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In the early eighties there was a TV show on German network television and I remember them presenting this puzzle, and I figured out the "cheat solution" as a k
by drcode 12y ago
In the early eighties there was a TV show on German network television and I remember them presenting this puzzle, and I figured out the "cheat solution" as a kid.
It was this awesome TV game show that consisted entirely of Martin Gardner-style puzzles and other fiendish physics/biology puzzles, and contestants who were all scientists. Does anyone by any chance remember the name of this German TV show? I would really like to look up more information about it! It deserves to be remembered.
- Someone 12y agoLikely Kopfball (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopfball_(Show) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopfball_(Show)), although that is late eighties (and the precursor late seventies)
- drcode 12y agoI found it through some extra searching starting from your link- "Kopf um Kopf" ... Is that the precursor you were thinking of? Here is a video on youtube that shows the awesomeness of this show (don't need to know German to appreciate it- On the start of the show, putting your finger under the device makes it spin in the opposite direction... why? The audience member with the right answer would get a reward.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ObdE9n3UF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ObdE9n3UF4 Take a quick peek at a few other random spots of the show in the video and marvel at the awesome scientific experiments on live TV: I think that was one of the most bad ass shows ever, especially since it didn't have that pejorative "science shows are only for kids" thing happening.
- Someone 12y agoI'm not sure. Wikipedia claims that he precursor also was called Kopfball, and has some overlap in the times when the series ran. I just googled the "kopf" that I remembered in combination with "wissenschaft" (science) and "fernsehen" (television), and that popped up, and I thought "that must be it". I should have been more cautious, though. German TV at the time had quite a few interesting programs about science (in a broad sense) I remember programs where they taught differentiation and integration, live chess (or at least, it seemed like that; if a player takes ten minutes to think about a move, the commenters would explain what the players might be thinking about) by such players as Karpov, Timman, and Anand (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_of_the_Grandmasters http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_of_the_Grandmasters), Hobbythek (http://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbythek http://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbythek) about DIY, (with subjects such as "we build a hot air balloon", "book binding", and "stereo photography"), and that program about personal computing whose name I don't remember.
- drcode 12y agoYeah, Hobbythek was awesome, too... I remember at maybe 8 years old trying to rebind one of my own broken books after probably seeing that exact episode you mention... It's really easy to get into this mode where you think "If it's not new and American it's crap" because the US in recent years has been so prodigious in creating such a large range of media of many different types, and because the US is not shy in "Americanizing" things from other countries and improving on them. However, there are definitely corners of brilliance lying in the past and in other countries that have been forgotten, and will be rediscovered in future years.
- nitrogen 12y agoThe deformed gelatin on the polarizer about half way in was pretty cool.