Physics & Caffeine: Stop Motion Film Uses a Cup of Coffee to Explain Key Concepts in Physics

Want to teach me physics? Make it inter­est­ing. Bet­ter yet, use a cup of cof­fee as a prop. Now you’ve got my atten­tion.

Cre­at­ed by Char­lotte Arene while intern­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris-Sud’s Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Sol­id State Physics, Physics & Caf­feine uses a shot of espres­so to explain key con­cepts in physics. Why does cof­fee cool off so quick­ly when you blow on it? It comes down to under­stand­ing heat and ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Why does cof­fee stay in a cup at all? That seem­ing­ly sim­ple ques­tion is explained by quan­tum mechan­ics and even New­ton­ian physics and spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty. You might want to watch that sec­tion twice.

Shot image by image, this stop motion film took three long months to cre­ate. Pret­ty impres­sive when you con­sid­er that 5,000 images went into mak­ing the film.

Get more infor­ma­tion on the film, and even down­load it, from this page. And find more physics primers below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Free Physics Text­books

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

World Sci­ence U Lets You Take Free Physics Cours­es from Lead­ing Minds in the Field

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing