Pendulum Waves as Kinetic Art

in Physics, Video - Science | August 9th, 2011

This Har­vard-pro­duced video has gone viral, and then some, hav­ing clocked more than 3,000,000 views. We’ve watched the pen­du­lum balls swirl, mov­ing almost impos­si­bly from pat­tern to pat­tern, and we’ve remained daz­zled all along. But the mechan­ics behind this chore­o­graphed action haven’t real­ly been brought to the fore. So let’s turn to Har­vard’s web site to under­stand how this kinet­ic art works:

The peri­od of one com­plete cycle of the dance is 60 sec­onds. The length of the longest pen­du­lum has been adjust­ed so that it exe­cutes 51 oscil­la­tions in this 60 sec­ond peri­od. The length of each suc­ces­sive short­er pen­du­lum is care­ful­ly adjust­ed so that it exe­cutes one addi­tion­al oscil­la­tion in this peri­od. Thus, the 15th pen­du­lum (short­est) under­goes 65 oscil­la­tions. When all 15 pen­du­lums are start­ed togeth­er, they quick­ly fall out of sync—their rel­a­tive phas­es con­tin­u­ous­ly change because of their dif­fer­ent peri­ods of oscil­la­tion. How­ev­er, after 60 sec­onds they will all have exe­cut­ed an inte­gral num­ber of oscil­la­tions and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

We’re adding this clip to our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. You’ll also find a good num­ber of Physics cours­es in our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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A Day in California

in Life | August 9th, 2011

Opin­ions are famous­ly mixed on South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. It has nev­er been Woody Allen’s kind of place. In Annie Hall, he quipped “I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only cul­tur­al advan­tage is that you can turn right on a red light.” But this is com­ing from a guy who prefers fog and over­cast skies to sun­ny days at the beach, some­one who does­n’t quite con­nect with what has drawn 25 mil­lion peo­ple to the region. Ryan Kil­lack­ey’s short film, “A Day in Cal­i­for­nia,” will speak to those res­i­dents, or any­one who dreams of the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia life. He worked on the project for a year and a half, and it com­bines 10,000 images into a seam­less whole. Learn more about the project or watch the film here.

via @alyssa_milano

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Financial Markets Course with Yale Sage Robert Shiller

in Business, Economics, Yale | August 8th, 2011

In March 2000, Yale econ­o­mist Robert Shiller pub­lished Irra­tional Exu­ber­ance, a book that warned that the long-run­ning bull mar­ket was a bub­ble. Weeks lat­er, the mar­ket cracked and Shiller was the new guru. Fast for­ward a few years, and Shiller released a sec­ond edi­tion of the same book, this time argu­ing that the hous­ing mar­ket was the lat­est and great­est bub­ble. We all know how that pre­dic­tion played out.

Unlike most of the finan­cial indus­try, Shiller isn’t locked into a peren­ni­al­ly bull­ish view, bent on pump­ing the mar­ket despite what the real num­bers sug­gest. And that should give stu­dents, whether young or old, some con­fi­dence in his free course sim­ply called “Finan­cial Mar­kets.” Avail­able on the web in mul­ti­ple for­mats (YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video — Yale Web Site), the 26 lec­ture-course cov­ers the inner-work­ings of finan­cial insti­tu­tions that ide­al­ly “sup­port peo­ple in their pro­duc­tive ven­tures” and help them man­age eco­nom­ic risks. You can start with Lec­ture 1 here. Above, we present his intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture on Stocks.

Final­ly (and sep­a­rate­ly) you can get Shiller’s thoughts on how to han­dle Amer­i­ca’s big debt mess here. It was record­ed in recent days.

Shiller’s course appears in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. 385 cours­es in total. Don’t miss them.

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Astonish Me: A Magical Mystery Through Nature’s Hidden Secrets

in Film, Video - Science | August 8th, 2011

The World Wildlife Fund turns 50 this year, and, to mark the occa­sion, the acclaimed drama­tist Stephen Poli­akoff and direc­tor Charles Stur­ridge have teamed up to shoot ‘Aston­ish Me,’ a short, mag­i­cal tale that reminds us of the many mys­ter­ies nature still con­ceals.

Every year, sci­en­tists dis­cov­er some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of 15,000 new species. (See some of the most intrigu­ing recent ones here.) But this could all dis­ap­pear if we don’t pay more atten­tion to con­ser­va­tion. Every­one who worked on the film — from actors to film crew — did so for free. The action takes place in London’s Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um.

