Neil deGrasse Tyson on Teaching Science

From the creator

New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink Join Big Think Edge for exclusive video lessons from top thinkers and doers: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pop culture is a great way to frame new information. And a teacher like Neil can make a huge difference. Why spend hours explaining something in great detail when you can simply use what they already know? Pop culture is a great scaffold to build and hang information off of argues Neil deGrasse Tyson. For example: you need to understand basic laws of gravity in order to play Angry Birds, so why spend hours explaining Newton's Law when you can just fling a red bird at a pig? In this video, Neil uses a great anecdote about watching a football game and realizing that physics and science play a huge part in it whether the audience knows it or not. To prove his point, he does the math about the physics of the stadium, combined with certain factors like the angle of the rotation of the earth... to prove just how lucky a particular game-winning field goal was. On the other hand, Neil also explains that science-folk sometimes have a hard time understanding the relevance of pop culture. The two need each other, he argues, to make both fields more accessible to the other side. So, could Beyoncé factor into a discussion about string theory? Perhaps one day. But only if Neil does the talking. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Published 2011-08-02 · Watch on YouTube ↗
Availability and playback restrictions are controlled by the original channel.