Learning Physics Through Free Courses

in Physics | April 13th, 2009

There’s some­thing com­pelling about physics. Almost every major open course­ware col­lec­tion fea­tures a well-craft­ed physics course, and these cours­es con­sis­tent­ly rank high on iTune­sU and YouTube Edu. Let’s give a quick overview of the favorites.

At Stan­ford, we’re putting togeth­er a six course sequence called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum. Taught by Leonard Susskind, one of America’s lead­ing physics minds, this course traces the devel­op­ment of mod­ern physics, mov­ing from 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 won­der­ing, the sixth course is being taped right now, and it will be com­ing online dur­ing the months to come.)

Anoth­er pro­gram that has received a fair amount of atten­tion is Wal­ter Lewin’s series of cours­es at MIT. As The New York Times has not­ed, Lewin has long had a cult fol­low­ing at MIT, and now, thanks to his physics cours­es, he’s achieved a minor degree of fame on the inter­net. His lec­tures, deliv­ered with panache, can be found here:

• Physics I: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics — iTunes — Video Down­load — YouTube
• Physics II: Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism — iTunes — Video Down­load — YouTube
• Physics III: Vibra­tions and Waves — iTunes — Video Down­load — YouTube

A third course to call your atten­tion to is Richard Muller’s Physics for Future Pres­i­dents (Feed — MP3s — YouTube).  The course comes out of UC Berke­ley, where it’s an under­grad­u­ate favorite. (It’s also the basis of a recent book by the same name.) And the whole point here is to give cit­i­zens the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge they need to under­stand crit­i­cal issues fac­ing our soci­ety.

Final­ly, anoth­er course worth review­ing is Fun­da­men­tals of Physics, which is taught by Rama­mur­ti Shankar and it’s part of Yale’s Open Course ini­tia­tive.

UPDATE: Since we orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed this col­lec­tion, Bill Gates has post­ed Richard Feyn­man’s great lec­tures online. Learn more here.

All of these physics cours­es, and many more, can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. You can also find the cours­es in our sec­tion called Physics: Free Cours­es.

Crime Fiction: Download and Listen

in Audio Books | April 11th, 2009

Seth Har­wood is bring­ing crime writ­ing into the new world of Web 2.0. Since 2006, Har­wood has been pod­cast­ing his own crime fic­tion, includ­ing a book called Jack Wakes Up, which you can down­load (for free) via iTunes, RSS Feed, or MP3. (Ran­dom House will be releas­ing Jack Wakes Up in print next month for $10.25.) This expe­ri­ence got Seth think­ing about the pow­er of pod­casts, and he soon took the next log­i­cal step, launch­ing Crimewav.com, a web­site devot­ed to pod­cast­ing crime sto­ries (not just his own) to an audi­ence world­wide. On Crime­wav, you’ll find some gems, includ­ing Dashiell Ham­met­t’s first sto­ry (1923), “The Bar­ber and His Wife” (mp3). Plus, you’ll stum­ble upon a delet­ed chap­ter from Michael Con­nel­ly’s lat­est NYT best­seller, The Brass Ver­dict, read by Con­nel­ly him­self (mp3). Lots of good pieces to explore. And if this sort of fic­tion is your thing, then let me direct you to two oth­er good resources. First, an archive of Agatha Christie’s radio mys­ter­ies, and then the free works of best­selling hor­ror author, Scott Sigler. Enjoy.

A Closer Look at YouTube EDU

in Google, YouTube | March 31st, 2009

Art Inspired Poetry

in Art, Poetry | March 29th, 2009

Introducing YouTube EDU!

in Google, YouTube | March 26th, 2009

Here’s a lit­tle break­ing news: Today, Google has launched YouTube EDU, which cen­tral­izes the con­tent from over 100 uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges (get list here).  This robust col­lec­tion gives you access to lec­tures by pro­fes­sors and world-renowned thought lead­ers, new research and cam­pus tours. At the moment, you can access over 200 full cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, UCLA, Yale and  IIT/IISc.  And it’s all search­able with­in YouTube EDU.

I plan to fol­low up with a more exten­sive piece soon. But I just want­ed to get the word out and let you start check­ing it out. If you have any first impres­sions, please let us know what you think in the com­ments. Nice work Youtube!

Last­ly, if you want to down­load hun­dreds of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es (most­ly in audio) to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es here.

Fol­low us on Twit­ter at @openculture or sign up for our rss feed here.

