Now showing
Science and Quantity (1957)
About this film
A narrow glass tube, filled with hydrogen, connected to a powerful source of electricity, projects a piercingly bright light. Analyze this light precisely by means of special apparatus. Do the same for light from a distant gala, light which may have been traveling earthward for a billion years. The light is the same, as Gerald Holton shows. The materials emitting the light are the same. The stars and the earth have the same elements in common. Precise numerical analysis has led to this result. In the writings of the Greeks and of other philosophers before the rise of modern science, the unity of the universe could only be postulated. Now it can be found to exist, by experiment, by measurement, as it were. Holton, in this program, surveys the vast importance of figures, numbers, in the progress of science. To make his point clear, he enlists the help of a small boy with a football as well as the more routine scientific assistance of oscilloscopes, spectroscopes and a cyclotron control panel.
Directors & creators
WGBH Educational Foundation
Subjects
public broadcasting, AAPB, Science, Mathematics, History of Science, Measurement, Numerical Data, Alchemy, Chemistry, Physics, Botany, Anthropology, Scientific Method, Allegory, Chemical Elements, Solar System, Wavelength, Scholasticism, Gold Purification, Symbols, Natural Philosophy, 1950s Science, Scientific Education, Philosophy of Science, Quantitative Analysis
More from this pool