Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

CHEM Study Films . . . Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Seaborg, is filmed in the target area of an atom smasher at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. J. Arthur Campbell, Chairman of the Chemistry Department at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California. The Executive Director is Dr. Richard J. Merrill. The Principal Investigator and Editor of the text is George C. Pimentel, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Lloyd E. Malm of the University of Utah edits the Laboratory Manual, and the films are being produced under the supervision of David W. Ridgway, who is on leave from Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. A unique opportunity was available in the production of the films. The audience— high school students of chemistry— was clearly defined. One could assume that the students would be familiar with certain specific concepts and vocabulary. Because the films were to be an integral part of the course one could consciously say, "Well do on film those things that film can do best— and leave to the teacher, the text, and the laboratory the things the teacher, the text, and the lab can do best." The films can concentrate, therefore, on doing the things the teacher would find difficult or imp)ossible to do. The opportimity was available to have, not only high school teachers, but also scientists and professors intimately involved in the film making process. A typical example of this occurred in the fall of 1962, when CHEM Study took advantage of a "one-week vacation" when Dr. Glenn Seaborg was to be in Berkeley to make a film on the transuranium elements. Three individuals who were among the principals in the discovery of most of the transuranium elements are included in the cast. In the film Dr. Seaborg introduces Dr. Burris Cunningham of the "Rad Lab" as: "the first man in the world ever to see plutonium." Dr. Stanley G. Thompson and Mr. Albert Ghiorso, Rad Lab scientists, ciirrently at work on research which may isolate additional new elements are shown in the film doing experiments directly related to the discovery of new elements. Dr. Seaborg was photographed in the control room of the cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and is shown in the target area of a giant atomsmasher. Only moments before Dr. Seaborg and the camera crew entered the target area, bombardment experiments with radioactive elements had been in progress. All experimentation done in the film involves radioactive elements, some valued at tens of thousands of dollars per gram. Tliis film, then, will provide an opportunity for high school students to meet personalities they othenvise could never see, and to observe experiments impossible to perform in any classroom. There has been opportimity to use experimental techniques in the films. An example: in one film, GASES AND HOW THEY COMBINE, the teacher is asked to stop the projector after a problem has been presented in the film. The students are given an opportunity, while the projector is stopped, to discuss and to propose answers to the question. The projector is then started and the scientist who has posed the question presents a solution. This has proved to be a good teaching device. Both teacher and students participate directly. Animation is used only as a last resort. As it turns out, however, a majority of the films do have animation in them. An anomaly? No. It is felt that animation should be used only for those abstractions which are so difficult to portray that they cannot be presented effectively any otlier way, and there are many such situations. The staff always seeks first for good experiments, good physical analogs, to get the ideas over. The final criterion must be, "Does the film teach?'' If animation is the best method of getting the idea across, animation is used. The CHEM Study staff members go into the classroom and observe students at work. Reactions to the films have been obtained, both directly from students and teachers, and indirectly through questionnaires completed by participating teachers. Reactions are 716 Educational Screen and Audiovisual Guide — December. 1962