Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained

in Physics, Science | April 1st, 2008

Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty needs no intro­duc­tion. Actu­al­ly maybe it does since we’re not deal­ing with light con­cepts here.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty in a Nut­shell (MP3) offers a free, 30-minute intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. The lec­ture was pre­sent­ed by Richard Wolf­son of Mid­dle­bury Col­lege. And it’s cou­pled with a sec­ond free lec­ture called Ein­stein’s Mirac­u­lous Year. Both lec­tures were pro­duced by The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s work on rel­a­tiv­i­ty (1905), and they tie into a larg­er com­mer­cial course taught by Wolf­son: Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and the Quan­tum Rev­o­lu­tion: Mod­ern Physics for Non-Sci­en­tists. The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny cours­es are not free, but they’re well done. And if you buy the mp3 ver­sions when they’re on sale, you can often get the cours­es at a good price. Also, you can fre­quent­ly find DVD ver­sions dis­count­ed on Ama­zon (see, for exam­ple, here). And, even bet­ter, you can some­times rent them for free from your local library.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for a good selec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, vis­it our meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Also see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Google Sky, Moon and Mars

in Astronomy, Google, Science | March 17th, 2008

Here’s what you get when Google engi­neers put their heads togeth­er with astronomers from large obser­va­to­ries: With Google Sky, “you can search for plan­ets, lis­ten to Earth & Sky pod­casts, watch some beau­ti­ful Hub­ble tele­scope images, or explore his­tor­i­cal maps of the sky from the com­fort of your brows­er.” The prod­uct was rolled out just last week, and you can get more info on the new release from Google’s offi­cial blog.

The new Sky prod­uct sits com­fort­ably along­side Google Moon and Google Mars, which have been around since 2005–2006. Cre­at­ed in con­junc­tion with sci­en­tists at the NASA Ames Research Cen­ter, Google Moon offers a col­lec­tion of lunar maps and charts and delves into the Apol­lo mis­sions. The Mars prod­uct, mean­while, offers some of the most detailed exist­ing maps of the red plan­et.

For more good sci­ence, see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion here.

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Richard Feynman Plays the Bongos

in Science, Video - Science | March 6th, 2008

When he was­n’t busy hash­ing out the the­o­ry of quan­tum elec­tro­dy­nam­ics, Nobel Prize win­ning physi­cist Richard Feyn­man was hit­ting the bon­gos and singing prais­es to orange juice. Watch him go. And find more vin­tage Feyn­man resources below.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

Learn How Richard Feyn­man Cracked the Safes with Atom­ic Secrets at Los Alam­os

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

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Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

in Science | March 4th, 2008

Cour­tesy of Wired’s Blog, here are 10 videos dis­play­ing some rather cool chem­istry exper­i­ments at work. Below, we’ve post­ed one video that will let you answer a ques­tion that you’ve almost cer­tain­ly pon­dered for ages — can liq­uid nitro­gen neu­tral­ize molten iron? (For more videos along these lines, check out this site.)

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The Christian Darwin You Don’t Know

in Religion, Science | February 17th, 2008

darwin2.jpgAt least in Amer­i­ca, Charles Dar­win has become the favorite whip­ping boy for many fun­da­men­tal­ists on the right. In one neat pack­age, you get in Dar­win all things deplorable. A god­less “sec­u­lar human­ist” who denied the sanc­ti­ty of human­i­ty, God’s prov­i­dence, and the integri­ty of the Bible. What more could you love to hate?

Some­where lost in today’s cul­ture wars is the real Charles Dar­win. Aired first in Octo­ber, this pro­gram, pro­duced by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Medi­a’s Speak­ing of Faith (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site), revis­its Dar­win’s life & thought with James Moore, a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar who has writ­ten Dar­win: The Life of a Tor­ment­ed Evo­lu­tion­ist. And here’s the pic­ture that we get. Like many impor­tant sci­en­tists who came before him — Galileo, Coper­ni­cus and New­ton — Dar­win believed that sci­ence could help explain the laws of nature cre­at­ed by God. Fur­ther, he saw his Ori­gin of Species as describ­ing the forms of life that owed their exis­tence to God’s law — a law that expressed itself in nat­ur­al selec­tion. Read­ers will find that Dar­win’s text is lit­tered with ref­er­ences to cre­ation. And Dar­win, him­self, was not­ed for say­ing that when he wrote the book, his faith in God was as strong as that of a bish­op, although his faith did wane lat­ter in life. Sim­ply put, Dar­win was hard­ly the ene­my of reli­gion that many con­sid­er him today.

Again, you can access this pro­gram with the fol­low­ing links: (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Addi­tion­al­ly, you can access a free e‑text of On the Ori­gin of Species here, along with a free audio­book ver­sion here.

You may also want to check out a relat­ed pro­gram by Speak­ing of Faith: Ein­stein and the Mind of God

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What Does 47 Billion Light Years (in Radius) Look Like?

in Science, Video - Science | February 15th, 2008

That’s one esti­mate of the size of our uni­verse, and this video (added to our YouTube Playlist), using pic­tures from the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, tries to put it in per­spec­tive. For more amaz­ing pho­tos from the Hub­ble, see this col­lec­tion.

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Psychedelics Revisited

in Science, Video - Science | February 10th, 2008

On Fri­day, we men­tioned the BBC pro­duc­tion called “What on Earth is Wrong with Grav­i­ty.” Below is anoth­er video by the same pro­duc­ers called “Psy­che­del­ic Sci­ence,” which sur­veys the past and present of psy­che­del­ic drugs, and the new era of sci­en­tists explor­ing ways to use these drugs again for ther­a­peu­tic pur­pos­es (i.e., the treat­ment of schiz­o­phre­nia and addic­tion).

via Boing Boing

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Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

in Science, Video - Science | February 10th, 2008

Speak­ing of psy­che­delics, we’ve post­ed a doc­u­men­tary below (yet anoth­er BBC pro­duc­tion) that takes a not entire­ly flat­ter­ing look at the life of Tim­o­thy Leary, the Har­vard psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who went coun­ter­cul­ture in 1960s and advo­cat­ed the ther­a­peu­tic and spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fits of LSD. I remem­ber see­ing him years lat­er when I was in col­lege. My mem­o­ry of the man: Spunky and about as non­lin­ear as you could get.

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