Understanding Modern Physics: Download Leonard Susskind Video Lectures

What’s the “the­o­ret­i­cal min­i­mum” for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics? Here’s your chance to find out. Below, you will find three cours­es (the first of even­tu­al­ly six) pre­sent­ed by Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford physi­cist who helped con­cep­tu­al­ize string the­o­ry and has waged a long-run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing (see his new book on that sub­ject here). Freely avail­able on iTunes and YouTube (see below), these video lec­tures trace the begin­nings of mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, tak­ing you from Isaac New­ton (or New­ton­ian Mechan­ics) to Albert Ein­stein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Notably, these cours­es were orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed with­in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which means that the con­tent was pitched to an audi­ence much like you — that is, smart peo­ple who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have an exten­sive knowl­edge of physics. Watch the video below — the first lec­ture that kicks off the series of cours­es — and you will see what I mean.

Final­ly, in case you’re won­der­ing, the next three cours­es (cov­er­ing quan­tum mechan­ics, elec­tro­mag­net­ism, cos­mol­o­gy, black holes, and more) will be pre­sent­ed this com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year and, once taped, we will give you a heads up. Sign up for our RSS Feed and you will be sure to get an update. Also see our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es for many more cours­es along these lines.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

  • Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics (Fall 2007) iTunes YouTube
  • Quan­tum Mechan­ics (Win­ter 2008)  iTunes YouTube
  • Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Spring 2008) iTunes YouTube
  • Ein­stein’s Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (Fall 2009) iTunes YouTube
  • Cos­mol­o­gy iTunes — YouTube
  • Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics iTunes YouTube

Bonus Mate­r­i­al

In 2006–2007, Susskind taped a sep­a­rate series of lec­tures on Quan­tum Mechan­ics. You can down­load them as free video lec­tures as well:

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Comments (22)
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  • […] aten­tos a este espa­cio: ocur­rirán grandes cam­bios muy pron­to, basa­dos en con­tenidos abier­tos como Ă©stos. (Bueno, yo encuen­tro que el “¿Cual es el mĂ­n­i­mo teĂłri­co para pen­sar inteligen­te­mente […]

  • […] to Ein­stein to Black Holes. So far, we’ve made five of the six cours­es avail­able online (get them here), which amounts to 100 hours of free class­room footage. Hard to beat. (And, in case you’re […]

  • […] New­ton to Ein­stein to Black Holes. So far, we’ve made five of the six cours­es avail­able online (get them here), which amounts to 100 hours of free class­room footage. Hard to beat. (And, in case you’re […]

  • hmm says:

    how do i down­load these videos from youtube

    • CJ Fearnley says:

       I use  http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/ to down­load videos from YouTube.  Works great!

  • […] Leonard Susskind is an excel­lent lec­tur­er and his free video lec­tures on every­thing from Hamil­ton­ian mechan­ics to spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty to quan­tum mechan­ics are some of the […]

  • haryanto says:

    Prof. Susskind is an amaz­ing lec­tur­er. No won­der he won JJ Saku­rai prize. I am not an native Eng­lish speak­er, but the way he speak is easy to be under­stood. Many thanks Pro­fes­sor.

  • […] Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics, has now been post­ed on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. If you click through to this page, you will find every course in the series. Six cours­es. Rough­ly 120 hours of video. A com­pre­hen­sive tour of mod­ern physics. All in video. All […]

  • Sheldon says:

    Keep it com­ming

  • Don Langlois says:

    Can I get these lec­tures on dvd?

  • […] on line Physics Lec­tures were done at Stan­ford. This one is done by Leonard Susskind and avail­able here.  I have not pre­viewed this sec­ond offer­ing but I cer­tain­ly plan to do it as time per­mits. It is a […]

  • […] and know­ing you, you want to go deep­er. So here you: Leonard Susskind, a world famous physi­cist, offered a series of six cours­es for Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­iess, which traced the arc of mod­ern physics. It goes from New­ton to Black Holes. Nat­u­ral­ly a tour of […]

  • Tyrone Faulkner says:

    Is the Quan­tum Mechan­ics Course by Dr. Leonard Susskind avail­able on dvd?

  • CJ Fearnley says:

    The most impor­tant on-line course — and it is on physics — is Physics C10/LS C70V at Berke­ley.  @cjfsyntropy:twitter wrote a detailed review of the course here:  http://blog.cjfearnley.com/2011/02/24/the-most-important-video-course-on-line-physics-c10ls-c70v-at-berkeley/eley/

  • […] web­cast with Bri­an Greene and some spe­cial guests: renowned the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Leonard Susskind (watch his the­o­ret­i­cal physics cours­es online) and Saul Perl­mut­ter, win­ner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Togeth­er, they will “explore […]

  • vishal says:

    if heat is ener­gy then what is cold

    • markie says:

      If heat is ener­gy right, mean­ing exother­mi­cal­ly ener­gy is giv­en off in the form of heat. But endother­mi­cal­ly ener­gy is absorb thus
      cre­at­ing the sur­round­ing to be in a less ener­gy” tem­pre­ture state”.

  • Ramon Costa says:

    to low vol­ume.

  • Mike Stay says:

    Are there assign­ments to go with the lec­tures?

  • Tun Lin Aung says:

    What is the mag­net­ic Mono-pole like?
    ႊ့ႊႊDoes the God play the Dice Every day?

  • RH Peat says:

    Hot Dark Illu­sion

    I’m the whole in the hole
    with­in the black­hole.
    No place in par­tic­u­lar at all,
    I’m entropy; smil­ing chaos,
    I thrive and evap­o­rate;
    I era­di­ate and dis­si­pate,
    where no sin­gle thing exists;
    I’m trans­for­ma­tion par­ti­cles.
    Horizon’s reflec­tion, refrac­tion,
    I am two place at once;
    I am mat­ter and ener­gy on the spot,
    two and three dimen­sion­al.
    I’m every­where and nowhere —
    Hig­gs-Boson: Gravi­ton-Pho­ton,
    elec­trons all over the place.
    Dark mat­ter and dark ener­gy.
    I’m the sun turned inside out
    I’m every­thing —
    noth­ing at all
    that holds bits of infor­ma­tion
    that can’t be destroyed.
    I’m a foun­tain that falls
    into its own pool.
    So my every­thing is noth­ing
    leav­ing change on the counter
    When buy­ing green-tea
    on a hot day at the gift-shop
    on the wall …

    © RH Peat 5/31/2016

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