This is a Brian Cox show we're talking about, not a science show. I'm surprised there weren't more slow mo shots of Cox doing his "boyish wonder" face.
I too though this "boyish wonder" face was phony. And yet the "boyish wonder" face will change the fate of the whole video when I show it to my 7yo. The rest is concrete and iron, not really appealing to kids, despite the potential awesomeness of the huge vacuum chamber.
What? No! I don't know about you, but I would have a silly grin on my face too if I actually got to see this experiment live - I mean it's such a classic result - we've all been told that this is what would happen, but very few of us actually get to see it. It's like the experience of seeing the moons of Jupiter the first time that you look at it through a telescope - yes, you know the moons are there, you've even seen photos of them in high-def colour, but there is something special about seeing it first hand.
So no, I don't think that that's a fake grin. But then, as with most female geeks, I have a huge Brian Cox crush, so I may be biased ;)
I was giddy just watching this video! I'm sure his joy was genuine. It's just amazing to see feathers fall straight and bounce(!) when they hit the ground.
I find this perplexing. Obviously few of us would get to see a feather drop due to the lack of a huge vacuum chamber, but you can derive almost as much experimental entertainment by dropping, say, a ping-pong ball and a similarly sized marble or ball bearing.
Really, I think the slow-motion camera has much more educational value than the vacuum chamber (cool as that is). When I was in school and we'd debate such things, I liked to do experiments but dropping things of different weight off the roof only takes you so far, as people might object that they hit the ground a fraction of a second apart but too little of an interval to notice given the relatively low height etc. If I was doing it now I'd just use my camera to tighten things up, and although it's slo-mo capabilities are limited several current consumer models deliver that functionality at affordable prices.
One of my science teachers demonstrated it in class with a vacuum glass tube containing a small feather and a small lead weight. I remember being equally amazed to see it. As pointed out, there is a difference between being told something and seeing it.
The demonstration that air resistance is the cause of the difference in fall duration is what you gain from this. You don't get to remove air resistance from the equation in any other way. It's easy for an ignorant person to assume there's no way air, something we "feel" no resistance from in our daily lives, would be able to fight the force of gravity to such a degree. This experiment makes that concept clear, where dropping a stick and a lead pipe from equal height would not.
Ping-pong ball was a thoughtless example, but many things of different weights will be Good Enough for the junior experimenter, eg plastic ans steel pipe sections dropped straight downwards.
I demonstrated it to my son this morning by filling up one of two boots with coins and demonstrating both boots still fell at the same speed despite the weight difference.
I was laughing and giggling the whole time myself - I'm pretty sure I had a similar look on my face. In fact almost everyone else in the video had a similar goofy look at one point or another!
It's one thing to know that this will happen, it's another entirely to see it happen.
The value of his 'boyish wonder face' is that he's emotionally open, relatively speaking, and therefore we perceive that he's not consciously deceiving us in ways that he thinks important. It shouldn't matter, of course, since explanations either stand or they don't. But it seems that so much public discourse is infected with paranoia and conspiracy theory, including around space history.
His 'boyish wonder', although personally I think it's genuine, does get annoying to those of us who have their own wonder to contend with. Though, perhaps, those completely devoid of it themselves appreciate the cues.
I really don't mind Cox... what I despise is the trend of putting comedians in to science and politics shows in an attempt to relieve the dowdiness (Sorry Dara). Then again, I'm one of those people who used to sneak downstairs in the early hours to watch the dusty math and science stuff the BBC used to broadcast for teachers to record on VHS.
For what it's worth, Cox isn't a comedian. He has a PhD in physics, has supervised PhDs of his own, has been a research scientist at some of the best groups in the world, and currently works in Geneva with the LHC.
Surely he's qualified to demonstrate F=ma, even to someone with a sense of wonder as evolved as your own.
Alan Alda has done a great job of bringing charisma and humor to science shows without dumbing anything down. The key is to find a comedian/actor/whatever who has a genuine interest in the material.
Ben Goldacre is the master of this style of science communication. Friendly and fun and enthusiastic, but in a way that appeals to both laymen and his peers. I suppose epidemiology is somewhat more human than astrophysics, so its easier.
Do you not have kids or rarely interact/play with kids?
Kids are no, even though I know the relevant laws of physics and was intellectually not surprised, I was still in awe and it still violates my instinctive expectations. A visual equivalent to stepping onto a broken escalator.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who finds Cox incredibly annoying.
FWIIW, the exploratorium in SF and the Boston Science Museum both have experiments of this nature. It is a cool vacuum chamber though. Reading some of the NASA early docs on building such things can be quite fun.
I'd never heard of him before this morning, but this style of overly-polished TV production is common in the US as well. One of the things that irritates me about it is that they expend significant budgets on presenting and dramatizing quite basic things in science (which is a good thing) but all this experiential/eye-candy stuff comes at the expense of covering less material.
If you're looking for science documentaries with a little more depth, look at the series done by Jim Al-Khalili (eg., "Atom", "Absolute Zero" or "Chemistry: A Volatile History") and Michael Moseley ("The Story of Science").
In "The Story of Science", Moseley covers much the same ground as James Burke's famous "Connections" (and also his highly-esteemed "The Day thee Universe Changed") -- albeit in a more literal and less literary angle -- or indeed Sagan's eminent "Cosmos".
Al-Khalili is a physicist, though, and I think his documentaries are more to the point than Cox's, even if they're also full of excellent photography. Definitely less bubbly.
