MIT’s (Free) Introduction to Physics

in Physics, Science | April 13th, 2008

Wel­come to MIT. Here’s your intro­duc­tion to Physics.

Today, we present Physics I: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics, a fresh­man course taught by Wal­ter Lewin, the pop­u­lar physics pro­fes­sor who was recent­ly writ­ten up in The New York Times. The course cov­ers the foun­da­tions of mod­ern physics, which takes you from Isaac New­ton’s ground­break­ing work to super­novas, and which cov­ers such oth­er top­ics as Flu­id Mechan­ics, Kinet­ic Gas The­o­ry, Bina­ry Stars, Neu­tron Stars, Black Holes, Res­o­nance Phe­nom­e­na, Musi­cal Instru­ments, and Stel­lar Col­lapse.

You can down­load the course lec­tures in video via iTunes or in var­i­ous for­mats here. (The course is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties, which now con­tains over 200 free cours­es.) For more lec­ture series by Wal­ter Lewin, look here (Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism) and here (Vibra­tions and Waves).

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Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained

in Physics, Science | April 1st, 2008

Ein­stein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty needs no intro­duc­tion. Actu­al­ly maybe it does since we’re not deal­ing with light con­cepts here.

Rel­a­tiv­i­ty in a Nut­shell (MP3) offers a free, 30-minute intro­duc­tion to Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. The lec­ture was pre­sent­ed by Richard Wolf­son of Mid­dle­bury Col­lege. And it’s cou­pled with a sec­ond free lec­ture called Ein­stein’s Mirac­u­lous Year. Both lec­tures were pro­duced by The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of Ein­stein’s work on rel­a­tiv­i­ty (1905), and they tie into a larg­er com­mer­cial course taught by Wolf­son: Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and the Quan­tum Rev­o­lu­tion: Mod­ern Physics for Non-Sci­en­tists. The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny cours­es are not free, but they’re well done. And if you buy the mp3 ver­sions when they’re on sale, you can often get the cours­es at a good price. Also, you can fre­quent­ly find DVD ver­sions dis­count­ed on Ama­zon (see, for exam­ple, here). And, even bet­ter, you can some­times rent them for free from your local library.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for a good selec­tion of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, vis­it our meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. Also see our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Einstein and the Mind of God

in Physics, Religion, Science | October 18th, 2007

Speak­ing at a con­fer­ence on sci­ence, reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy in 1941, Albert Ein­stein famous­ly said that “sci­ence with­out reli­gion is lame; reli­gion with­out sci­ence is blind.” Ein­stein, a Ger­man-born Jew, con­sid­ered him­self reli­gious. But what he meant by reli­gion was not straight­for­ward. The first episode of a two-part pod­cast called Ein­stein and the Mind of God (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site) tries to sort out Ein­stein’s reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ty and how it squares with his sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. For Ein­stein, reli­gion con­sist­ed of a belief, not in a per­son­al God, but a uni­ver­sal spir­it that man­i­fests itself in nature. And it was the task of physics to make sense of nature, of God’s uni­verse. Or, so that is how it’s explained by Free­man Dyson, a famed the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist who appears on the show. In the sec­ond part, the pod­cast turns to look at Ein­stein’s ethics (iTunes — MP3 — Web Site). Although not with­out per­son­al flaws (he often fell short in his personal/domestic life), Ein­stein had a strong moral sense informed by his Jew­ish upbring­ing. He saw sci­en­tists hav­ing a deep moral oblig­a­tion to soci­ety; he took strong posi­tions against war (except when Hitler came along); he opposed racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and lament­ed the plight of African-Amer­i­cans well before the civ­il rights move­ment; and he laud­ed reli­gious lead­ers’ efforts to use non-vio­lent action to oppose immoral con­di­tions. Each of these pod­casts runs around 53 min­utes in length, and they form part of a larg­er radio/podcast series called Speak­ing of Faith (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which is issued by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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What Genius Looks Like at Zero Gravity

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | May 2nd, 2007


Stephen Hawk­ing recent­ly climbed aboard a jet nick­named the “Vom­it Comet,” which car­ried Hawk­ing and his med­ical staff to 32,000 feet and then began a par­a­bol­ic dive that put the celebri­ty physi­cist into a state of weight­less­ness…

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How Einstein Became Einstein

in Physics, Science | April 16th, 2007


      Einstein_3The nar­ra­tive of Albert Ein­stein’s life pro­vides hope to every under­achiev­er out there. Ein­stein was slow to start speak­ing. His teach­ers pre­dict­ed ear­ly on that he’d nev­er amount to much. When he com­plet­ed his grad­u­ate work, he was the only stu­dent in his cohort who could­n’t land a uni­ver­si­ty posi­tion. And so he wound up work­ing at a patent office in Switzer­land. The young Ein­stein was appar­ent­ly “no Ein­stein.” 

But it was at the patent office that young Albert fleshed out his the­o­ries on rel­a­tiv­i­ty, and he’d even­tu­al­ly win a Nobel Prize. Lat­er, when he trav­eled to the Unit­ed States, he was wel­comed as a rock star. All of this is recount­ed in Wal­ter Isaac­son’s new biog­ra­phy, Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse, which John Updike reviewed in a recent New York­er. The for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor at Time mag­a­zine and head of CNN, Isaac­son writes biogra­phies that are rich but approach­able. To get a feel for his style, you can lis­ten to him talk about Ein­stein dur­ing an appear­ance on Fresh Air (iTunes — Feed). And, just as an inter­est­ing aside, you can down­load Ein­stein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty: The Spe­cial and Gen­er­al The­o­ry as a free audio book from Lib­rivox (full zip file — indi­vid­ual mp3 files).

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Has Stephen Hawking Been Wrong For The Last 30 Years?

in Physics, Video - Science | March 16th, 2007

With his cut­ting-edge research on black holes in the 1970s, Stephen Hawk­ing emerged as a major play­er in the physics world. Then, with the 1988 pub­li­ca­tion of the best­seller, A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Hawk­ing achieved inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty sta­tus.

As this BBC pre­sen­ta­tion shows, Hawk­ing’s fame might rest on weak­er foun­da­tions than most could have imag­ined. Sev­er­al impor­tant physi­cists, includ­ing Leonard Susskind here at Stan­ford (see our pre­vi­ous ref­er­ences to him), zeroed in on Hawk­ing’s major con­tention that, when black holes dis­ap­pear, they take along with them all infor­ma­tion that ever exist­ed inside them, which leads to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion that there are clear lim­its to what sci­en­tists could ever know about black holes. After 20 years of debate, the Susskind camp seems to have won out, leav­ing Hawk­ing’s lega­cy in ques­tion. This BBC web page will give you the back­sto­ry in brief, but you may want to go straight to this 50 minute video.

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