Tropical Rainforest IMAX
Movie Script
1. Main Title Sequence
2. The Story’s Beginning / An Ancient Forest
3. The Tropical Forest Has Evolved
4. Creatures of the Forest
5. Rain / Constant Wetness in the Forest
6. Sunlight to Darkness
7. Biological Diversity
8. A Jump Forward in Time
9. Forests of the World
10. Birds Populate and Pollinate the Forest
11. The First Inkling of Primates
12. The Forest Renews Itself
13. The Interdependence of Forest Organisms
14. Primates Come to the Forest
15. Tree Logging / Human Tools
16. The World Rainforest / News (CNN - Tropics in Trouble)
17. Humans Mining The Tropics
18. Looking Closely At The Forest
19. Seeing the Forest From Another View
20. The Race to Learn About the Rainforest
21. Traveling Towards the Future (Music: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”)
Jeopardy Questions
Science Vocabulary
Tropical Rain Forest IMAX Crossword Puzzle
Words and clues submitted to Puzzlemaker at DiscoveryEducation.com
Tropical Rain forest IMAX Student Worksheet
Movie Script
1. Main Title Sequence
What is a rain forest?Answer: a tropical woodland with high annual rainfall (2 words)
2. The Story’s Beginning / An Ancient Forest
Imagine …
we’re travelers in time.
It’s now 400 million years ago.
Some of the most primitive of plants, the ferns
cover almost all the land.
And now, a hundred million years have passed. (300 million years ago)
The dominance of ferns is ending
and the trees with different leaves
and trunks and spreading branches
are beginning to appear.
We have burst upon a new fantastic era --
tropical rain forests have begun.
3. The Tropical Forest Has Evolved
Imagine now … it’s 60 million years ago.
The dinosaurs have come and gone.
The insects who were here before,still thrive.
The forest is a tangled weave of plants
competing for the nutrients and light.
4. Creatures of the Forest
Multitudes of life-forms are emerging.
Static life -- the fungi, plants and trees --
support amobile world --
the insects and the rest, who move about in search of food.
What is locomotion?Answer: the process by which an organism moves
5. Rain / Constant Wetness in the Forest
In the morning, moist and sun-warmed air starts rising
prelude to the midday clouds
and every afternoon the rain descends
as tropical rainforests ‘round the planet
live up to their hot and humid name.
What is humidity?Answer: the amount of water vapor in the air Note: water vapor is a colorless, odorless gas – not droplets of water.
What is condensation?
Answer: the process in which rising warm air cools and condenses, causing water vapor to change to dew
What are condensation nuclei?
Answer: Solid particles suspended in the air, such as dust and smoke, provide surfaces for dew and water droplets to form on. Clouds are made of a great many of these tiny droplets.
What is dew point?
Answer: In the process of condensation, water vapor changes to dew when it cools to its dew point.
Every day since time on Earth began,
the sun has traced a beam of energy and heat – a band --
around the Earth’s equator.
What is the main factor affecting a region’s weather patterns?Answer: latitude
And so, the daily dose of sun and water
keeps the tropic landscape nourished,
slowly shaping, changing every form of life.
And still, there’s 50 million years or more to go
before the early humans come.
6. Sunlight to Darkness
Coming out to taste the air,
the forest creatures of the night
are just as varied and as numerous as those of day.
What does nocturnal mean?Answer: animals that are active at night
At dawn, the 12 hours night becomes another 12 of day.
There are no seasonal extremes,
Cycles of only light and darkness,
rain and sunshine,
week by week,
and month on month,
from year to hundred-millionth year.
7. Biological Diversity
Within this cycle grows the largest single living thing
the land has ever seen …
the tree, the very fabric of the forest.
Many times the size of dinosaurs
that trampled around their roots many years ago,
the trees are part of the variety
of many thousand different flowering plants.
But why so many shapes and colors?
How did they arrive at such complexity?
Many creatures blend in with their backgrounds.
How did they acquire this camouflage?
What is camouflage?Answer: hiding or disguising by changing appearance
Every complicated organism
has its origin in something simpler.
Every form of life has ancestors
that were among the earliest on earth.
What is the Theory of Evolution?Answer: the idea that life began with very primitive life forms that have, over time, changed into all the different types of organisms on Earth today
Each individual is, by random chance,
just marginally different from its parents.
What is a trait?Answer: characteristics often shared by family members
What is a mutation?
Answer: a genetic change that occurs that makes a species more likely to survive in a given environment
Just occasionally
the variations prove a slight advantage for survival.
