Grad Student Wins Alan Alda's Flame Challenge 161
eldavojohn writes "Scientists have long been criticized of their inability to communicate complex ideas adequately to the rest of society. Similar to his questions on PBS' Scientific American Frontiers, actor Alan Alda wrote to the journal Science with a proposition called The Flame Challenge (PDF). Contestants would have to explain a flame to an eleven-year-old kid, and the entries would be judged by thousands of children across the country. The winner of The Flame Challenge is quantum physics grad student Ben Ames, whose animated video covers concepts like pyrolysis, chemiluminescence, oxidation and incandescence boiled into a humorous video, complete with song. Now they are asking children age 10-12 to suggest the next question for the Flame Challenge. Kids out there, what would you like scientists to explain?"
1 of my favorite Antenna channels (Score:5, Informative)
Over-the-air channel 12-3 broadcasts an hour of Scientific American every day. Very well done (if a bit simplistic). They air other documentaries too. I remember when TLC used to have shows like this, but now it's PBS doing the job.
Re:1 of my favorite Antenna channels (Score:2, Informative)
You forgot ghosts and aliens.
If I see that orange guy that is just abosolutely positive that aliens are milking our prostates to create alien-human hybrid living spacecraft to deliver pyramid materials to far-off galaxies... I'm gunna throw my TV out the window. The best part is that H presents him like an expert. Whatever the fuck an "expert" in active alien conspiracies is, I'll never know.
As for all the fucking retarded ghost shows, they just repeat the same nonsense, over and over.
"That has to be a ghost."
"No it doesn't."
"I dunno, I'm pretty sure that's a ghost."
"Nope."
"Look here, there was a sound."
"You're in a 200 year old building, jackass."
"Yeah but that's not the sound a building makes."
"God, please shut up."
"We need to do an emergency exorcism. C'mon everybody..."
"Next time, on ghost show, the guys we pay to make this show are sure they think they might have recorded yet another random sound that could be evidence of a potential ghost. Maybe."
What kind of asshole tunes in, week after week, for that?