The Search for Solutions

tv show

poster for The Search for Solutions

9 total episodes

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1 seasons

First Aired June 10, 1980

Overview

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.

tv poster

Patterns

Season 1 - Episode 2 - 0h 0m

Air Date

June 10, 1980

Overview

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 Howser explains baseball hand signs; an examination of how a meteorologist decodes weather information from tropical cloud formations in order to predict weather; the complex word symbols of the Japanese language; how heat-sensitive photography allows the turbulent patterns of gases and fluids to be analyzed; a look at Spain's Alhambra Palace; an interview with Bernhardt Weunsch of M.I.T., who discusses man's fascination with crystals; and how the Greek translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone allowed linguists to decipher the lost Egyptian language.