The teacher

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George Schwartz, a science teacher at Forest Hills High School in Long Island, NY, discusses the teacher shortage and the complexity of the profession. Teaching is more than just being well informed because it involves personal relationships. Mr. Schwartz shows how a teacher must be a showman to demonstrate scientific principles in ways students won't anticipate, such as pulling paper from beneath a full beaker of water to prove the rule of inertia. To prove that a teacher's influence affects eternity, Lynn Poole interviews four of Mr. Schwartz's former students: Dr. Richard Lewontin, an assistant professor of genetics at North Carolina State College; a high school senior and budding herpetologist; a third year medical student at Harvard Medical School; and a freshman majoring in biology at Queens College. All praise their former teacher and explain how he had influenced them. Mr. Schwartz lists the requirements of a good teacher: subject knowledge, love of young people, boundless energy, and self-criticism.

Life in your own yard

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Due to studio difficulties, there is no sound track on this program for the first few minutes. Dr. Schwartz displays some of the creatures brought from Cook's Pond near Blairstown, NJ: a painted turtle, a bullfrog, a tree frog, and an aquarium of pond water with a variety of fish, insects, plants, and tadpoles, all part of the web of life. He then describes smaller pond organisms (hydra, damsel fly nymph, and planaria) that he shows viewers under a television microscope he developed.

Life in a drop of water

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Lynn Poole explains that "microscope" is from the two Greek words "mikros," small, and "skopos," a watcher. He notes that Dutch Antony Van Leeuwenhoek and English Robert Hooke were both instrumental in the development of the instrument and that Charles A. Spencer was America's first microscope maker. Dr. Schwartz, using the RCA Vidicon (a microscope connected to a television monitor), shows slides of water specimens from ponds in New York and New Jersey. The organisms he identifies include one-celled blepharisma and stentor, which he compares to the multi-celled rotifer, the plant spirogyra, diatoms, and the beating heart of a daphnia or water flea. Dr. Schwartz also shows a replica of Van Leeuwenhoek's microscope and his drawings of bacteria, and he demonstrates how to make a slide for viewing.

Life in a drop of water

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Biologist George Schwartz explains how the microprojector microscope, which he developed, displays the microcosm in a drop of water on a television monitor. He shows slides of the shells of diatoms, the basic food source in fresh and salt water; amoeba, which move by protoplasmic flow; blepharisma, a one-celled organism; rotifers, multi-celled organisms; and euglena, used in anemia research because of their sensitivity to vitamin B-12. Mr. Schwartz discusses producers (such as diatoms), consumers (animals), and reducers (bacteria, fungi, mold) and shows a diagram of a food pyramid of the producers and consumers in Antarctic waters. A film of a microdissection apparatus introduces new ways to research microscopic life.