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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Stephen Hawking/Carl Sagan Mashup Released as Single

in Music, Physics, Science | November 11th, 2009

For the past cou­ple of months, A Glo­ri­ous Dawn, a mashup meld­ing Stephen Hawk­ing’s voice with scenes from Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos, has been mak­ing its way around the blo­gos­phere. Now, on the eve of what would have been Sagan’s 75th birth­day (he died in 1996), A Glo­ri­ous Dawn has been offi­cial­ly released as a sin­gle by Third Man Records, the label cre­at­ed by White Stripes singer Jack White. We have post­ed the video above. You can also down­load the song in mp3 and oth­er for­mats here, or buy it as a spe­cial 7 inch sin­gle (pre-order here).

via Huff­in­g­ton Post and Telegraph.co.uk

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Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking Remixed

in Physics, Science | September 25th, 2009

It’s rare that a video trend­ing on YouTube actu­al­ly fits the mis­sion of this blog. But here you have one. As the pro­duc­er of this video writes, this is a “musi­cal trib­ute to two great men of sci­ence. Carl Sagan and his cos­mol­o­gist com­pan­ion Stephen Hawk­ing present: A Glo­ri­ous Dawn — Cos­mos remixed. Almost all sam­ples and footage are tak­en from Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos and Stephen Hawk­ing’s Uni­verse series.” You can down­load the track here. And, mean­while, I’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites.

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Math & Science Tutoring on YouTube

in Business, K-12, Math, Physics, Science | September 25th, 2009

This comes to us via a tip from Twit­ter. The Khan Acad­e­my has now post­ed on YouTube over 800 videos (find a com­plete list here) that will teach stu­dents the ins-and-outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more. The clips have been record­ed by Salman Khan, a Har­vard Busi­ness School and MIT grad. And to give you a feel for them, we’ve post­ed above the first in a long sequence of lec­tures on dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions. (The remain­ing lec­tures can be found here.) This YouTube chan­nel, which now appears on our list, Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tions, is one of sev­er­al video sites that pro­vide free online tutor­ing via video. As men­tioned in the past, you can find online good video col­lec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to chem­istry and cal­cu­lus.

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Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum

in Physics, Stanford | September 14th, 2009

For the past two years, Stan­ford has been rolling out a series of cours­es (col­lec­tive­ly called Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum) that gives you a base­line knowl­edge for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics. The sequence, which moves from Isaac New­ton, to Albert Einstein’s work on the gen­er­al and spe­cial the­o­ries of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, to black holes and string the­o­ry, comes out of Stanford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram (my day job). And the cours­es are all taught by Leonard Susskind, an impor­tant physi­cist who has engaged in a long run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing. The final course, Sta­tis­ti­cal Mechan­ics, has now been post­ed on YouTube, and you can also find it on iTunes in video. The rest of the cours­es can be accessed imme­di­ate­ly below. Six cours­es. Rough­ly 120 hours of con­tent. A com­pre­hen­sive tour of mod­ern physics. All in video. All free. Beat that.

Mod­ern Physics: The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum

PS If you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, you should con­sid­er check­ing out Prof. Susskind’s new course. It will take a year­long look at new rev­o­lu­tions in Par­ti­cle Physics, and how impor­tant the­o­ries will be test­ed by the Large Hadron Col­lid­er in Europe. His course begins next week. Learn more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Has Stephen Hawk­ing Been Wrong For The Last 30 Years?

Learn­ing Physics Through Free Online Cours­es

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Cosmology Online

in Physics | June 28th, 2009

Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford physi­cist who helped con­cep­tu­al­ize string the­o­ry and has waged a long-run­ning “Black Hole War” with Stephen Hawk­ing (see his newish book on that sub­ject) offers a course on Cos­mol­o­gy, which stud­ies the ori­gin and devel­op­ment of the uni­verse. It’s actu­al­ly the fifth course in a larg­er six-course intro­duc­tion to Mod­ern Physics (find them in our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es). But the course stands on its own, and, along the way, it takes a close look at the Big Bang, the geom­e­try of space-time, infla­tion­ary cos­mol­o­gy, dark mat­ter, dark ener­gy, the string the­o­ry land­scape and more. You can access the full course on YouTube here, and also on iTunes here. Final­ly, the course comes out of Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, which brings engag­ing class­es to the broad­er pub­lic. If you hap­pen to live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area (0r want to take top-notch writ­ing cours­es online), give the pro­gram a look.

PS We’ve got a new cus­tom url for our Face­book page. Check us out at facebook.com/openculture.

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Angels & Demons: The Science Revealed

in Physics, Science | June 16th, 2009

Back when I was at the now defunct Alliance for Life­long Learn­ing (an e‑learning ven­ture put togeth­er by Stan­ford, Oxford and Yale), we did a reli­gion course that keyed off of Dan Brown’s Da Vin­ci Code. No one thought high­ly of the book, but the dean of the Yale Divin­i­ty School believed that the book’s pop­u­lar­i­ty (and the ques­tions it raised about reli­gion) cre­at­ed a good teach­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. And he was right. Fast for­ward sev­er­al years, and we now have Dan Brown’s oth­er book, Angels & Demons, get­ting released as a major film too. So, why not use this as an occa­sion to talk about the sci­ence invoked by the film? UC Berke­ley has done just that. (Watch here). And so has Carnegie Mel­lon. CM pref­aces the video fea­tured above as fol­lows: 

Could you real­ly destroy the Vat­i­can using a small amount of anti­mat­ter made in the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? Thats the ques­tion Carnegie Mel­lons Man­fred Pauli­ni seeks to answer in the lec­ture Angels and Demons: The Sci­ence Revealed. Dr. Pauli­ni, an exper­i­men­tal par­ti­cle physi­cist and mem­ber of the CMS exper­i­ment at CERNs Large Hadron Col­lid­er, dis­cuss­es the sci­ence facts and fic­tion in the movie Angels and Demons, based on Dan Browns best-sell­ing nov­el.

Dr. Pauli­ni talks about the physics at the heart of Angels and Demons, which focus­es on what hap­pens when mat­ter and anti­mat­ter meet. The absence of prac­ti­cal­ly any anti­mat­ter in the uni­verse is cru­cial to our exis­tence, and under­stand­ing that absence is one of the big chal­lenges of par­ti­cle physics.

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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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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.