Science on the SPOT goes behind the scenes at local San Francisco Bay Area labs, follows breaking discoveries, and gets you special access to obscure science locations and collections.

Our First Episode

In our first installment of the series, Suiting Up For Science: Swimming with Sharks we get in the tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to meet the intrepid dive team who keeps the enormous Outer Bay Exhibit spic-and-span while swimming in 40 pounds of stainless steel, shark-resistant armor. For your viewing pleasure, we've embedded a blog-sized version here. If you'd like to embed it on your blog (pretty please), go to the story page and grab the embed code.

Share Your Ideas

Do you know someone who has to wear special gear for your job in science, engineering, or technology? Are you that person? Leave a comment below if you have an idea of which science fashionista we should visit next. Suiting up for Science is just one type of story we'll be doing, so other ideas are welcome, too.

How to Watch Science on the SPOT

We'll be tweaking things a lot (both technically and editorially) over the coming weeks so stay tuned. Well, not exactly tuned, as you won't see these segments broadcast on KQED-TV. To see all episodes of SOTS, you can go the main SOTS page:

http://science.kqed.org/quest/series/sots/

They are available for streaming here on the QUEST website (look stories with the green corner stripe), via our main QUEST Video Podcast (both iTunes and RSS), on YouTube, and our first foray into High Definition video podcasting, the Science on the SPOT High Definition Podcast (iTunes and RSS). For the record, our current HD podcast spec is 1280 x 720, 5mbps H.264 video, 128k AAC audio. Let us know how it looks. I personally think it looks incredible on Apple's iPad, but YMMV.

And you can make story suggestions for Science on the SPOT, as well as QUEST radio and TV, at anytime.

Great for Teachers

One reason we're making a few different download options available is that we want teachers to have easy access to the stories, even if they can't stream our stories on the web due to a slow connection, or have a totalitarian regime school district that blocks YouTube. And at 3-5 minutes in length, we're hopeful they'll be easy to incorporate into classroom curricula.

Our new "Donate Now" screen at the end of our stories
makes it a snap to support QUEST.

We hope that all this free content, available to anyone who wants to embed it, use in classrooms or share with friends, will inspire you to help keep it sustainable.

Becoming a KQED member is one option, but what if you're not from around here? Maybe you're just not a joiner. Or you really want to support a specific program– like QUEST– that matters to you.

We hear that. So we're trying something new. Enter the QUEST microdonation pilot program.

At the end of all new videos on the QUEST website, you can donate $5 (or another prime number of your choice), in a simple one-time transaction via credit card or PayPal. No pledge, no need to call in, no requirement to become a member.

If we received one $5 donation a year from everyone who watches our stories online, we'd collect enough to produce a whole new season of QUEST! Of course, if you just want to give straight away, we won't stop you. You may proceed directly to our microdonation page.

This is a pilot project for us to test results and we're anxious to hear what you think. Please leave any comments that you might have here or email donation@kqed.org — and please spread the word to your (generous) friends!

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The squid, along with pink dolphins and matamata turtles are all stars of the new Jean Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures web original video series, produced for PBS by KQED and the Ocean Futures Society.

Now, if we can just get Bay Area Bites to post some more calamari recipes…

Craig Rosa is the Interactive Producer for QUEST.

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