But unlike a fictional series, the stuff here has already been expanded on -- by real scientists. If you want to learn more about the ideas mentioned here, you can just go to the library. So, in short, reality is Cosmos fanfic.
I can certainly sympathize. I'd like nothing better than to have more Cosmos at some point - especially if Tyson is allowed to use more of his impromptu/improvised persona and voice (as with his Star Talk Radio show). His laugh - and genuinely good natured spirit - helps makes him that much more affable and compelling. To see that come through in a future version of Cosmos would be great. Unless things change, though, that's almost entirely wishful thinking. But there is always the aforementioned Star Talk Radio ... really good stuff there.
To me, the show is designed to tease and tantalize more than anything else. It lays down the basics, but puts on an air that says if you want to learn more, you're going to have to look for yourself. It's an idea that needs to grow, because people want ready answers without looking for them themselves.
Do they still have those?! I just really liked the way it's been presented on Cosmos, plus the presence of NdGT. Maybe I'll watch some of Through the Wormhole, sort of lost track of that one.
This episode felt like a love letter to Faraday more than anything, and I'm kind of okay with that. He deserves to have his name spoken alongside Einstein and Newton by the masses and if this pushes that notion even a quantum towards realization I can dig it.
I really think that the show is meant for young people or people not familiar at all with science. It packages the material in an easy to understand manner, adds drama to keep them hooked and tosses in some inspiration along the way. We're jaded, but this is probably going to mean as much to people in the future as the original does to a lot of us.
But my complaint is that it wasn't easy to understand because the narration didn't explain why any of these discoveries worked. Tighr was able to do that in a few sentences up above.
I'm kind of on the fence about that, though. Sure I was able to explain it, but I had to use bigger words and ideas that the show didn't even try to address. I think what Possum is trying to say is that young people who aren't already familiar with science aren't going to know what polarization, dielectric, or electromotive mean. The show approaches those topics from an "Explain it like I'm 5" viewpoint. Anyone who is sufficiently interested in these topics (and the show presents them in an exciting way!) is free to google for more.
Maybe what this show needs is one of those "Read More About It" tags like CBS used to put at the end of its educational specials, listing books that interested young viewers could check out if they wanted to learn more.
I can't remember where I saw it, but there was an interview with Tyson in which he said something to the effect that the show was intended for people who were not entirely knowledgeable about science, or were on the fence about how important it is to our history and to our lives. Sure, the episode could have been presented in a slightly different way that would have made the science a bit clearer, but this explains why the show didn't go too deep into the details of the science - its priorities were elsewhere.
I enjoyed the Faraday story. I was not aware of him. But I don't know that I put him in the Einstein/Maxwell category. He wasn't educated. He couldn't even begin to justify his thoughts/theories because he just couldn't do the math. Important figure? Sure. Impressive man? Yup. It's amazing what he was able to accompish with the level of education he had. I still can't stand NDT's narration... what a snooze fest...
Faraday was such a huge force in science that the unit named after him is rarely used in quantities larger than a microFarad, and picoFarad is extremely common. You can deal with thousands or millions of Amps, Volts, or Ohms, quite a lot of Henries or Siemens, and billions of Hertz, but you're life time total of capacitance that you've dealt with can fall far short of just a single Farad, because Faraday was that awesome.
That was such a valuable contribution to the discussion. I cannot thank you enough. Because, clearly, the fact that I haven't used any specific quota of Einsteins or Sagans or Hypatias lately is a clear indication of those individuals' contributions to science.
Indeed it is. I often use microEinsteins in LED lighting calculations, and the size of the unit does reflect his prominence. A Sagan, unfortunately, is a very large amount of weed, comprising 10e9 lids, although it's an unofficial measure while the Einstein is redundant. You can tell a lot about the significance of a scientist and the lasting quality of his work by what he leaves behind. A Newton is the unit for force, a Joule is the unit of energy, a Tesla is a unit of magnetic flux density. A Mann is a unit of statistical fraud, as in "It will take three point five Manns to hide this decline!"
Uh-huh. I'm going to go waaaay out on a limb here and conclude that judging "what a scientist leaves behind" by how often (or whether or not) one uses a unit of measurement named after the scientist is a pretty silly, ridiculous, naive thing to say.
Not to mention that 1F capacitors are actually fairly common. Sure, the scale is a bit wonky, but supercaps do exist and have practical applications. The scale is due to the math.