Several technology-related businesses planned to announce new products during the National Science Teachers Association annual meeting last week in Boston, but only one offered a “sneak preview’’ of a science-related coming attraction.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was encouraging science teachers to tune in to a broadcast--which it billed as “the world’s largest science class’'--called “Live from Bell Laboratories.’' The show will air later this month in celebration of National Science and Technology Week.
The program is aimed at giving the nations’ 37 million middle-school science students and teachers an inside look at the facility where such space-age devices as the laser and the transistor were developed, said Donna Cunningham, an AT&T spokesman.
The program will take students on a guided tour of the corporation’s Murray Hill, N.J., facility and will include interviews with such researchers as Arno Penzias, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The broadcast, which is scheduled to air on April 29 at 10 A.M. E.D.T. will be hosted by David Heil, the host of the Emmy-award-winning public-television science program “Newton’s Apple.’'
Ms. Cunningham said that schools may receive the hour-long broadcast in one of three ways.
Schools with satellite dishes can receive the signal directly from the transponder 12BV on the Telstar 302 satellite.
Those without dishes can ask their local cable-television system to retrieve the satellite signal.
The program also will be distributed by the Public Broadcasting Service to its 340 member stations.
For more information about the program, or for assistance in receiving the telecast, call Ms. Cunningham at (802) 482-2933.
The International Business Machines Corporation has announced several new refinements to its Personal Science Laboratory.
The PSL is a microcomputer-based laboratory that combines probes, software, and a personal computer. The probes collect data to be analyzed, plotted, and manipulated by the system’s software.
The new products, which will be available in September, include rotary motion sensors and light sensitive, “photo event’’ timer probes. Also included are two separate modules--one that detects and records electrical current and frequency, and another that detects and controls on-off switches.
The new products will be marketed by EduQuest, I.B.M.'s Atlanta-based education subsidiary, and can be ordered by calling 1-800-éâí-3327.--P.W.
