Richard Feynman Presents Quantum Electrodynamics for the NonScientist

in Physics, Video - Science | April 9th, 2012

In 1979, the charis­mat­ic physi­cist Richard Feyn­man jour­neyed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land (New Zealand) and deliv­ered a series of four lec­tures on Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics (QED), the the­o­ry for which he won his Nobel Prize. It’s some heady mate­r­i­al, but Feyn­man made a point of mak­ing dif­fi­cult con­cepts intel­li­gi­ble to a crowd not nec­es­sar­i­ly trained in sci­en­tif­ic think­ing. If you’ve nev­er seen Feyn­man lec­ture before, then you won’t want to miss these lec­tures avail­able in four parts (find Part 1 above, and the remain­ing parts below), or his longer lec­ture series, The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law, deliv­ered at Cor­nell in 1964. (Find it here, or in the Physics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.)

As for the Auck­lund lec­tures on QED, they lat­er became the basis for Feyn­man’s pop­u­lar 1988 book, QED: The Strange The­o­ry of Light and Mat­ter. 

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

Richard Feyn­man: The Like­li­hood of Fly­ing Saucers

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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Perpetual Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visualization of Our Ocean Currents

in Video - Science | April 3rd, 2012

Hats off to the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter Sci­en­tif­ic Visu­al­iza­tion Stu­dio, which pro­duced this three minute ani­ma­tion called Per­pet­u­al Ocean. The visu­al­iza­tion shows ocean cur­rents as they swirled around between June 2005 and Decem­ber 2007, and it was all pro­duced with a com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el called ECCO2. ECCO2 attempts to mod­el the cir­cu­la­tion and cli­mate of the ocean, help­ing sci­en­tists to under­stand how the ocean will con­tribute to future cli­mate change. It’s some heady sci­ence that also yields some visu­al­ly impres­sive ani­ma­tions.

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.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

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NASA’s Stunning Tour of the Moon

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | April 2nd, 2012

On 18 June 2009, NASA launched the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO) from Cape Canaver­al to con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions that would pave the way for future lunar explo­ration. The main objec­tives? To scout for safe and pro­duc­tive land­ing sites, locate poten­tial resources (with spe­cial atten­tion to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of water ice) and char­ac­ter­ize the effects of pro­longed expo­sure to lunar radi­a­tion. All along, the LRO has col­lect­ed sci­en­tif­ic data about the moon’s topog­ra­phy and com­po­si­tion, result­ing in some of the most spec­tac­u­lar images ever tak­en of the moon. NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter has assem­bled some of these images into a won­der­ful ani­mat­ed tour of the moon.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Star Gazing from the International Space Station (and Free Astronomy Courses Online)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | March 26th, 2012

Don Pet­tit joined NASA in 1996 and has since logged more than 176 days in space, liv­ing abord the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS) mul­ti­ple times, and always tak­ing his cam­era with him. In the past, he has shown us What It Feels Like to Fly Over Plan­et Earth, Views of the Auro­ra Bore­alis Seen from Space, and How to Drink Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty. Now we get an edit­ed ver­sion of what it looks like to star gaze from low orbit. Whether you look up or down, you can’t lose.

Look­ing to dig a lit­tle deep­er into what’s hap­pen­ing out there in the cos­mos? Then you might want to spend some time with the cours­es list­ed in the Astron­o­my sec­tion of our Free Cours­es col­lec­tion.

  • Astro­bi­ol­o­gy and Space Explo­ration – iTunes – YouTube – Lynn Rotschild, Stan­ford
  • Astron­o­my 101 – iTunes – Web Site – Scott Miller, Mer­cedes Richards & Stephen Red­man, Penn State
  • Explor­ing Black Holes: Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty & Astro­physics –YouTube – iTunes Video — Web Site – Edmund Bertschinger, MIT
  • Fron­tiers and Con­tro­ver­sies in Astro­physics - YouTube — iTunes Audio – iTunes Video – Down­load Course – Charles Bai­lyn, Yale
  • Intro­duc­tion to Astro­physics — iTunes — Joshua Bloom, UC Berke­ley

