Old school science films -and a wistful reverie

The Mystery of Cosmic Rays ( 1957 school film )

I recall seeing a number of these wonderful science films in elementary school in the late 1950s - the post war golden age in America.

 1957 was the anxious year of the Russian sputnik - a tremendous stimulus for bright curious kids to study science.

 Ironically my high school biology class was viewing a film on the circulation of the blood when the teacher broke in to announce that President Kennedy had been shot in Texas.

 The decay of optimism in the mid-60s . But still extraordinary progress in science and technology .

 I recall reading about theoretical physicist Murray Gellmann bringing order into the mystery of so many newly discovered particles : quarks with fractional electric charges.

 Then the Cosmic Background Radiation announcing the birth of the universe.

 Then the horror of the Vietnam War and the cover of Time Magazine in 1968 : " Is God Dead ? " 

Soon Albert Camus and The Absurd became more relevant to me than Albert Einstein and relativity ( with the exception of his essay " Why Socialism ? ".)

 How many kids today are starry eyed about THEIR future and excited about SCIENCE ? Has there been a decline in science literacy ?

 Curious I took the Christian Science Monitor on line test a few years ago. I did quite well - thanks to those Sputnik years.

 I miss those great science writers Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan. Let me mention one of Asimov's essays : " The Armies of the Night " - on the growing darkness in American science education.

" The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays " -with Richard Carlson and Dr. Frank Baxter