What is an adaptation?Answer: a genetic change that occurs that makes a species more likely to survive in a given environment
Under evolutionary pressure,
those with an advantage tend tothrive,
while other lines die out.
What is natural selection?Answer: Individuals with traits better adapted to the environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on the more successful traits.
They don’t’ succeed.
And after millions of generations,
minute alterations, step-by-step, emerge
and, so much time on evolution’s path,
that life is able to perform what seems like magic
as an everyday event.
All of evolution works this way.
8. A Jump Forward in Time
Now, it’s 20 million years ago.
The number and variety of species is increasing rapidly
and filling every nook and cranny in the forest.
9. Forests of the World
Land which one day will be given names
like Borneo, Sumatra, Java,
Queensland, Thailand, Burma,
India, Madagascar, Congo,
Cameroon, the Amazon,
the Central Isthmus of America --
they all are covered by this luscious forest.
Where are the tropical rain forests on the Earth?Answer: Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Queensland, Thailand, Burma, India, Madagascar, Congo, Cameroon, the Amazon, the Central Isthmus of America
10. Birds Populate and Pollinate the Forest
Diversity, if undisturbed by major changes
leads to more diversity.
Birds, related to the dinosaurs,
diversify to many shapes and sizes,
feeding off the different fruits and flowers,
and spreading seeds and pollen across the forests.
What is pollen?Answer: a fine, yellowish powder made of tiny grains that contain the male sex cells in plants
What is pollination?
Answer: the transfer of pollen to the sticky pad at the top of the pistil (stigma)
11. The First Inkling of Primates
The age of mammals has arrived.
The only mammals that can fly are bats …
which by locating echoes, see with sound.
What is echo location?Answer: a process for locating distant objects by means of sound waves reflected back to the sender from the objects
The lemurs, relatives of early primates,
look around the twilight world with large and ghostly eyes.
12. The Forest Renews Itself
By hour, by day, by decade, year and century,
time, it rolls inexorably on.
Individual trees may live 100 years or more
and then will fall or die.
What is photosynthesis?Answer: the process by which plants that contain chlorophyll make oxygen and their food
What are the raw materials used by green plants for photosynthesis?
Answer: carbon dioxide in the air, light and water
The toppling giant leaves will leave a gaping hole
which plants and younger trees will rush to fill.
The energy contained within the fabric of trees
is never lost or wasted.
Termites quickly go to work
and soon the forest floor reclaims what it supplied
as everything recycles through the system.
What is the term for organisms that break down dead plants and animal wastes?Answer: decomposers
The new trees race to fill the gap.
Within a year or so
the surface of the woven canopy has been restored.
What is a canopy?Answer: the uppermost spreading layer of a forest
Everything is used, and used again.
13. The Interdependence of Forest Organisms
The need for food and space for living
leads to complicated patterns of behavior.
Time and circumstances lead one type of ant
to harvest leavesas food for fungus.
What is the term for an organism that feeds on only plants?Answer: herbivore
As it grows, the fungus breaks thetrue leaves down,
converting it to food for ants.
Such intimate relationships are frail,
and one cannot exist without the other.
What is mutualism?Answer: a relationship in which both species benefit from the other’s presence
Symbiotic harmony like this is found across the forest--
while one species may rely on others for survival,
all of them rely upon the trees.
What does environmentmean?Answer: all of the external conditions affecting the life, development and survival of an organism
What is a community?
Answer: all the organisms living together in one environment
14. Primates Come to the Forest
And now, we have reached 2 million years ago.
The monkeys, apes, and other agile primates
have evolved, diversified, adapted.
Eating almost everything they can,
they travel quickly thru the upper branches.
Time travelers, we have nearly reached the present day.
It’s just 10,000 years ago.
15. Tree Logging / Human Tools
Humans have evolved and used the trees
in ways no animals have done before.
Within the last 200 years our tools have changed.
Our use of trees has much increased.
Now, today, it’s we, the humans,
that have brought the biggestchange
to tropical rainforest around the world have ever seen.
And now the very moment our tools enable us
to harvest forests whole,
we suddenly can see the bigger picture.
16. The World Rainforest / News (CNN - Tropics in Trouble)
Coming upon the “International Hour” we’ll examine
new ecological reports on tropical rainforests.
Thousands of acres of rain forests
are destroyed worldwide
to make room for crops and cattle and roads.
Trees, trees and more trees are going down the river
every day in the name of progress.
The tragedy is that they won’t be replaced
because where these trees once grew is fast becoming a desert.
Scientists express the continual concerns
about the potential devastating effects of rainforest burning.
