The Standard Deviants - Space & Science 2-Pack (Astronomy 1, Physics 1)

• Color

The Standard Deviants - Astronomy, Part 1
Aimed at college students or accomplished high school students, this award-winning series uses humor, whimsical graphics, and a lot of quick cuts to make academics accessible--even fun. And that's tough when you're talking about an hour and 39 minutes of astronomy-theory history (from the ancient Greeks through Newton), the law of gravity, properties of light, how telescopes work, makeup and rotations of the Earth and Moon, and more laws than you can shake a stick at. The Standard Deviants staff of professors, a comedy-writing team, and 13 actors manage to find the right balance of goofiness (a doofus mechanic tries to explain nanometers) and hard-core information (explanations of parallax, retrograde, the Doppler effect--need we say more?). So if a Calvin Klein ad parody is your idea of a good way to teach the Kelvin scale, this program is for you. A study card with outline and formulas is included. --Kimberly Heinrichs

The Standard Deviants - Physics, Part 1
Only the most intense science geeks have ever considered physics entertaining, but the Standard Deviants, undaunted as ever, do their best to make serious science fun to watch, and therefore memorable, in this two-hour presentation. Utilizing flashy graphics that make the perennial example of Newton being struck with an apple appear positively quaint, the troupe of exuberant young performers starts off by quickly providing the obligatory "what is physics" intro, and then moves into a fast tutorial on scientific notation. With the basics out of the way, it's time for segments illustrating scalars and vectors, which, in the format followed throughout the DVD, are followed by a review section and a quiz, which the student can either take or skip. More advanced concepts, including one-dimensional kinematics, two-dimensional kinematics, Newton's Laws of Motion, and friction all follow. Physics may not lend itself to the kind of madcap delivery the Standard Deviants have brought to other subjects, but the graphics employed are often brilliant, and the individual lessons are concise and easy to understand. The material has all been approved by an academic panel, and while this presentation is not intended to be a substitute for a course in physics, as a review guide this stands as a solid treatment of a serious subject, made as entertaining as possible. --Robert J. McNamara