Look Around You

20 minute short film which was the inspiration for the series.

The full music video for "Little Mouse" by Jack Morgan (BSc), the song created as a result of Experiment One in the first series episode "Music".

Maths can help us in our daily lives - for example, in cooking pasta, in calculating the correct moment for starting a conversation, or (if you can fly) in working out where to land. Queen Elizabeth III and Queen Elizabeth IV are going to a party given by Queen Elizabeth V. QE3 has forty dresses to choose from, QE4 has four thousand, and QE5 has only one dress, but it can take the form of many dresses. Then, during the night, QE3's servant steals the plans for QE4's party dress and, working till dawn, makes four thousand exact copies... So can we reckon what the chance is that all of the Queens will be wearing the same dress at the party?

In this episode we learn about the amazing igloo-building skills of ants and the surprising ability of water to boil eggs.

You need to know something about Germs. You really do. And Professor Miles can help you...

We visit the Look Around You Music 2000 Competition, a search for the sounds people will be listening to in the year 2000. Three contestants have half a minute each to perform what they think will be the music of tomorrow. Contestant Anthony Carmichael gives us England's first ever performance of rap music. The contest is judged by Look Around You's resident music expert, the Ghost of the composer Tchaikovsky, who speaks through an interpreter. We also meet the chairman of the Royal Pop and Rock Association, Sir Alan Rees, who coincidentally is the reigning French-kissing champion.

The team looks at advances in healthcare, and Jack Morgan goes under the knife as Dr Fu supervizes the efforts of a robot-surgeon called Medibot to create the perfect face. Other presenters try out a new toothbrush that burns away plaque - though with one rather serious side effect... And in a special report, the team visits a Sleep Institute and meets its director, Professor Craven, a man with some cutting-edge ideas.

This week, the team looks at advances in sporting technology. The world 400,000-metre champion, Ros Lamb, demonstrates a new serum (based on caramel-flavoured rocket fuel) which is said to help her to run at up to 3,500 miles per hour. And Ros faces this week's Challenge - can she run the 524 miles from London to Aberdeen in under five minutes? (But it was not foreseen that she would arrive in Scotland half her original size.) We meet two of the clones of the late Sebastian Jackson, the world's most famous football designer. The Invention of the Week is a betting system - based on a machine made of straw and designed by a race-horse. Finally, the team visits the U.S. to investigate the new sport of Gonnis - which is an inspired cross between golf and tennis.