The tasks often involve building an enabling technology. For example, to make insect repellent requires building steam distillation apparatus, to build a compass requires making a primitive battery to magnetize a needle, making photographic film requires extracting iodine from seaweed then a electrolysis apparatus to make silver iodide which is photosensitive.
For the camera they used the bottom of a broken bottle as a lens. The group is given 3 days to complete 3 tasks in a relatively primitive environment.
Surviving the Iron Age
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/surviving_ironage/
A group of reenactment people live together for 3 months using iron age skills – building kilns, making pottery, smelting iron, blacksmithing, weaving cloth and gill nets, making fishing traps, plowing fields, making mead, and so on.
Very neat stuff!
-t