Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Inferno Inspired Galileo’s Physics

in History, Literature, Physics | January 17th, 2011

This com­ing fall, Mark Peter­son, a physics pro­fes­sor at Mount Holyoke Col­lege, will pub­lish a new book where he makes a rather curi­ous argu­ment: Back in 1588, a young Galileo pre­sent­ed two lec­tures before the Flo­ren­tine Acad­e­my. And there he laid the ground­work for his the­o­ret­i­cal physics when he called into ques­tion the accept­ed mea­sure­ments of Dan­te’s hell (as depict­ed in the Infer­no, the great epic poem from 1314). Did debates over a poem fig­ure into the unfold­ing of The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion? The Boston Globe digs deep­er into the ques­tion with the video above and a longer arti­cle here.

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, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

The Sto­ry of Physics Ani­mat­ed in 4 Min­utes: From Galileo and New­ton, to Ein­stein

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William F. Buckley Threatens to “Smash” Noam Chomsky in the Face (1969)

in History, Politics | January 15th, 2011


So much for the Gold­en Age of Civil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca – but at least it was said with a lit­tle smile and the ensu­ing debate had some sub­stance…

Note: A read­er sug­gests in our com­ments that Buck­ley was jok­ing­ly allud­ing here to a pre­vi­ous con­fronta­tion­al moment with Gore Vidal, and it sounds about right. (“I’ll sock you in the god­damn face and you’ll stay plas­tered.”)

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Water Sculpture

in Art | January 14th, 2011

Shinichi Maruya­ma, a Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­ph­er now liv­ing in New York, uses sim­ply his hands, glass­es of water and a Phase One P45 cam­era to cre­ate ele­gant water sculp­tures. “No mat­ter how many times I repeat the same process of throw­ing [water] in the air, I nev­er achieve the same result. And I am so fas­ci­nat­ed by this unex­pect­ed inter­ac­tion of liq­uids col­lid­ing … that I am over­whelmed by its beau­ty.” Find an inter­view with Maruya­ma here and more images of his work here. On a rather relat­ed note, don’t miss our pre­vi­ous post, Water Drop Filmed in 10,000 Frames Per Sec­ond. Anoth­er thing of beau­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

in Film, Literature, Sci Fi | January 13th, 2011

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown, a doc­u­men­tary from 2008, is avail­able online. Named the Best Doc­u­men­tary at the 2008 Com­ic-Con Inter­na­tion­al Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val, the film revis­its the life and writ­ings of H.P. Love­craft, the father of mod­ern hor­ror fic­tion. And it fea­tures impor­tant con­tem­po­rary artists (from film­mak­ers John Car­pen­ter and Guiller­mo Del Toro, to writ­ers along the lines of Neil Gaiman), all talk­ing about Love­craft’s influ­ence on their dark fan­ta­sy tra­di­tion.

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!

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MIT Introduces Complete Courses to OpenCourseWare Project

in MIT, Online Courses | January 13th, 2011

This week, MIT’s Open­Course­Ware project launched OCW Schol­ar, a new series of cours­es “designed for inde­pen­dent learn­ers who have few addi­tion­al resources avail­able to them.” To date, MIT has giv­en stu­dents access to iso­lat­ed mate­ri­als from MIT cours­es. Now, with this new ini­tia­tive, life­long learn­ers can work with a more round­ed set of resources. OWC Schol­ar takes video lec­tures, home­work prob­lems, prob­lem solv­ing videos, sim­u­la­tions, read­ings, etc., and stitch­es them into a struc­tured cur­ricu­lum. Per­fect for the self-dis­ci­plined stu­dent.

Below we have list­ed the first five cours­es in the OWC Schol­ar col­lec­tion. (They’re entire­ly free.) Fast for­ward three years and you will find 20 cours­es online, says MIT. All will be added to our big list of Free Online Cours­es.