Extreme Sheepherding

in Random | March 20th, 2009

File this clip (now added to our YouTube Favorites) under Ran­dom. See you next week. 

via Alfred A. Knopf Twit­ter Feed (ours here)

Is GWB The Worst President Of The Past 50 Years?

in Current Affairs | March 19th, 2009

Stay with me con­ser­v­a­tives on this one. It’s not as bad as you think…

NPR’s Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has a rather unique for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (Get more pre­cise details on the debate for­mat here.) Recent debates have cen­tered on the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Is Wash­ing­ton or Wall Street ulti­mate­ly to blame for the finan­cial cri­sis? Should we legal­ize the mar­ket for human organs?  Is the US final­ly win­ning the war in Iraq? And then, is George W. Bush the worst pres­i­dent of the last 50 years?

The GWB debate brings togeth­er a pret­ty sol­id pan­el. Argu­ing against the Bush lega­cy: Jacob Weis­berg (Edi­tor in Chief of Slate) and Simon Jenk­ins (colum­nist for the Guardian and the Sun­day Times). Then, for the Bush lega­cy: Karl Rove (the all impor­tant Bush strate­gist) and Bill Kris­tol (edi­tor of The Week­ly Stan­dard and for­mer colum­nist for The New York Times). As you’ll see, it’s a pret­ty spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion. Have a lis­ten and let us know where you come down: iTunes — Feed — Stream.

As a quick note, the Intel­li­gence Squared pod­cast can be per­ma­nent­ly found in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Stevie Wonder Performs “Sketches of a Life”

in Music | March 18th, 2009

“Ste­vie Won­der, the awardee of the sec­ond Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song, pre­mieres “Sketch­es of a Life,” a sprawl­ing, hybrid pop-clas­si­cal con­cer­to, writ­ten between 1976 and 1994. The work was unveiled through a com­mis­sion for the Library of Con­gress in the Coolidge Audi­to­ri­um.” The per­for­mance was record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 23, and it runs 55 min­utes. You can watch it here.

Via The Library of Con­gress Twit­ter Feed (Get ours here)

Clay Shirky on the Demise of the Newspaper

in Media | March 15th, 2009

Clay Shirky, who does a lot of good think­ing (see his lat­est book) about the social and eco­nom­ic effects of inter­net tech­nolo­gies, has post­ed a new piece on the slow but steady demise of the news­pa­per. It’s an intel­li­gent, not entire­ly lengthy, piece. Here’s a quick quote to whet your appetite:

Round and round this [debate], with the peo­ple com­mit­ted to sav­ing news­pa­pers demand­ing to know “If the old mod­el is bro­ken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Noth­ing. Noth­ing will work. There is no gen­er­al mod­el for news­pa­pers to replace the one the inter­net just broke.

With the old eco­nom­ics destroyed, orga­ni­za­tion­al forms per­fect­ed for indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion have to be replaced with struc­tures opti­mized for dig­i­tal data. It makes increas­ing­ly less sense even to talk about a pub­lish­ing indus­try, because the core prob­lem pub­lish­ing solves — the incred­i­ble dif­fi­cul­ty, com­plex­i­ty, and expense of mak­ing some­thing avail­able to the pub­lic — has stopped being a prob­lem…

Soci­ety doesn’t need news­pa­pers. What we need is jour­nal­ism. For a cen­tu­ry, the imper­a­tives to strength­en jour­nal­ism and to strength­en news­pa­pers have been so tight­ly wound as to be indis­tin­guish­able. That’s been a fine acci­dent to have, but when that acci­dent stops, as it is stop­ping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of oth­er ways to strength­en jour­nal­ism instead.

When we shift our atten­tion from ’save news­pa­pers’ to ’save soci­ety’, the imper­a­tive changes from ‘pre­serve the cur­rent insti­tu­tions’ to ‘do what­ev­er works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

And while I’m on this top­ic, let me also direct your atten­tion to a piece pub­lished on Mash­able by a recent col­league of mine, Woody Lewis. It gives you a good look at the 10 Ways News­pa­pers are Using Social Media to Save the Indus­try (assum­ing that can be done).

via Clay Shirky’s Twit­ter Feed

Leonard Cohen, Live From The Beacon Theatre

in Music | March 12th, 2009

Leg­endary Cana­di­an musi­cian Leonard Cohen is now tour­ing the Unit­ed States for the first time in 15 years (get all of the details here). Fans who can’t catch a show will be pleased to know that NPR’s All Songs Con­sid­ered pro­vides free access to Cohen’s recent show at the Bea­con The­atre in NYC. (It was record­ed on or around Feb­ru­ary 19th.) The set should run about 1:14 and includes 12 songs. You can get it here:  Stream — RSS Feed — iTunes.