These fires … which produce 20% of the world’s fossil fuel carbon dioxide
are a major contributor to the greenhouse effect.
What is the greenhouse effect?Answer: Carbon dioxide in the air lets sunlight pass through to Earth’s surface and warm it, but blocks heat rays from escaping.
What is global warming?
Answer: Destroying forests results in less carbon dioxide used by plants, contributing to more carbon dioxide in the air, blocking heat rays from escaping upward from the Earth’s atmosphere.
70% of the prescription drugs sold in the US came from plantsonly found only in the Amazon rainforest environment …
Now it is time to make peace with nature … with nature … with nature.
400 million years of evolution. Four minutes and a chainsaw brings it down.
17. Humans Mining The Tropics
The giants of the forest have been felled,
together with the life that they sustained.
Species which no humans have ever seen
are driven to extinction every day.
What does extinct mean?Answer: no longer existing
If the clearing of the trees continue,
50 years could see these forest gone
and with them the variety and range of biological diversities.
18. Looking Closely At The Forest
The challengeis to understand
the rapid changes we have brought upon our planet.
The tropical rainforests of the world have shrunk dramatically.
Two of them remain untouched,
available for study.
Botanists, biologists, the chemists, entomologists
and all who wish to analyze and understand the forest ecosystem,
will sometimes travel several thousand miles
to reach a tiny airstrip
and a research site
that’s largely undisturbed.
What is a biologist?Answer: a scientist who studies living organisms and life processes
What is a zoologist?
Answer: a scientist dealing with the study of animal life
What is a botanist?
Answer: a scientist dealing with the study of plant life
What is a chemist?
Answer: a scientist who studies composition, structure and properties of matter
What is an entomologist?
Answer: a scientist who studies insects
I’m always staggered
by how much there is to see and hear inside the forest.
Doing the search is challenging in these places.
The tropical forests all around the earth
cover less than 7% of the land surface.
We’ve only just, in the last 50-100 years,
begunto understand the biological history of the place.
We’re learning from on-going research
that more than 90% of the world’s species –
the ants, birds, mammals, plants,
bugs of all kinds -- live in the tropics.
It’s the very biology of our planet.
Everything we look at has some aspect here
that is quite unknown.
The more time I spend in the rainforest,
the more carefully I look,
the more I see.
19. Seeing the Forest From Another View
As humans standing on the ground,
we often only see the world that’s at our feet.
We need to look around …
above our heads.
I’ve been studying this small group of trees
for more than 10 years.
Yet each time I come up
I’m amazed to find species of plants
that I’ve never seen before.
There are over 28,000 species of plants
that actually live out their entire lives
up here in the tree tops.
I wanted to know what this incredibly abundant
group of plants are doing in the forest.
How do these plants affect the trees?
How do they affect the birds?
How do the birds affect them?
What would the forest be like
if these plants, the epiphytes,weren’t here?
As a kid I was always up in the trees,
and I know my mother, who is terribly afraid of heights,
still shakes her head in wonder
when she realizes what her daughter does for a living.
The results of my own research have surprised me.
I’ve learned that nearly half of the mineral nutrients
in the green foliage of the forest
are contained in the epiphytes themselves.
What is commensalism?(as epiphytes (orchids) living their entire lives on trees)
Answer: a relationship in which one species benefits and the other is unaffected
This feeling that I might discover
something up there entirely new
is a major motivation for the science I do.
20. The Race to Learn About the Rainforest
Ground-based scientists, however agile,
find it hard to reach the topmost part
of the surface of the forest canopy.
A team of airborne scientists have a novel way
of getting around the problem.
(French) It is really wonderful being here.
Floating on a moving ocean of green
is like being at sea,
except for the sounds of monkeys, insects, birds, frogs.
Up here where there is so much sunlight
you can feel the impact of the whole forest
containing millions and millions of different species.
Sometimes the transpiration
from all the leaves of the forest
makes it seem like it raining up instead of down.
What is transpiration?Answer: the process by which plants release from their leaves water that they have taken in through their roots
Everything is incredibly wet.
Our work – trying to understand it all –
has hardly even begun.
This is a story that began 400 million years ago.
It’s taken all that time to build a tropical rainforest.
21. Traveling Towards the Future (Music: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”)
Let’s imagine that it’s 50 years from now.
There is much we have learned already about nature,
sometimes by using it to suit our needs.
We are just part of evolution,
no better than the insects and no worse.
But time and evolution
gave us conscience.
We can understand what’s going on.
We can see the consequence of our actions.
We can learn why species go extinct.
We have the tools,
and better, we have foresight.
Future is a time that we can change.
