It's Barney the purple dinosaur exploding on video. It's a Ricki Lake lookalike hosting a talk show about sex. It's game show contestants being pelted with garbage cans full of colorful plastic balls.
But is it chemistry?
Well, "ChemTV" is, in an MTV, teenage-friendly sort of way. The traveling stage production created by Dow Chemical Co. kicked off its 1996 spring tour Friday at Romeoville High School.
"It was good, especially that guy right up there," said sophomore Monique Buchanan, pointing to one of the male dancer-actors on stage after the show. Her girlfriends giggled appreciatively.
"I thought it was great," said junior Rachel Anderson. Friends who attended the first of the day's three shows had told her it was boring, she said, but she was glad she had decided to go. And the chemistry lessons incorporated into the production worked, she said.
"It all made sense and everything," she said. "It wasn't like I didn't understand it."
Now in its second year of touring, "ChemTV" was created to open up young people's eyes to the importance of chemistry in everyday life, said Kristen Patterson, Dow's manager for the show. One inspiration for the program was a Dow survey of schools throughout North America that showed students' lack of interest in traditional teaching methods, she said.
"The students said, `We don't want another textbook,' " Patterson said. "Basically, they said, `We want something like MTV.' "
And that is what "ChemTV" gives them. As students streamed into the auditorium for Friday's late-morning show, two video screens high over the stage showed fast-paced clips of bouncy performers singing the music from the television show "Friends."
Then, the screens showed a brief, documentary-style video of stars in space, with a voice-over describing the evolution of the universe, sun, Earth and humans. The video ended with the message that change continues on the planet and a brief appearance by Barney before he exploded into bits, provoking cheers from the audience.
"We get their attention from the start of the show," Patterson said.
The rest of the program interspersed live sketches, singing and games with brief videos of music and interviews. There was the "Vicki Lake Show," a segment in which a peppy actress-talk show host began a discussion on sex and music videos, then got sidetracked by guest "Rush Trimbaugh" and his attack on a conspiracy--that everything from pizza to perfume is composed of chemicals.
From there, the show proceeded to a clip of "Lethal Water Warriors," a mock commercial touting a video game about the chemicals needed to ensure safe drinking water; a performance of "Method to the Madness," a rap on the scientific method; a Village People-style parody about the periodic table of elements; and a round of "Check It Out," a game show in which two real students and a teacher stood in giant "beakers of knowledge" to answer questions about chemistry.
Wrong answers were punished with a trash can of "neutrons" and "protons"--plastic balls in bright colors--poured over the contestants' heads. By the end of one game, both students had disappeared under hundreds of balls, and the teacher was declared the winner.
"It was fabulous," said Assistant Principal Lindy Steeves. After learning about the program through a video sent to the school by Dow, she said, "We jumped at the opportunity."
"I thought it was something (students) would enjoy," Steeves said. "It tries to show chemistry is everywhere in the world. It certainly does that."
To encourage teachers to follow up on that message, Dow makes a variety of brochures, books, tapes and videos available to schools.
"The basic message of the show is, everything starts with the periodic table," Patterson said.