Tuesday, January 2, 2018

KLEM TV

Kampen om tungtvannet -- Norwegian for "The Heavy Water War" -- is a fascinating 6-part mini series produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp beginning in 2015. The story concerns the WW II sabotage efforts of Norwegian partisans with the help of British intelligence and support. Briefly, the Germans needed heavy water (deuterium oxide) for their nuclear power/bomb ambitions and Norsk Hydro was the sole supplier in Europe. The series has a "Guns Of Navarone" vibe and definitely keeps your interest. Most of the characters are based on real-life counterparts except for the female British intelligence officer. That's too bad because she's quite fetching:

Anna Friel
She plays the sort of mind that's easy to fall in love with. 

Another aspect I liked about the series is that it's done in at least three different languages: Norwegian, German, and English. This is fascinating because I've taken an interest in the interplay between those Germanic languages. For example, consider the title: Kampen om tungtvannet. Readers like Sixty will recognize the the German translation: Kämpfen um Schwerwasser. Astute readers might reckon that "Tungvannet" must mean "heavywater." 

Tungsten means "heavy stone" in Swedish. It is indeed a heavy element -- the pure metal has other interesting properties and old time TV viewers may recall that Wilkinson razor blades used to tout that their blades were hardened by tungsten carbide. The chemical symbol for tungsten is not Tu as it should be, but rather W, for Wolfram. That's another interesting story.

Sorry to have drifted off into two of my favorite topics, chemistry and languages. Give the show a butcher's -- it's on Netflix or Amazon -- I forget which.

15 comments:

The Dude said...

My router bits are from the WC Field.

chickelit said...

Wolframkohlenstofffeld or do your bits hate kids and dogs?

The Dude said...

LOL - no, but the dogs do get a bit frothy when they hear the router running.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

She is cute. she was in "Pushing Daisies" - a very strange concept for a series, but I give it tons of credit for originality. Worth watching on boring cold winter nights.

john said...

She has very nice teeth.

Had a molar removed recently and I'm getting more sensitive to those things.

john said...

Oh, she's British and she has very nice teeth.

That doesn't make any sense.

deborah said...

I never got the allure of platinum wedding bands. I guess platinum is rarer and more expensive but it never seemed legit to me. White gold is suspect also. Looks like silver, so just get silver!

edutcher said...

The true story of the Norway operations is told in a couple of good books and a pretty good movie, The Heroes Of Telemark, with Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.

In his history of Wwii, Winnie Churchill also recounts what happened.

chickelit said...

@deborah: Platinum looks exactly like nickel but feels much heavier. You can only get that sort of heft with 24k gold which of course is too soft for a ring. Platinum won't tarnish, unlike silver. Nickel is pretty resilient to tarnish as well. A full set of d-electrons cupped in d-orbitals!

deborah said...

Ah. Thanks, as usual for the chemistry lesson.

Oh, and get a load of that set of d-electrons cupped in d-orbitals! You nut :)

chickelit said...

edutcher said...The true story of the Norway operations is told in a couple of good books and a pretty good movie, The Heroes Of Telemark, with Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.

*drills finger into chin*

I'll have to watch that!

chickelit said...

@deborah: How else do electrons keep their shape?

virgil xenophon said...

One of the best about those Norwegian operations is "Two Eggs On My Plate" 1953-Oluf Reed Olsen, a participant.

virgil xenophon said...

Until I read the reviews on Amazon I didn't realize how hard it was/is to obtain a copy of this -long out-of-print book. And here I read it for free from my school library when I was in the fifth grade. Just demonstrates how the epoch one is born into affects ones view of the world..

The Dude said...

CL - you made me look up Cockney Rhyming Slang. Made my Loaf hurt. Now I am going to head down to the Rub-a-dub-dub, have a George Raft, get so Brahms I fall off my Ones and twos, then they will call the Ducks and geese and that will be that.

Bristols.