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and start shar­ing intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Astronaut Films Auroras from Above

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 20th, 2012

As the sun’s 11-year cycle of mag­net­ic storms moves clos­er to peak inten­si­ty some­time ear­ly next year, peo­ple who live at high­er lat­i­tudes can expect to see col­or­ful auro­ras light­ing up the night sky. But what would it be like to look down at the auro­ras, or to move through them? In these strik­ing images from NASA, we find out. Astro­naut Don Pet­tit has been orbit­ing the Earth since Decem­ber, as a Flight Engi­neer for Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion Expe­di­tion 30, and while up there he’s been tak­ing advan­tage of the increased solar activ­i­ty by film­ing some of the fire­works in the Earth­’s mag­ne­tos­phere. “We can actu­al­ly fly into the auro­ras,” Pet­tit says in this NASA Sci­ence­Cast. “It’s like being shrunk down and put inside of a neon sign.” To learn more, you can read the arti­cle at NASA Sci­ence News, and to watch oth­er episodes in the series, vis­it the Sci­ence­Casts home page. Find more excel­lent clips in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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The Most Astounding Fact According to Neil deGrasse Tyson

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | March 8th, 2012

Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked by a read­er of TIME mag­a­zine back in 2008, “What is the most astound­ing fact you can share with us about the Uni­verse?” Here’s his answer, set to a new­ly-designed video. If you want to see the orig­i­nal TIME Q&A, you can revis­it it on YouTube here. H/T Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Remem­bers His First Meet­ing with Carl Sagan

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The Fabric of the Cosmos with Brian Greene: Watch the Complete NOVA Series Online

in Physics, Television, Video - Science | March 7th, 2012

For­get about inclined planes and pul­leys. In this series from the PBS pro­gram NOVA, physics is pre­sent­ed as an exot­ic, mind-bend­ing realm.

The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos, first broad­cast in Novem­ber, fol­lows up on the 2003 Peabody Award-win­ning The Ele­gant Uni­verse. Both series are adapt­ed from the best-sell­ing books of host Bri­an Greene, a math­e­mati­cian and physi­cist at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

Like the ear­li­er series, which was cen­tered around String The­o­ry, The Fab­ric of the Cos­mos deals with ideas that are on the cut­ting edge of sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry. “This is a report from the fron­tier of cos­mic thought,” wrote Den­nis Over­bye last Novem­ber in The New York Times, “as fresh as last mon­th’s Nobel Prizes, uncom­pro­mis­ing in its intel­lec­tu­al ambi­tions and dis­cern­ing in its choice of com­pelling sci­en­tif­ic issues. The action ranges from Times Square to the Grand Canyon, from bowl­ing lanes and bil­liard tables to the lim­its of the imag­i­na­tion.”

The series is arranged in four parts of approx­i­mate­ly 50 min­utes each. The episodes are called “What is Space?;” ‘The Illu­sion of Time,’ ‘Quan­tum Leap,’ and ‘Uni­verse or Mul­ti­verse?’

 

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Stephen Hawking’s Universe: A Visualization of His Lectures with Stars & Sound

in Physics, Video - Science | March 2nd, 2012


It’s a lit­tle ran­dom. It’s very cool. It’s Jared Fick­lin’s inter­ac­tive art project that takes Stephen Hawk­ing’s Cam­bridge Lec­tures and then uses an algo­rithm to turn the physi­cist’s words into stars. The video pret­ty much explains all that you need to know. I should only add two things. 1.) Fick­lin is one of the speak­ers at the big TED show this week, and 2.) it looks like you can snag The Cam­bridge Lec­tures (or pret­ty much any book you want) as a free audio down­load from Audible.com if you sign up for their 14 day, no-strings-attached, free tri­al. Get more details on that here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Trib­ute to Stephen Hawk­ing, A Brief His­to­ry of Time

Stephen Hawk­ing: Aban­don Earth Or Face Extinc­tion

Free Physics Cours­es (part of our col­lec­tion of 750 Free Online Cours­es)

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