The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Physics, Video - Science | ≅ 2 Comments
Last fall, we featured a talk by the hot-shot theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, “A Universe from Nothing,” which answered some big enchilada questions: What is our current understanding of the universe? When did the universe begin? What came before it? How could something come from nothing? And what will happen to the universe in the [...]
≡ Category: Astronomy, Film, Physics | ≅ 3 Comments
Brilliant but unmotivated, Stephen Hawking was a 21-year-old PhD student at Cambridge when he first noticed something was wrong. He was falling down a lot, and dropping things. He went into the hospital for tests, and learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The doctors told him he would gradually lose control of every [...]
≡ Category: Film, Physics | ≅ 8 Comments
It’s another case of the whole being greater better than the sum of the parts. Between 1981 and 1993, documentary producer Christopher Sykes shot three films and one TV series dedicated to the charismatic, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988). We have presented these documentaries here individually before (some several years ago), but never brought [...]
≡ Category: Physics | ≅ Leave a Comment
In the world of everyday experience we perceive three dimensions of space. Through any point, no more than three perpendicular lines may pass. The notion that there might be more than three dimensions has traditionally been the domain of science fiction shows like The Twilight Zone. In this engaging lecture (click image above to watch), [...]
≡ Category: Music, Physics, Random | ≅ Leave a Comment
Last week, the reports about Higgs Boson, otherwise called the God particle, put CERN and the Large Hadron Collider back into the news, leading some to ask: What exactly are Higgs and the Collider all about? We’re glad you asked. And what better way to answer that question than with a fly, little rap by Kate McAlpine (aka Alpinekat) [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, e-books, Physics | ≅ 102 Comments
A Reddit.com user posed the question to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and popularizer of science. Where possible, we have included links to free versions of the books, all [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses, Physics | ≅ Leave a Comment
As The New York Times noted in a 2007 profile, Walter Lewin long had a cult following at MIT. But when his free courses went viral on the web (find them in the Physics section of our big collection of Free Online Courses), the physics prof became an “international Internet guru,” the first star of the [...]
≡ Category: MIT, Physics, Technology | ≅ Leave a Comment
Think of it as the ultimate slow-motion movie camera. Researchers at M.I.T. have developed an imaging system so fast it can trace the motion of pulses of light as they travel through liquids and solids. To put it into perspective, writes John Markoff in The New York Times, “If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion [...]
≡ Category: Physics, Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Cambridge University has had many famous graduates, but perhaps none is more famous than Isaac Newton (class of 1665). This week, Cambridge continues to honor Newton by opening a digital archive of Newton’s personal papers, which includes an annotated copy of the Principia, the landmark work where the physicist developed his laws of motion and gravity. The [...]
≡ Category: Astronomy, Comedy, Physics, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
With a fast-moving mixture of comedy and seriousness, an interview on The Colbert Report is something of an improvisational flying trapeze act. “Stephen Colbert is an amazingly good interviewer,” writes physicist Sean Carroll, “managing to mix topical jokes and his usual schtick with some really good questions, and more than a bit of real background knowledge.” Beneath [...]
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