Video, Science, and You (page 2)

Preserving the Temporary

The most widespread use of video in science is for simple documentation: the recording of otherwise transitory events. Theoretically, you could describe verbally every move a rat makes in the process of learning to trip a lever to obtain a treat, but why not just train a camcorder on its maze and painlessly preserve the whole process?

This, of course, is what you use your camcorder for already: recording birthdays and holidays and school wingdings and such for a posterity presumably interested in these fascinating events. So the point here is not to tell you how to document things with your camcorder, but how to expand your awareness of things to document.

For instance, do you often get your Harley chopper back together with three anonymous parts left over? If you prop a camcorder on a tripod where it can record the process of dismantling your hawg, you'll be able to see where everything came from and therefore, where to put everything back.

In my own case, I realized in the nick of time that the complex plumbing and electrical lines to and from our newly built swimming pool were about to be covered forever with poured concrete decking. Hastily I recorded the positions of all these components before they were entombed. Some years later, when a baby possum committed hari kiri in a water line (don't even ask) we reviewed the tape in order to bust a minimum of concrete in reaching the site of its regrettable d…