• Air date: 31 Oct '83 39 episodes
      3-2-1 Contact is an American science educational television show that aired on PBS from 1980 to 1988, and an adjoining children's magazine. The show, a production of the Children's Television Workshop, teaches scientific principles and their applications. Dr. Edward G. Atkins, who was responsible for much of the scientific content of the show, felt that the TV program wouldn't replace a classroom but would open the viewers to ask questions about the scientific purpose of things.
  • List of Episodes (39)
    • 1. Survival: Breathing

      31 Oct '83
      A computer program introduces the names of the new cast. Robin surprises Miguel and Kathy with a used car, but all three are surprised when the carburetor is faulty. During their ride, the tailpipe falls off.In Inglewood, California, Kathy participates at a firefighter's school.Lauren Taylor begins the New York City Marathon in the first of a five-part film story.ANIMATIONS: How birds breathe; how fish breathe.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Frozen Blob, Part One."" Vikki suspects that
    • 2. Survival: Temperature

      01 Nov '83
      Robin goes on a survival trek in the mountains of Wyoming.In Part Two of the New York City Marathon story, Lauren explains the importance of keeping cool.Film insert: warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded animals.Biography: How important is smell to guinea pigs? Biologist Benjamin Shepherd explains this principle to a group of schoolkids.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Frozen Blob, Part Two."" Mrs. Belmont-Smith is convinced that the ice sculpture has melted. But a quick taste proves that this
    • 3. Survival: Protection

      02 Nov '83
      Miguel, Robin, and Kathy help epidemological detectives in their investigation on a food poisoning case. Jackie searches with schoolkids for jumping frogs. In ""The Bloodhound Gang,"" Vikki attends a séance staged by a fortune-teller.
    • 4. Survival: Energy

      03 Nov '83
      Paco attempts to surprise the others by preparing bread–and ends up surprising himself. In The Bloodhound Gang, Vikki senses something afoul at the séance.
    • 5. Survival: Teamwork

      04 Nov '83
      Miguel, Robin, and Kathy have a computer game in waiting for a contest. Can they get anything done by splitting the responsibilities? In Denver, Miguel puts a hospital's Flight for Life rescue squad to the test. Lorna Coppinger and son Tim show Robin how their sheep dog interacts so well with sheep. The New York City documentary ends with a reminder on togetherness. FILM INSERT: Loner animals. THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Girl from Outer Space, Part Three."" The gang reassembles
    • 6. Sports: Training Analysis

      24 Oct '83
      Before Miguel can put together a training program for his friends, they spend the day organizing the closet. Miguel and Jackie go to a serious West Point gym drill. Robin discovers how computers begin to help in an athlete's training. In the studio experiment, Miguel shows Paco how things are balanced when the center of gravity is below the point of support.Film insert: Gymnasts.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of X Marks the Spot, Part One."" During a ten-mile run in a small village, one of
    • 7. Sports: Time, Rate, Measurement

      25 Oct '83
      Robin helps Kathy and Miguel to coordinate their schedule of errands, splitting the duties among themselves to get everything done faster.Robin finds out from a pair of jockeys the basics of training thoroughbred horses (it's all about speed). Kathy gets a run-in with speed skaters.FILM INSERT: Ride-and-tie races.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of X Marks the Spot, Part Two."" Only three suspects could have taken the treasure map, but all three ran the race. (Concludes in next episode.)
    • 8. Sports: Energy Transfer

      26 Oct '83
      Carol Lewis (Carl's brother) and her trainer illustrate the mechanics of the long jump. Kathy witnesses a pole-vaulter in training. Robin discovers a variety of bicycles.Film Insert: Bryan Allen flies across the English Channel on a man-powered plane.The Bloodhound Gang: ""The Case of X Marks the Spot, Part Three.""
    • 9. Sports: Impact Analysis

      27 Oct '83
      Kathy is downstairs, exercising while waiting for Miguel to return. Miguel is with Judy Clarke, who discusses the design of athletic shoes. She leads Miguel to two other researchers, ready to do measurements on Miguel's feet. Miguel weighs 135 pounds, and the impact each foot endures while he runs is twice that weight. In between the experiments and observations, Judy tells Miguel what type of athletic shoe would be best for running. Back at the basement, Kathy sprains her knee. Robin sees
    • 10. Sports: Coordination

      28 Oct '83
      Robin sees two synchronized swimmers in perfect coordination. The Biography segment features a neurologist discussing people's motor skills. A team of high-school boys uses information churned through a computer to assemble a basketball ""dream team"" and predict the score of a game. THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Magnetic Woman, Part Two."" The Gang exposes the ""Little Georgia Magnet's"" tricks.
    • 11. Flight: Flying Animals

      17 Oct '83
      Miguel invites Kathy and Robin to Lincoln Park Airport, where he is taking flying lessons. After a brief discussion of the four forces, Miguel acquaints himself with the plane's controls. Kathy discovers a wounded raptor in the Minnesota woods, prompting a visit from a graduate student intent on helping the raptor. Film insert: Different wings for different things. A musical number, Trying To Fly, adapted from The Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive, becomes the backbone of this theme week (it reappears
    • 12. Flight: Air Resistance

      18 Oct '83
      Miguel, Robin, and Kathy join the crew of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as they inflate balloons. Robin takes her first parachute jump.FILM INSERT: Air is there. ANIMATION: Falling paper demonstrates drag.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Veiled Thief, Part Two.""
    • 14. Flight: Thrust

