Physics in the Tiger Woods Scandal

in Physics | December 13th, 2009

Here’s the intel­lec­tu­al upside of the Tiger Woods ker­fuf­fle: A copy of John Grib­bin’s Get a Grip on Physics was spot­ted in Woods’ wrecked Cadil­lac. (Pho­to here.) And, ever since, the book has been in high demand. The Wall Street Jour­nal reports that the book’s Ama­zon sales rank has jumped from 396,224 to 2,268. But, from what I can tell, the book actu­al­ly seems to be out of print, and you’ll need to pay a min­i­mum of $42 to buy a used copy online. (Here’s an instance where Google’s book dig­i­ti­za­tion ini­tia­tive would ben­e­fit an author.) If you’re look­ing to bone up on your physics, let me save you a few bucks. With Learn­ing Physics Through Free Online Cours­es, we have pulled togeth­er free cours­es from MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, and Yale, plus a series of famous lec­tures by Richard Feyn­man that Bill Gates has put online. These and many oth­er physics cours­es can also be found in our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online and on our Free iPhone App. Enjoy and remem­ber to wear your seat­belt.

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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:

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.

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