Television Science

I'm weak willed and couldnt wait for season 2 of Heroes to appear on UK TV, so (Becky look away now) I downloaded the season Premiere from the US.

What I wanted to comment on was this scene (No spoilers for those watching at UK pace) which is set in a school Science lab during a lesson.

Here's the crowd shot:

Lots of beakers and conical flasks, on bunsen burners. Looks very sciency yes?

Then we cut to the Teacher at the front of the class. Note the lesson context.

It's a lesson on Evolution (which is kinda the theme running through Heroes). But there is very little practical work you can do in a school laboratory for evolution. Why the hell are there bunsen burners and conical flasks of odd coloured liquids being heated?

Maybe they're trying to recreate the primordial soup in a conical flask. They may be there a while if they are...

Purely from a health and safety point of view you wouldn't deliver the theory part of a lesson with the bunsens still going. You'd have all the students standing up as well in case anything was knocked over. And why is that girl not got her hair tied back? This teacher would be slated if Ofsted ever came in to observe.

What this shows is what happens when people from the media try and "do" science. They have this idea that science is always men in lab coats with lots of glassware and liquids bubbling and boiling in the background.

I once had a film crew come into my school to make a show for channel 4. They wanted to interview our teachers about some of initiatives we were doing in Science and I was the lucky person picked to chaperone them around the school and be their point of contact. They were going to use my lab to hold the interviews. But first they decided my lab wasn't Sciency enough... Could I set up some glassware with liquids in, just to have in the background. So out came the burettes, the conical flasks, the copper sulphate solution. If I had had dry ice and ethanol they'd have wanted be to do that too... .

Take the current Direct Line commercial with the Science teacher pouring what appears to be some liquid nitrogen into a flask inside a fume cupboard while the class looks on. It looks sciency, but bears no relation to an actual science practical. Obviously dreamed up by some advertising exec after a long liquid lunch.

Stop it. It's just silly.....