Whipped Cream Difficulties

Science Sunday!

Today, we’re wrapping up the Bell System Science Series. Previous posts:

• Part 1.
• Part 2.
• Part 3.

We’re still in the “produced “under the personal supervision of Jack L. Warner”/Owen Crump era. But according to Wikipedia, the Bell System wasn’t all that happy with the first two Warner films, and actually approached Frank Capra about coming back. I gather he turned them down.

Film number seven in the series: “Thread of Life”, about DNA and related matters (heredity, genetics, all that stuff). This is from 1960, so it’s worth considering where we were at the time: it wasn’t until 1952 that DNA was established as the carrier of genetic information, and it wasn’t until 1953 that Crick and Watson published the double helix paper. Franklin and Gosling’s X-ray diffraction photo was from 1952.

In an influential presentation in 1957, Crick laid out the central dogma of molecular biology, which foretold the relationship between DNA, RNA, and proteins, and articulated the “adaptor hypothesis”. Final confirmation of the replication mechanism that was implied by the double-helical structure followed in 1958 through the Meselson–Stahl experiment. Further work by Crick and co-workers showed that the genetic code was based on non-overlapping triplets of bases, called codons, allowing Har Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley, and Marshall Warren Nirenberg to decipher the genetic code. These findings represent the birth of molecular biology.

This is literally within a couple of years of the beginnings of molecular biology, and the Bell System is trying to present these concepts to the general public.

What if – and I know this is a crazy thought – but what if someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos produced a one hour video once a year to explain some scientific concept to the general public? Get some real hotshot director like Tarantino to direct, bring in subject matter experts who come across well on camera, hire a charismatic host…? I think you could do this without veering into the political arena, though I’m sure the temptation would be hard to resist for some.

Just a thought.

Rowland Barber wrote the screenplay for this one: he’s perhaps more famous as the author of The Night They Raided Minsky’s, basis for the early William Friedkin movie.

Film number eight in the series: “About Time”. The people of Planet Q have a problem. They haven’t been into the concept of “time”, but they just got their first clock and want to know what time they should set it to. They are unhappy with the initial answer – “Set it anywhere you like.” which leads to a discussion of time, the nature of time, timekeeping, how do we really know what time it is anyway, and relativity theory.

Spoiler #1: the ultimate answer turns out to be…”Set it anywhere you’d like.” But there’s a catch: the people of Planet Q are looking for audiophiles who are interested in high quality cassette tapes.

Spoiler #2: if you don’t want to watch the whole film, but are just interested in the guest appearance, Dr. Richard P. Feynman appears at about the 45 minute mark.

Is it just me, or is there a little bit of resemblance between Feynman and Leonardo DiCaprio?

Okay, that may not have been the best DiCaprio photo I could have picked, but I have reasons. I really think DiCaprio could pull off the Feynman role, if they ever make that film of his life.

But I digress. There was one more film in the series: “The Restless Sea”. Unlike the first eight, it was only 30 minutes long. It also wasn’t produced by Capra or Warner: this was actually a Disney production. Les Clark, one of the early Disney animators, directed, and Walt Disney appears as himself.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find this one anywhere. Wikipedia’s page lists various public domain/DVD/VHS/laserdisc releases of the Bell System Science Series, but none of them seem to include “The Restless Sea”. I suspect this is locked away in the Disney vault, possibly on the same shelf as “Song of the South”.

Next week: I want to continue the “Science Sunday” theme, but I don’t have any good ideas right now. Suggestions from the gallery are very welcome.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2020 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Geek, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.