Physics 1: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics
Physics II: Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism
Intro­duc­tion to Sol­id State Chem­istry
Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus
Mul­ti­vari­able Cal­cu­lus

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How Musical Are You?

in Music | January 12th, 2011

Are you blessed with a musi­cal brain? If you care to find out, the BBC is now run­ning an exper­i­ment – How Musi­cal Are You? – that assess­es your over­all rela­tion­ship with music. It includes ques­tion­naires and tests designed to see whether you can group togeth­er dif­fer­ent musi­cal styles, mem­o­rize tunes and rec­og­nize the beat in a piece of music. It all takes about 25 min­utes, and, when you’re done, you will receive some (desir­able or unde­sir­able) feed­back. This exper­i­ment was designed by researchers at the Music, Mind and Brain Research Group, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, and your par­tic­i­pa­tion will con­tribute to their research into the musi­cal brain. Note: You will need to reg­is­ter with the BBC to par­tic­i­pate.

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How to See the World Like Malcolm Gladwell

in Media | January 12th, 2011

This ques­tion ran through my mind just yes­ter­day. No, not how does Mal­colm Glad­well see the world? But, rather, what does it feel like to inhab­it the mind of peo­ple who think and see the world in entire­ly dif­fer­ent ways? The ques­tion can be a big exis­ten­tial thought exper­i­ment. Or, it turns out, it can be the impulse guid­ing Mal­colm Glad­well’s var­ied, often unex­pect­ed, and usu­al­ly best­selling inquiries.

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Raymond Chandler & Ian Fleming in Conversation (1958)

in Books, Literature | January 12th, 2011

We take you back to 1958 when Ian Flem­ing, cre­ator of the great spy­mas­ter char­ac­ter James Bond, meets up with Ray­mond Chan­dler, Amer­i­ca’s fore­most writer of hard-boiled detec­tive fic­tion. The two authors, who read and admired each oth­er’s work, sat down for drinks one day and got down to talk­ing about vil­lains (real and imag­ined) and their icon­ic lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. The BBC cap­tured it all on audio (above). You can also find a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion on page 30 of this PDF. The con­ver­sa­tion, which has a free flow­ing qual­i­ty to it, runs 25 min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ray­mond Chandler’s Long-Unno­ticed Cameo in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty

The Adven­tures of Philip Mar­lowe: The Radio Episodes

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

James Bond in Drag For Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day

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NASA: The Frontier Is Everywhere

in Astronomy, Video - Science | January 11th, 2011

Reid Gow­er writes: “NASA is the most fas­ci­nat­ing, adven­tur­ous, epic insti­tu­tion ever devised by human beings …” but “none of their bril­liant sci­en­tists appear to know how to con­nect with the social media crowd.” Strange giv­en that “NASA is an insti­tu­tion whose fund­ing direct­ly depends on how the pub­lic views them.” Tak­ing mat­ters into his own hands, Gow­er has pro­duced a lit­tle mar­ket­ing gift for NASA: The Fron­tier is Every­where, a video mod­eled after Michael Marantz’s beau­ti­ful short film, Earth: The Pale Blue Dot, which also fea­tures the voice of Carl Sagan – some­one who under­stood the impor­tance of pop­u­lar­iz­ing sci­ence…

P.S. NASA isn’t exact­ly inept on the mar­ket­ing front. We should remind you of two pret­ty cool and recent NASA pro­duc­tions:

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Lauch­es Pho­to Archive on Flickr

via Zadi.TV

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The Impossible Motion Contraption

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | January 11th, 2011

Every year, The New Sci­en­tist spon­sors an illu­sion con­test, and, above, we have the win­ner of the 2010 edi­tion: A con­trap­tion cre­at­ed by Kou­kichi Sug­i­hara (Mei­ji Insti­tute for Advanced Study of Math­e­mat­i­cal Sci­ences, Japan) that appears to defy grav­i­ty, allow­ing wood­en balls to roll up slopes. But, in actu­al fact “the ori­en­ta­tions of the slopes are per­ceived oppo­site­ly, and hence the descend­ing motion is mis­in­ter­pret­ed as ascend­ing motion.” You can now make sub­mis­sions to the 2011 edi­tion.

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A Brief History of Product Placement in Movies

in Film | January 11th, 2011

Prod­uct place­ment — it became com­mon­place dur­ing the 1980s, but it has a much longer his­to­ry, one that goes right back to the begin­ning of film. Oliv­er Noble’s video light­ly (empha­sis on light­ly) traces the evo­lu­tion of con­spic­u­ous prod­uct place­ment in film. A lit­tle tale of the not-so-good, the bad and the ugly…

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