George Rebane

Wayne Watson, Nevada County’s ‘Mr Science Guy’, will sponsor and host “a Summer Science (and mathematics) Video Festival beginning July 8th. This is an opportunity to meet and perhaps share your interests in science, as well as enjoy some very interesting science from the past into the future. The material should be suitable for high school to adult ages.”

His email goes on to describe the program –

The festival consists of about 2 hours of science videos weekly that I have in my collection, from which I’ve selected topics for this purpose. The topics range from astronomy, biology, mathematics, evolution to psychology. The videos will be shown in the community room of the County Library on Wednesdays from 7:30 to 9:30 over five weeks, as below. There is no charge for attendance, but donations to defray cost of renting the room will be appreciated.  I’ll be using the large screen in the room and my video/computer projector.  The first showing will be:

July 8: *Luck, ESP, Magic (60min, about 20 min video Q&A, as fits), Superlative Mathematics (30 min)

*From the DVD jacket: Dr. Wiseman has established an international reputation for research into the scientific examination of unusual areas within psychology. His lecture will cover these many interests, including: the Luck Project, lying and lie detection, the psychology of magic, eyewitness testimony, the psychology of the paranormal, and experimenter bias in ESP research.

The second video features Prof. Doug Shaw who has won a number of awards for teaching mathematics. Here he, in three short segments, covers some fun mathematics about the shortest paper on mathematics in history, the largest number in the history of mathematics, and the silliest result in mathematics. Yes, there is a largest number in mathematics, and it’s not infinity.

*Some of the videos will be ones I’ve captured from science TV shows, and purchased from professionally produced commercial free videos.  The TV shows have advertising in them, but I’ll skip through them as is possible. Although, if possible, and I have the time, I may edit some out.

I will be announcing other videos as the festival proceeds via e-mail, possibly my web site (SBCGlobal is discontinuing web site support this summer), The Union, and KNCO radio. Here are the dates, note July 22, 2009 was unavailable:

    July 8
    July 15
    July 29
    August 5
    August 12

A hint at what might follow is the 50-60s Mr. Wizard show, The Secret Life of Machines, Light Fantastic, The Atom, Break the Science Barrier, Alphabet Conspiracy (Bell Science Series from the 60s), Black Holes–The Brightest Objects in the Universe, and many others.

If any of you have science announcements of interest to the community, I’ll see that they are mentioned or appropriate material about them handed out. You need to provide the handouts. For example, topics of interest about the Nevada County Astronomy (NCA) club, light pollution handouts from the IDA (International Dark-Sky Association), science lectures and events in nearby communities, limited to one or two announcements per person per week about a forthcoming science TV show (for example, right now Space Week on DirecTV is showing, June 22-26 starting at 9pm.), or OLLI courses (Sierra College non-credit, short classes). Contact me early by e-mail for submissions.

I’ll need help setting up chairs beforehand and afterwards, and clean up. If you want to bring your own popcorn or soda, that’s fine, but you’ll need to make sure any wrapping, mess, or other remnants are taken care of properly after the showing.