Comment Re:MacGyver (Score 2, Interesting) 434
I agree with that the science is a bit off in those shows, however, this made me think of a particular episode I saw recently. To skip the storyline it was basically this:
McGuyver goes to visit a school where his old science professor teaches. The son to the science professor is also in the school and is trying his damned hardest to live up to his dad's standards, but fails as his father (the teacher) is not being a good father and is never satisfied with an A when there's an A+. In any case, all the science students have a final project, it's building a barrier/blockade to prevent others from entering a door. So there's a hallway, 6 doors, 6 different methods of locks. Some doors have a peep hole to see inside the room. The task is to break the door scientifically and enter the room.
Example locks from the show:
1. It's time based, door won't open until clock reaches X hour
2. It's 10 locks, some when turned left are locked, some when turned right are locked, you don't know which, endless combinations to get in.
3. Two glasses are on a scale inside the room balancing each other out. Tipping one glass over will unlock the door.
4. Looking through the peep hole you see a huge metal plate on a pole blocking the door, the pole is hooked up to a garage opener.
The kid of the teacher in the show had door 4, and the short story is that the "really smart kid in class but that hates the other guy cheats and listens on how to open the door".
To break the doors they did this:
1. Hooked up some electrical thing to the door that made the clock run faster. Voila, door opened in minutes instead of hours.
2. On the side of the locks along the door frame, the guy put magnet and poured metal dust between the magnet and the door. On the locks that were closed, the dust would stick. Thus he know which way to unlock it.
3. Used a high frequency modulator to shatter a glass inside the room.
4. (This one isn't exactly science, but it's interesting.) When the viewer looked through the hole, he actually saw an exact miniature replica of the room, but the big blocking thing was in the opposite open location. So when the evil kid managed to replicate the frequency for the garage door opener, the room in fact locked, but the miniature opened it's mini-version. The door had been open the whole time.
So, McGuyver isn't all bad all the time. What I'm getting is this:
I've bought many books on many subjects intending to learn from them. I get bored, super fast, and the book was a waste. I watch someone do something scientific that has a logical explanation, I immediately start to think of "wow, what kind of door could I build?", "hmm, I wonder how that problem could be solved (such as, opening one of the doors before I saw the solution), etc. Learning by doing is very strong, it's proven over and over again that if people get as much hands-on as possible with a subject (combined with other stuff of course), they learn and question things at the same time.
I think anyone would find that episode interesting. Remember, everyone loves booby traps! How can you make science a booby trap? You probably could in many different ways. One of my favorite teacher was my science teacher. He would always get electrical shocks (serious ones) from various things he was displaying. For some reason, the fact that he was just crazy about science made me love going to those classes, because I never knew what was going to happen, and if something went really wrong while he was doing it, he's ask us "Ok, what just happened there, and why?". It made us think, and I know for a fact that we all learned tons.
Hope that helps and that this isn't modded into oblivion :)
McGuyver goes to visit a school where his old science professor teaches. The son to the science professor is also in the school and is trying his damned hardest to live up to his dad's standards, but fails as his father (the teacher) is not being a good father and is never satisfied with an A when there's an A+. In any case, all the science students have a final project, it's building a barrier/blockade to prevent others from entering a door. So there's a hallway, 6 doors, 6 different methods of locks. Some doors have a peep hole to see inside the room. The task is to break the door scientifically and enter the room.
Example locks from the show:
1. It's time based, door won't open until clock reaches X hour
2. It's 10 locks, some when turned left are locked, some when turned right are locked, you don't know which, endless combinations to get in.
3. Two glasses are on a scale inside the room balancing each other out. Tipping one glass over will unlock the door.
4. Looking through the peep hole you see a huge metal plate on a pole blocking the door, the pole is hooked up to a garage opener.
The kid of the teacher in the show had door 4, and the short story is that the "really smart kid in class but that hates the other guy cheats and listens on how to open the door".
To break the doors they did this:
1. Hooked up some electrical thing to the door that made the clock run faster. Voila, door opened in minutes instead of hours.
2. On the side of the locks along the door frame, the guy put magnet and poured metal dust between the magnet and the door. On the locks that were closed, the dust would stick. Thus he know which way to unlock it.
3. Used a high frequency modulator to shatter a glass inside the room.
4. (This one isn't exactly science, but it's interesting.) When the viewer looked through the hole, he actually saw an exact miniature replica of the room, but the big blocking thing was in the opposite open location. So when the evil kid managed to replicate the frequency for the garage door opener, the room in fact locked, but the miniature opened it's mini-version. The door had been open the whole time.
So, McGuyver isn't all bad all the time. What I'm getting is this:
I've bought many books on many subjects intending to learn from them. I get bored, super fast, and the book was a waste. I watch someone do something scientific that has a logical explanation, I immediately start to think of "wow, what kind of door could I build?", "hmm, I wonder how that problem could be solved (such as, opening one of the doors before I saw the solution), etc. Learning by doing is very strong, it's proven over and over again that if people get as much hands-on as possible with a subject (combined with other stuff of course), they learn and question things at the same time.
I think anyone would find that episode interesting. Remember, everyone loves booby traps! How can you make science a booby trap? You probably could in many different ways. One of my favorite teacher was my science teacher. He would always get electrical shocks (serious ones) from various things he was displaying. For some reason, the fact that he was just crazy about science made me love going to those classes, because I never knew what was going to happen, and if something went really wrong while he was doing it, he's ask us "Ok, what just happened there, and why?". It made us think, and I know for a fact that we all learned tons.
Hope that helps and that this isn't modded into oblivion
