Customer Reviews

Rough Science: Gold Rush/Space Race

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

 

 

This is the reworked version made for the US. If you want to find the original ones, check out The Open University website in the UK.

this is a ramble:

I loved this series. These 2 seasons are not as good as the first(season's episodes) but those cost a fortune and I have only found them sold in 1 place.

If I had seen this series as a kid I would definitely have majored in engineering.

Remember Gilligan's Island where the professor could make anything (but a boat)? Well, these guys(men & women) can really do that.

why not 5 stars?:

1- there are lots of cheats where they have or find really needed stuff as opposed to really starting with only common items.

2- They do some really cool stuff - but if it takes more than 1 sentence to explain they don't tell or teach you how. The show will motivate you to want to study engineering (or chemistry, biology, geology) but it will not teach you much. I really wish they had shown how jonathan hare makes his stuff (that would be my dream series).

Even with the lack of details the whole cast is incredibly likeable and the show is fun to watch.

I highly recommend checking it out -especially if you are under 20.

I saw these two series on Netflix and now I am trying to find the other four. The challenges are difficult and the enthusiasm, ingenuity, and sheer brain power abound--the Rough Scientists remind you of why science can be both practical and fun.

I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Rough Science is fun to watch. Scientists are given tasks (like in the first episode: get gold out of the river in 3 days and build an accurate and precise scale). The scientists have to use their knowledge and meager available tools to complete the tasks.

It's educational and fun to watch them perform their tasks.

However, each task seems to have a variable amount of cheating involved that just doesn't make sense with the spirit of the show. For instance, they are limited to using sheep wool to make a lotion base, but they scent it with tea tree oil found by taking a helicopter to a neighboring forest.

I suppose I wanted to see them rough it a little more than rough science does. I wanted to see scientists put into a "desert island"-like situation and thrive. But instead, it's just showing how modern scientists with mostly modern equipment can reinvent the wheel with it. It's more akin to watching Apollo 13 than Cast Away.

All of that negative said, it's still fun to watch them reinvent those wheels.

A team of scientists are given a series of challenges that they must meet using a limited array of materials and their own ingenuity. The episodes are short, so they zip along rather quickly, too much so in some cases, and I suspect there was a bit of behind-the-camera fudging as well, but the result is an entertaining show that makes science exciting.