      20 Oct '83
      Miguel has entered himself and Robin in a boomerang-throwing competition. But neither knows how to throw a boomerang properly. They get a demonstration on boomerang flight from a professional. In California, Kathy flies an ultralight with a test pilot.Film inserts: indoor airplane flying at Columbia University leads a boy to building a model airplane; the need for great amounts of energy for birds and airplanes to fly.ANIMATION: The four forces involved in flying.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The
    • 15. Flight: Acceleration

      21 Oct '83
      Kathy brings a telescope to talk about the changing constellations in the night sky. In the process, Kathy discusses Newton's Laws of Motion. Robin visits NORAD as it observes satellites in orbit. Miguel hears how planes take off and land at an aircraft carrier.FILM INSERT: Flying objects need a lot of fuel to fly.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Bottled Boat, Part Three."" The Gang deduces the pennant is marked with a microdot.
    • 16. Babies: The Code of Life

      07 Nov '83
      Paco is trying to find out what DNA is. Not everyone has the complete answer until somebody calls the wrong number repeatedly. Robin is fortunate to talk with one of the biologists who discovered the basics of DNA.Jackie learns about the breeding of miniature horses. Miguel finds a botanist observing the wildflowers and insects populating a vacant New York City lot.FILM INSERT: The jacquard loom.ANIMATION: Life evolving through DNA.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of The Locked Safe,"" a
    • 17. Babies: Growth and Development

      08 Nov '83
      Miguel has had it up to his ears with duplicates. He goes to a florist to get the perfect orchid for his mother's birthday. The florist tells him all the orchids in the shop are clones. That prompts Miguel to visit a cytologist for a lesson on cloning plants. Once that's done, Miguel runs into a nice girl at a copy center, for whom he wants to buy another orchid. He doesn't realize she is one of identical twins.Paco tells his dog Franklin about growth hormones. Kathy meets a biochemist who
    • 18. Babies: Behavior

      09 Nov '83
      While Miguel, Robin, and Kathy go off on a picnic, Paco is left to examine Miguel's ants. He then has to scramble for the ants when they get loose. Immediately, Miguel senses that his ants have escaped.A saxophonist imitates the call of a wolf in attempt to understand wolves' ""music."" Miguel examines spiders' webs in the Okefenokee Swamp. Kathy witnesses how the sounds of dolphins are reproduced on computers to help learn about dolphin behavior. Robin watches a monkey being trained to
    • 19. Babies: Colonization

      10 Nov '83
      Robin visits Mount St. Helens two years after its historic 1980 eruption to see where plant life in the area is attempting a comeback. In the weekly studio experiment, Miguel explains to Paco how fungus colonizes.BIOGRAPHY: Geraat Vermeij, a native of Holland, studies shells.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Computer Caper, Part Three."" Vikki discovers that the woman who poured water in the trash can, is left-handed. Looking closer at the pictures, Ricardo realizes that the moneyâ€
    • 20. Babies: Change

      11 Nov '83
      Paco sets up a school report on his walk on the beach. He teams up with a chimpanzee and a biologist who studies animal locomotion. At the university, the biologist shows Paco part of the skeleton of Lucy, the great evolutionary find of 1974. Miguel goes to a dinosaur burial ground in northern Montana.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Computer Caper, Part Four."" With the barest of clues, a restaurant's souvenir pen, the gang traces the man who stole the computer files.
    • 21. Senses: Taste and Smell

      05 Dec '83
      Miguel, Robin, and Kathy are prepared for a fishing campout. On their way back from fishing, Kathy discovers she has lost the matchbook and ventures out to find it. She finds it, but has she gotten herself lost?At the University of Pennsylvania, Robin learns how taste and smell are connected (and how they differ).Kathy goes to 3M to see the production of scratch-and-sniff.THE BLOODHOUND GANG: ""The Case of the Frozen Blob, Part One."" Vikki suspects that a frozen ice sculpture has been stolen
    • 22. Senses: Sight

      06 Dec '83
      Main Concept: In order for us to see, the eye must convert light energy to electrical energy, which is interpreted by the brain as an image. Robin learns that sight is the dominant sense in some animals. She visits the U. S. Coast Guard in San Francisco and finds how pigeons, with their acute eyesight and color vision, are used to spot survivors at sea. Miguel visits the Computer Graphics Lab in New York City and learns how forms and colors of video images are manipulated electronically to
    • 23. Senses: Hearing

      07 Dec '83
      The kids assemble glasses with varying water amounts for a musical scale. In the process, Paco learns that certain frequencies are beyond the human hearing range. Vikki of The Bloodhound Gang is hired to begin ""The Case of the Girl from Outer Space.""
    • 24. Senses: Touch

      08 Dec '83
      Paco surprises everyone with a gecko as his present for Robin's birthday. We meet a neurologist who studies the sense of touch in Brooklyn. In ""The Bloodhound Gang,"" Vikki attends a séance as she investigates ""The Case of the Girl from Outer Space."" (Concludes in next episode.)
    • 25. Senses: Special Sensors

      09 Dec '83
      After a close call, Miguel, Robin and Kathy drill themselves (and the basement) in case of fire. The Bloodhound Gang, en masse, breaks down ""The Case of the Girl from Outer Space.""
    • 26. Shapes in Nature

      21 Nov '83
      Miguel and Paco start the week in the back of a pick-up truck, riding through San Diego Wild Animal Park. They see the prehensile tongue of a giraffe up close. A worker explains how giraffes evolved to its long-necked self. Kathy and Robin go to Magi, a 3-d computer animation studio. Christine Chang, a computer scientist, shows how masic shapes turn into complicated animal shapes. Back at the Wild Animal Park, Miguel and Paco see how an elephant's trunk can pick up things. FILM INSERT: Basic