Sleek Geeks is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

 television series, hosted by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

Karl Kruszelnicki

Karl Kruszelnicki AM is a scientist, who is best known as an author and science commentator on Australian radio and television. He is often referred to as Dr Karl....

 and Adam Spencer

Adam Spencer

Adam Barrington Spencer is an Australian radio presenter, comedian, and media personality. He first came to fame when he won his round of the comedic talent search Raw Comedy in the mid-1990s...

. The six-part series aired from 3 January 2008, and was based on Kruszelnicki and Spencer's Sleek Geek Week

Sleek Geek Week

Sleek Geek Week is an annual event in which Dr Karl Kruszelnicki and Adam Spencer travel to several destinations around Australia, presenting free talks on the topic of popular science...

 travelling roadshow, as well as Kruszelnicki's Great Moments in Science broadcasts on Triple J

Triple J

triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...

 radio. The show is co-hosted by fellow "geeks" Yumi Stynes

Yumi Stynes

Yumi Tasma Stynes is a television presenter for an Australian morning show The Circle and television channel Max.-Early life:...

, Ruben Meerman and Dr Stephen Bosi.

The program aims to demonstrate scientific principles and debunk common myths and fallacies, although Kruszelnicki and Spencer were disparaging of similar programs such as Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...

's MythBusters

MythBusters

MythBusters is a science entertainment TV program created and produced by Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The series is screened by numerous international broadcasters, including Discovery Channel Australia, Discovery Channel Latin America, Discovery Channel Canada, Quest...

(which Spencer called "constructively anti-scientific") and Sky One

Sky One

Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and Ireland.The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the United Kingdom, behind BBC One , ITV and BBC Two...

's Brainiac: Science Abuse

Brainiac: Science Abuse

Brainiac: Science Abuse is a British entertainment TV show with a science motif. Numerous experiments are carried out in each show, often to verify whether common conceptions are true or simply to create impressive explosions...

(which according to Kruszelnicki was "embarrassing... women jumping on trampolines").

Sleek Geeks was one of the first batch of television programs offered for sale in Australia on the iTunes Store

ITunes Store

The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...

.

Sleek Geeks Season 2 aired from 11 November until 30 December 2010, on ABC1 on a Thursday night at 8.00 pm.

Episode 1: Senses

The first episode examines the sense

Sense

Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception...

s of the human body: Adam tries his feet at firewalking, the audience consumes some hot chilli

Chili pepper

Chili pepper is the fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The term in British English and in Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia and other Asian countries is just chilli without pepper.Chili peppers originated in the Americas...

s, Karl attempts to break glass

Glass

Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...

 with singing, and the story of Mike the Headless Chicken

Mike the Headless Chicken

Mike the Headless Chicken , also known as Miracle Mike, was a Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been mostly cut off...

 is shown.

Episode 2: Mind Games

The second episode covers matters of the mind

Mind

The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...

: Adam subjects himself to hypnosis

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...

, Karl explains why we experience déjà vu

Déjà vu

Déjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined...

, and the mind's filtered perception is demonstrated when nobody notices a man in a gorilla suit

Gorilla suit

Gorilla suits or ape suits are full-bodied costumes resembling gorillas or other large primates.Gorilla suits have been used both to represent real gorillas in film and on stage, and also as a source of humour...

 in the audience.

Episode 3: Boys & Girls

The third episode looks at the differences between men and women, starting with the X chromosome

X chromosome

The X chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in many animal species, including mammals and is common in both males and females. It is a part of the XY sex-determination system and X0 sex-determination system...

, autoimmunity

Autoimmunity

Autoimmunity is the failure of an organism to recognize its own constituent parts as self, which allows an immune response against its own cells and tissues. Any disease that results from such an aberrant immune response is termed an autoimmune disease...

 in women, fetal mouth movement

Fetal movement

Fetal movement refers to motion of a fetus caused by its own muscle activity. Locomotor activity begins during the late embryological stage, and changes in nature throughout development. Muscles begin to move as soon as they are innervated. These first movements are not reflexive, but arise from...

, how finger length can indicate sperm count, and some facts about nose-picking

Nose-picking

Nose-picking is the act of extracting dried nasal mucus or foreign bodies from the nose with a finger. Despite being a very common habit, it is a mildly taboo activity in most cultures, and the observation of the activity in another person may provoke mixed feelings of disgust and amusement...

.

Episode 4: Time

The fourth episode covers time

Time

Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

: the Big Bang

Big Bang

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...

, the theory of relativity

Theory of relativity

The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....

, the Libet experiment

Benjamin Libet

Benjamin Libet April 12, 1916, Chicago, Illinois - July 23, 2007, Davis, California) was a pioneering scientist in the field of human consciousness. Libet was a researcher in the physiology department of the University of California, San Francisco...

, and how daylight saving contributes to a higher accident rate.

Episode 5: Forces

Adam and Karl experience zero gravity with the Roulettes

Roulettes

The Roulettes are the Royal Australian Air Force's formation aerobatic display team.They provide about 150 flying displays a year, in Australia and in friendly countries around the South-east Asian region...

 aerobatic team, discuss faster-than-light

Faster-than-light

Faster-than-light communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light....

 movement, look at the development of nuclear weapon

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

s, and find out who the "Murphy" who supposedly coined Murphy's law

Murphy's law

Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". - History :The perceived perversity of the universe has long been a subject of comment, and precursors to the modern version of Murphy's law are not hard to find. Recent significant...

 was.

Episode 6: Water

The final episode covers water

Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

: Adam and Karl find out the best way to escape from a rip current

Rip current

A rip current, commonly referred to by the misnomer rip tide, is a strong channel of water flowing seaward from near the shore, typically through the surf line. Typical flow is at 0.5 metres per second , and can be as fast as 2.5 metres per second...

, and to keep beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

 cool at a party. The audience sampled reclaimed water

Reclaimed water

Reclaimed water or recycled water, is former wastewater that is treated to remove solids and certain impurities, and used in sustainable landscaping irrigation or to recharge groundwater aquifers...

, recycled from Adam's urine

Urine

Urine is a typically sterile liquid by-product of the body that is secreted by the kidneys through a process called urination and excreted through the urethra. Cellular metabolism generates numerous by-products, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream...

 and bathwater.

External links

• Sleek Geeks - the TV show (Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
  
  )