Nova: Earthquake [VHS]
![Nova: Earthquake [VHS]](/images/Nova-Earthquake-VHS-6302431913-L.jpg)
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Product details
Actor: NovaEdition: VHS Tape
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Release Date: 1992-07-15
Audience Rating: Unrated
Publisher: Vestron Video
Studio: Vestron Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Nova: Earthquake [VHS]
Movie Review: Incredibly informative but maybe too high-level for some?
Summary: 2 Stars
I purchased this video to show my 6th grade science class and it started off well enough with actual video footage from the CA 1989 earthquake and really got their attention. However, it quickly delved quite deeply into scientific facts, geologic history, terms, etc... While the information was great for me and I learned a lot myself, it was definitely on a much higher scale than my class. I would recommend it for upper-grade levels or advanced middle school science, but not anything lower than that.Movie Review: Still Their Best Seismology Episode
Summary: 5 Stars
While NOVA has examined the science of earthquakes (seismology) in two more recent programs since this one was first broadcast in 1990 ("Killer Quake!" in 1994 and "The Day the Earth Shook" in 1996), this one in my opinion remains their best.
Beautifully narrated by actor Avery Brooks, it introduces the topic by showing dramatic and frightening video images captured purely by chance during the Loma Prieta (San Francisco Bay Area) event of October 17, 1989. The program then goes into the long history of science's attempt to understand (and predict) earthquakes: the discovery of P and S waves, the invention of the seismograph, Richter's magnitude scale, and eventually the development of the theory of plate tectonics (considered one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th Century). The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is revisited through the memory of tenor Enrico Caruso (who actually lived through it) and rarely-seen footage shot during the magnitude 9 Alaska quake of 1964 is also shown. A successful prediction of a large earthquake in China in 1975 is contrasted with one the Chinese failed to predict just a year and a half later. Paleoseismology (the relatively new study of ancient earthquakes through the examination of subsurface rock layers) is also discussed. Towards the end of the program, the story of how two different Japanese seismologists at the beginning of the 20th Century disagreed about the possibility of a great earthquake occurring in Tokyo within the first several years of that century is told. The younger one turned out to be right, but the case still illustrates the frustration scientists encounter in their attempts to come up with a foolproof method for at least forecasting (if not outright predicting) earthquakes. The program ends by revisiting the Bay area in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta event, recounting the severe damage that was done and warning that this was hardly the worst that an earthquake could do!
Hopefully this program will someday be put on DVD with chapter stops given the multitude of topics covered (you could take notes from this program); it certainly has a place in every geology classroom and in the library of anyone who is fascinated and/or directly affected by earthquakes.
(6/27/2006:) I originally wrote this review before I had seen a prerecorded VHS copy. Such episodes of NOVA on whatever media do not always play back exactly as they were broadcast. In the case of "Earthquake!," the program introduction by the WGBH announcer and original NOVA title sequence with the underwriters is missing. The underwriters are also missing from the end as is the PBS network identification logo. (This is similar to what they've done with the DVDs of 2005 and later episodes.) For some this may be a blessing, but for those of us who would like to see the program the way it was originally broadcast, it's a bit of a disappointment (I would have deducted one star for that). The main program content from the opening to the end credits is fully intact, however.
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