A Magnet Laboratory (1959)
1959 · Short film · 21 min · dir. Richard Leacock
Synopsis
In the hands of another director, the inner-workings of a magnet laboratory could have caused a whole classroom to fall asleep of boredom. No so when Leacock was hired to produce this twenty-minute version of lab mayhem. Try this: six researchers in a lab at MIT in the late 1950's show-off the power of electro-magnets, and in the process, accidentally set an experiment on fire. Or this: half way through the film the phone rings off screen, and host Francis Bitter says "tell 'em I'll call 'em…
Synopsis from TMDb
Details
- Director
- Richard Leacock
- Released
- 1959-07-18
- Running time
- 21 minutes
Cast & crew
Richard Leacock Director
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★★ · Physics at its best! · markpolkc · 2009-12-15
I remember watching this movie in my first year at Milwaukee School of Engineering. It always stuck with me. I've always hoped that it would be posted on the Internet. Real-world physics doesn't get any better than this! This movie is a classic!
★★★★★ · What we need is more PSSC films · amyv · 2010-08-23
Thanks for saving these 2 films. If it's at all possible, please find and post more. I stopped teaching in 1990 to be at home with kids and when I came back to school, the reel-to-reel versions of PSSC must-haves had disappeared -- they'd been chopped up piecemeal by ztek in their Cinema Classics. I've been scrounging around for the entire films for years. Thanks for giving me this one which I did not have. Please do all physics teachers (and students) a good service and post any more you can get your hands on!!
★★★★ · Fun and Educational · NickRusnov · 2009-04-03
This is an fun and very educational short made by some physicists with a huge generator and a penchant for melting copper wires. They are obviously having fun with the subject matter, and explain a lot of interesting things about magnetic fields and induction. It's quite educational and amusing, and a great look at university laboratory culture in the '50s.