Jeopardy Questions
Vegetation / Ecosystem / Meteorology / Survival / Evolution / CareersA 100 / B 100 / C 100 / D 100 / E 100 / F 100
the transfer of pollen to the sticky pad at the top of the pistil (stigma) / sum of all external conditions affecting the life, development and survival of an organism / the main factor affecting a region's weather patterns / the process by which an organism moves / characteristics often shared by family members / a scientist who studies living organisms and life processes
Movie: Birds feed off the different fruits and flowers and spread seeds and pollen across the forest. / Movie: Every day since time on Earth began, the sun has traced a beam of energy and heat – a band -- around the Earth’s equator.
What is pollination? / What is environment? / What is latitude? / What is locomotion? / What are traits? / What is a biologist?
A 200 / B 200 / C 200 / D 200 / E 200 / F 200
the raw materials used by green plants for photosynthesis / dead plants and animal wastes are broken down by these / the amount of water vapor in the air / animals that are active at night / an organism born with a trait that none of its ancestors have / a scientist dealing with the study of animal life
Movie: When a tree falls, termites quickly go to work and soon the forest floor reclaims what is supplied as everything recycles through the system. / Note: water vapor is a colorless, odorless gas -- not droplets of water.
What are carbon dioxide and water? / What is a decomposer? / What is humidity? / What are nocturnal? / What is a mutation? / What is a zoologist?
Vegetation / Ecosystem / Meteorology / Survival / Evolution / Careers
A 300 / B 300 / C 300 / D 300 / E 300 / F 300
Carbon dioxide in the air lets sunlight pass through to Earth's surface and warm it, but blocks heat rays from escaping. / all the organisms living together / the process in which rising warm air cools and condenses, causing water vapor to change to dew / hiding or disguising by changing appearnce / the idea that life began with very primitive life forms that have, over time, changed into all the different types of organisms on Earth today / a scientist dealing with the study of plant life
When a partially rotted log was turned over, fungi, termites, bugs, ants, slugs, and earthworms were found to be living in and around it. Together, these organisms represent a ______. / Movie: Many creatures blend in with their backgrounds.
What is the greenhouse effect? / What is a community? / What is condensation? / What is camouflage? / What is the Theory of Evolution? / What is a botanist?
A 400 / B 400 / C 400 / D 400 / E 400 / F 400
Destroying forests results in less carbon dioxide used by plants, contributing to a serious problem for the Earth. / a relationship in which both species benefit from the other's presence / Solid particles suspended in the air such as dust or smoke provide surfaces for dew and water droplets to form on. Clouds are made of a great many of these tiny droplets. / Tree-logging causes the death of animls living in the forests. Species which no humans have ever seen are driven to ______every day. / a genetic change that occurs that makes a species more likely to survive in a given environment / a scientist who studies the composition, structure and properties of matter
Movie: One type of ant harvests leaves as food for fungus. As it grows, the fungus breaks the leaves down, converting it to food for ants. / Movie: In the morning, moist and sun-warmed air starts rising, prelude to the midday clouds, and every afternoon the rain descends … / Movie: Each individual is, by random chance, just marginally different from its parents. Just occassionally the variations prove a slight advantage for survival.
What is global warming? / What is mutualism? / What are condensation nuclei? / What is extinction? / What is adaptation? / What is a chemist?
Vegetation / Ecosystem / Meteorology / Survival / Evolution / Careers
A 500 / B 500 / C 500 / D 500 / E 500 / F 500
the process by which plants release water from their leaves / a relationship in which one species benefits and the other is unaffected / In the process of condensation, water vapor changes to dew when it cools to its
______. / organisms that feed on plants / Individuals with traits better adapted to the environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on the more successful traits. / a scientist who studies insects
Movie: One airborne scientist said "Sometimes the ______from all the leaves of the forest makes it seem like it's raining up instead of down. Everything is incredibly wet." / Movie: Orchids (epiphytes) grow on large tropical trees and derive moisture and nutrients from the air and rain. The orchids depend on the support given by the trees but do not harm the trees. / Movie: Under evolutionary pressure, those with an advantage tend to thrive, while other lines die out. They don’t’ succeed.
Example: An animal tends to attack and kill animals that are weak rather than those that are strong.
What is transpiration? / What is commensalism? / What is dew point? / What are herbivores? / What is natural selection? / What is an entomologist?
Final Question
Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Queensland, Thailand, Burma, India, Madagascar, Congo, Cameroon, the Amazon, and the Central Isthmus of America
Where are the tropical rainforests on Earth?
Science Vocabulary In Script