The Search for Solutions

Season 1

1980

9 Episodes

A nine part television series, produced by J.C. Crimmins for PBS. Music composed, arranged and performed by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. The stated purpose of “The Search for Solutions” is to stimulate interest in science and technology, primarily among the young. The film comprises nine 18-minute sections touching on various aspects of scientific inquiry that its makers say can be shown as a whole, as it is in this engagement, or in any combination of its parts.

Episode 1 : ‎ Evidence

An astronomer discusses his method of collecting photographic evidence; a giant hole in Arizona was learned to be the imprint of a meteorite; a re-enactment of a recorded sighting by English monks; a phone company employee uses his highly-trained ear to listen for subtle signs of disturbance on the phone lines; an epidemiologist was able to deduce why the women and children of a tribe in New Guine...

Episode 2 : ‎ Patterns

An interview with Dr. Geerat Vermeij, a blind University of Maryland malacologist who collects mollusks and examines their shell patterns to determine vulnerability to predators; a look at the shorthand pattern of words, symbols, and gestures used by merchants in the Tokyo fish market; a discussion of Thomas Jefferson's coded correspondence with John Adams; New York Yankees third base coach Dick H...

Episode 3 : ‎ Investigation

How a television camera was used to investigate life below the South Pole ice shelf; the use of a one-million-volt electron microscope in the study of human cells; a look at scientists in Africa who investigate the population patterns of elephants in an effort to end the practice of killing these animals when national parks become overrun with the gargantuan, trunked creatures; an interview with D...

Episode 4 : ‎ Trial and Error

An interview with David Gordon Wilson of M.I.T. who talks of trial and error as a focused learning process; an interview with Paul MacCready, designer of a flying bicycle called the "Gossamer Condor," relates the process by which the final structure of the Condor was determined; Vincent J. Schaefer recounts his accidental discovery, in 1946, of a way to eliminate the supercooling of clouds which c...

Episode 5 : ‎ Context

An interview with a scientist who studies the songs of the humpback whale; an interview with an archaeologist who collected and painstakingly documented tiny button-like ancient clay objects -- regarded with disinterest by other scientists, who assumed they were toys or gambling pieces -- which ultimately revealed the origins of writing fifty centuries earlier than previously assumed; the work of ...

Episode 6 : ‎ Adaptation

A scientist brings solar energy equipment to address the needs of a small Egyptian village; an ingenious solution to the possible loss of blades during a storm from a giant windmill in Denmark; German architect Frei Otto discusses his designs of lightweight buildings; Arthur Riggs and Keiichi Itakura discuss gene alteration; firefighter Captain Fred Bruno discusses a chemical additive which allows...

Episode 7 : ‎ Modeling

Sculptor Henry Moore discusses the small-scale working models he creates for his massive bronze sculptures; a designer works with an underwater model of a house with movable windows; an engineer uses a plastic model filled with liquid to study arterial flow of blood in an effort to understand the causes of arterial sclerosis; a football field size model of the islands of Japan and the Inland Sea u...

Episode 8 : ‎ Theory

A scientist whose intuitive theory about ancient Native American monuments in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming turned out to be true; a discussion of a the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics; the work of French physicist Jean Baptiste Biot, who confirmed that meteorites showered a small French town in 1803; the work of an archaeologist in York, England, who has found evidence of a ...

Episode 9 : ‎ Prediction

Some predictions of sixteenth-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe were found to be incredibly accurate; a scientist studies the San Andreas Fault using a laser tracking system and discusses the cause of earthquakes; a "shake table" in Japan that tests construction techniques; a scientist predicts the consequences of earthquakes; the climate of the earth is affected by solar activity; restoration...

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