Customer Reviews

NOVA: Mystery of the Megavolcano

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been buying Nova documentaries so my 7-year old son can get some science in his head in addition to the complete list of Transformers and the details of their fates.

This DVD does that job admirably; he watched it quite closely, and after we watched it, it was clear that he understood the material and was enthused about it. He wasn't so enthused about living in a state adjacent to Yellowstone NP, but you can't have everything!

For adults, the material is still compelling, since you'll pick up more than a few interesting details of volcanic geology, how they match volcanic ash to a volano, and lest I forget, that Yellowstone's only 40k years overdue for the most destructive eruption ever.

For adults there's still a few "hmm" moments. For instance, matching ash from remote deposits back to the original "super volcano" plays a major role in the investigation portrayed by the documentary.

However, while there are several excellent scenes when not-matching samples are displayed against each other, when the matching samples are displayed, it's just two photos of the same sample. Ooh, boo, since I was really interested in seeing how an ash sample from many hundreds of miles away matches what they found in the crater. Would it be a match that's obvious to the uninitiated, or is it more like a fingerprint, where you have to know what to look for?

But that's a nit relative to the overall production, which is more than well enough done and met my goals perfectly.

As usual every movie that NOVA produces is excellent. I enjoyed watching this DVD. It really explained the underlying geology of Mega and Super Volcanoes. I think this is fun and pretty exciting. These enormous volcanoes are found all over our Earth. One nearly wiped out the human race 75,000 years ago.

Buy this and get your children to watch this DVD. I hope they would learn some exciting facts and develop a respect of our planet Earth. Geology is no longer boring!

Sara Howard, Author of "Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Moon" and "The Biggest Explosions in the Universe."

This is a great DVD on one of the largest volcanos to erupt 70,000 years ago. This has great detail, scientist interviews, and a great story. I've seen this before several times on TV and had to get it as soon as the price was right. This was written and produced by British David Sington who has done some fantastic films (Magnetic Storm, In the Shadow of the Moon, Dimming the Sun, Death Star, etc. - I have all of them). He really does excellent work - highly sophisticated, educational, entertaining, good music, just everything). I've seen this over and over again and I never get tired of it - there's always something I didn't catch before. This is loaded with information - can't keep my eyes off it.

First, my rating for this documentary is great. I gave it 4 stars. Second, why shy a star from a 5 star rating?: Amazon.com dated this documentary circa 1974. This is impossible. The graphics alone bespeaks of 2000's. And there's the scientific information on volcanos, especially megavolcanos, that weren't made available to the general public back in the 70s. I believe a correction is require on this dating oversight.

this film is a must for everyone to see as it showes you how insucure we are our lives can be changed in such a short time