science

The Secret Saturdays

The Secret Saturdays is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Secret Saturdays rather than just read about it. In short: The Secret Saturdays is an American animated television series created by Canadian cartoonist Jay Stephens and produced by PorchLight Entertainment for Cartoon Network. The series ran from October 3, 2008 to January 30, 2010.

Key takeaways

The Secret Saturdays belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Secret Saturdays to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Secret Saturdays from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Secret Saturdays is an American animated television series created by Canadian cartoonist Jay Stephens and produced by PorchLight Entertainment for Cartoon Network. The series ran from October 3, 2008 to January 30, 2010. It follows the adventures of the eponymous family of cryptozoologists that work to keep the truth about cryptids from getting out, to protect both the human race and the creatures themselves. The Saturdays travel the Earth searching for cryptids to study and battling twisted villains like the megalomaniac V. V. Argost. The series is influenced by 1960s-era Hanna-Barbera action series and Jay Stephens's interest in cryptozoology.

Plot

The Secret Saturdays revolves around the eponymous Saturdays, a family of cryptozoologists consisting of parents Doc and Drew Saturday and their 11-year-old son, Zak Saturday. The Saturdays are members of the Secret Scientists, a global organization with the goal of studying and safeguarding sciences considered too dangerous to be general public knowledge. As the foremost experts in cryptids, the Saturdays are responsible for studying and protecting cryptids around the world, while also keeping their existence a secret from the rest of humanity and averting cryptid-related threats. The Saturdays travel in their airship with their cryptid companions Fiskerton, Komodo, and Zon, while the young Zak Saturday strives to help his parents with their missions and to master his mysterious innate ability to influence and control the actions of cryptids. At the beginning of the series, the Secret Scientists are attacked en masse by V. V. Argost, the masked host of the cryptid-centric television series V. V. Argost's Weird World and a longtime enemy of the Secret Scientists. Argost and his henchmen steal the pieces of the Kur Stone, a Sumerian artifact which can lead its wielder to the location of Kur, an allegedly all-powerful cryptid. In the first season of the show, the Saturdays are also pitted against bounty hunter Leonidas Van Rook and his apprentice, who is later revealed to be Drew's long-lost brother Doyle Blackwell, who was separated from her after their parents died in an accident in the Himalayas. The Saturdays also discover an ancient mirror which leads to a dimension made of antimatter, and encounter their evil counterparts, whom Zak dubs the "Mondays." At the end of the first season, the Saturdays and Argost race to Kur's supposed resting place in Antarctica, only to discover that Kur is actually Zak; when the Kur stone was shattered years ago, Kur's soul entered Zak's unborn body, giving him the ability to influence cryptids. In the second season, Argost, taking an interest in Zak as the true Kur, bargains with Zak to teach him how to use his powers. Meanwhile, the Secret Scientists have turned against the Saturdays, wishing to capture Zak and place him into cryogenic sleep to prevent him from becoming a serious threat. As Doyle and a reformed Van Rook investigate the origins of V. V. Argost, they discover that Argost is actually a cryptid, the yeti, and was responsible for the murder of Drew and Doyle's parents decades ago. Argost captures Zak and reveals himself as the yeti, then uses the mirror artifact to summon Zak Monday, whose powers he steals, giving him the same powers as Zak and killing Zak Monday in the process. Argost and Zak wage a global cryptid war against each other using their Kur abilities, but Zak ultimately overpowers Argost, forcing him to retreat. After killing Van Rook, Argost captures Zak and tries to absorb his powers in addition to Zak Monday's, but the combination of matter and antimatter destroys Argost and the power of Kur.

Characters

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Secret Saturdays

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Secret Saturdays claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Secret Saturdays before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Secret Saturdays ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Secret Saturdays

In research: The Secret Saturdays appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Secret Saturdays in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Secret Saturdays is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2000s American animated television series, 2000s American black cartoons, 2000s American children's television series, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Secret Saturdays outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Secret Saturdays in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Secret Saturdays means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Secret Saturdays out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Secret Saturdays in simple terms?

Why does The Secret Saturdays matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Secret Saturdays?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Secret Saturdays.