A nice animation showing the inner workings of a cell. There is a narrated version.
Category: video
John Snow: How to be a Scientist
These three excellent, short videos on John Snow’s life and work on cholera do a nice job of describing what makes for good science–careful observation; good notes; creative analysis of data, etc. They should make a good “spark your imagination” introduction to biological science.
They also have an excellent explanation of all the ‘lies’ and liberties they took in the making of the video.
DIY Plastic Recycling Workshop
Thanks to Natasha for sending me this link. Precious plastic shares the technology to build your own modular plastics recycling workshop.
Our Microbial Symbionts
Sometimes I ask my students if we’re not just giant mechs for our microbial symbionts. After all, they outnumber us by about 10 to 1–in our own bodies. Rob Knight’s TED talk stokes my curiosity.
Finnish Education
A documentary on the educational system in Finland which is ranked as one of the best in the world. They have little homework, no standardized testing, and are rather Montessori-like.
Life as a Single Parent in the U.S.
The trailer for a documentary about what it’s like to live as a single parent, working on a single close-to-minimum wage paycheck, in the United States.
Natural Selection by Alfred Russel Wallace
Everyone knows about Charles Darwin, but hardly anyone remembers Alfred Russel Wallace, who came up with the idea of natural selection at the same time as Darwin. Darwin’s publication of the On the Origin of Species was spurred on by Wallace. Flora Lichtman and Sharon Shattuck shed a little light on Wallace with this video:
Indeed, from the introduction of On the Origin of Species:
I have more especially been induced to [publish], as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of the Malay archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to me a memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is published in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work—the latter having read my sketch of 1844—honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with Mr. Wallace’s excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts.
— Darwin, 1859. On the Origin of Species.
White Blood Cell Hunts Down a Bacterium
One of my biology groups is doing a presentation on the immune system in the next few days. They decided that they needed to wander around the school asking any teacher they could find for interesting games they could use for a presentation. Mr. Schmitt, our new math teacher, recommended the neat video above of a white blood cell hunting down a bacterium. It’s pretty dramatic.