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The Math Guy Radio Archive

in Math | August 8th, 2011

Image by Richard Ress­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Start­ing back in 1995, Kei­th Devlin, a Stan­ford math pro­fes­sor and pop­u­lar sci­ence writer, began mak­ing appear­ance’s on NPR’s Week­end Edi­tion Sat­ur­day, where he demys­ti­fies math ques­tions, both large and small, that have a bear­ing on our every­day lives. Years lat­er “The Math Guy,” as he’s oth­er­wise called, has built up a com­plete sound archive of his radio appear­ances, which fea­tures 78 episodes record­ed between 1995 and 2001. Here are a few fine exam­ples:

  • June 4, 2011 Any Way You Stack It, $14.3 Tril­lion Is A Mind-Ben­der. How can we com­pre­hend the size of the cur­rent US nation­al debt?
  • Octo­ber 23, 2010. Check­ing The Math Behind The Green­house Effect.
  • June 5, 2010. Run­ning the Num­bers for the World Cup.
  • July 4, 2009. Top 10 Rea­sons Why the BMI is Bogus.
  • April 4, 2009. Anoth­er Father of the Hydro­gen Bomb. The 100th anniver­sary of the birth of the math­e­mati­cian Stanis­law Ulam.
  • Feb­ru­ary 28, 2009. What do we need alge­bra for?
  • Decem­ber 27, 2008. ‘Hard Day’s Night’: A Math­e­mat­i­cal Mys­tery Tour. Math­e­mat­i­cal analy­sis of the open­ing chord and oth­er Bea­t­les music.

Again, you can access the com­plete archive here.

H/T @Stanford

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Video Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

Vin­tage MIT Cal­cu­lus Lessons

Futur­ist Arthur C. Clarke on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals

 

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Fellini + Abrams = Super 8½

in Film | August 8th, 2011

J.J. Abrams Super 8 meets Fed­eri­co Fellini’s mas­ter­piece 8 ½. The new gets lay­ered over the old, and it all adds up to Super 8 ½. Fun­ny enough, it kind of works.

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Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Animated

in Literature | August 5th, 2011

Back in 1959, Ken Kesey, then a grad stu­dent in Stan­ford’s cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram, start­ed par­tic­i­pat­ing in gov­ern­ment-spon­sored med­ical research that test­ed a range of hal­lu­cino­gens — LSD, psilo­cy­bin, mesca­line, and the rest. As part of the research project, Kesey spoke into a tapere­corder and recount­ed the ins-and-outs of his hal­lu­ci­na­tions. These tapes were even­tu­al­ly stored away, and Kesey went on to write One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest, a book that now sits on TIME’s list of the 100 Best Eng­lish-Lan­guage Nov­els since 1923.

A half cen­tu­ry lat­er (and ten years after Kesey’s own death), the LSD tapes live again. This week, the film­mak­er Alex Gib­ney will release Mag­ic Trip, a new doc­u­men­tary that revis­its Kesey’s fabled road trip across Amer­i­ca with the Mer­ry Pranksters and their psy­che­del­ic “Fur­ther” bus. (Tom Wolfe, you might recall, famous­ly cov­ered this trip with The Elec­tric Kool-Aid Acid Test, pub­lished in 1968.) Tak­en from the new film, the sequence above mix­es the redis­cov­ered tapes with some art­ful ani­ma­tion, and it cap­tures the whole mood of Kesey’s first trip …

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Tim­o­thy Leary’s Wild Ride and the Fol­som Prison Inter­view

via Wired

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Watch John Huston’s Beat the Devil

in Film | August 5th, 2011

In hon­or of what would have been John Hus­ton’s 105th birth­day, we’re fea­tur­ing Beat the Dev­il, the 1953 clas­sic direct­ed by Hus­ton and co-writ­ten by Tru­man Capote. Star­ring Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Jen­nifer Jones, Gina Lol­lo­b­rigi­da and Peter Lorre (quite a cast!), the film is a dra­mat­ic com­e­dy that spoofs the noir genre and par­tic­u­lar­ly Hus­ton’s own leg­endary film, The Mal­tese Fal­con. You can find Beat the Dev­il per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, as well as in our Free Film Noir col­lec­tion.

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