WaveLengths: Portraits of a Scientist, the eighth episode of the WaveLengths science series from Arizona Public Media, dispels many of the common stereotypes that television and Hollywood have about scientists: as men in white coats working alone in dreary labs, as mad scientists off the deep end, or simply as archetypal evil geniuses.
Segments from "WaveLengths: Portraits of a Scientist" include:
Cancer research by day, self defense at night: Meet Tracy Brooks, a research scientist who by day focuses on developing new, safer therapies for lymphoma, colon, pancreatic and breast cancers… and by night teaches a course in real-life self defense. Tracy is also wife to a police officer, mother to a three-year-old son, and was one of Tucson's 40 Leaders under the Age of 40 for 2009.
One by one: Ever since Anna Dornhaus was a little girl, she knew she wanted to be a scientist. Today she's a renowned researcher best known for uncovering the individuality of social insects and the sophisticated communication happening between individuals. Dornhaus discovered new individual behaviors in ants and bees by developing a unique way of identifying distinct personalities within large colonies.
BioME: What sparks a lifelong passion for science? An innovative program called Biodiversity from Molecules to Ecosystems, or BioME, funded by the National Science Foundation, brings the experience and research of graduate students into grade school classrooms to inspire kids for pursuing careers in science. For students who have never personally met a scientist, these first impressions can last lifetimes.
Largest collaborative experiment ever: It’s the largest man made experiment ever created, a collaboration of over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries and 15 years of construction. The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest particle smasher, developed and built by thousands of engineers and scientists coming together to work on location in Switzerland to answer some of the fundamental questions about the origin of our universe.
Cracking Einstein's code: Albert Einstein was the most famous scientist of the 19th century. His general theory of relativity describing the effect of gravity on space and time was an enigma for scientists for decades. The mathematical code was one of the most difficult to break in all of science, until a young scientist solved the mystery.
WaveLengths: Portraits of a Scientist premieres Sunday night, April 25 at 6:30 p.m. with an encore airing on Friday, April 30 at 11:30 p.m.
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