The Mechanical Universe

sponsoredwalk

The thought occured to me to share this little gem with the people on this site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mechanical_Universe

This is a first year college level video course on introductory physics.

It consists of 52 half-hour lectures on everything from calculus, to kinematics, to dynamics, to waves, Keplerian orbits, to Maxwells equations, to Special Relativity, to intro Quantum Mechanics, etc...

It visually and mathematically discribes;
The Millikan Oil Drop Experiment,
How the epicycle theory was disproven,
How Kepler plotted the orbit of Mars,
How resonance destroys wine glasses & bridges alike,
How Newton calculated the moon falling towards the earth,
How Maxwell discovered "c",
a derivation of the Lorentz Transform,

Personally, I got hooked on this show a year ago before I knew calculus & got lost quite a few times. You're going to have to know some basic calc & vector algebra to get the most out of it, but I bet you could concurrently learn these while watching.


Well, this show is pure retro too. There's plenty of scenes of Leibniz, Newton, Gallileo, Faraday, etc... all played by hilarious actors. Some old 70's German movie on Kepler (featured in Cosmos too:p) that I still search for to this day.

I'll stress that you either need to be studying a proper book or have already done so to get the most out of it. However, if this show was shown to people without mathematical/physics abilities I bet it would only encourage most of them to get cracking/equating...

It's free, retro, legal good clean fun provided by the Annenberg Foundation

krd

Funnily enough, I was watching some of these the other week. Maxwell, Kepler and resonance (the bridge piece is really cool).

1985, David Goodstein, CalTech. Annenberg Foundation.

On American free to air TV, there's always at least one or two university channels that just show lectures. They show these kinds of lectures all the time.

I've been watching a few of these shows - trying to refresh myself - soon I intend to get down to some painful work of using a pen and some paper to do actual calculations.

sponsoredwalk

Thats awesome that they still show this stuff on tv.
This series is phenomenal, the music is so inspiring when it derives some of the equations, particularly when they derived the speed of light. To me it was just one of those moments you know.

But yeah, you simply can't depend on these alone to learn. They are the perfect supplement. If we were shown this stuff in leaving cert physics mixed with some notes & practice equations instead of that terrible curriculum they have, well I just don't know lol, I suppose it is too advanced...

These mixed with one of those standard college level texts and the superb onine lecture series given by Yale are just a full frontal assault on physics.
Really recommended to all.

krd

No you can't depend on them alone to learn. To learn the concepts properly you need to do the derivations. But they're great for covering the basic concepts very well.

I was studying physics just before the advent of the internet proper. We had no real access to stuff like this. And I was studying at a college with a crap library. There was no google. If you wanted to use another college's library, you had to write a letter and get permission - Then get on a bus and travel there hoping the books they had would cover what you needed. Life was really painful.

I'd love to have access to all the open university stuff as well. I love to have the stuff on USB sticks that I could just pop on find what I'm looking etc. - I'm looking to revise what I've forgotten

gentillabdulla

I watched the first 2 so far and saying that I like them is an understatement.

sponsoredwalk

Okay, before you go and finish the videos, if you want to learn this stuff right I think you should just relax.

There are accompanying lectures that I found on itunes only very recently.

These lectures are meant to accompany the first 20 or so lectures of the mechanical universe.

I really recommend you try to coordinate them with the mechanical universe videos so that you'll learn this stuff as best as possible on first exposure, and take notes.

Here are the videos, these are classroom lectures. The lecturer in the videos talks about what mechanical universe lecture will coincide with what video of his, so I'd say watch the first two of these new ones before moving on

They are in .mp4 format, if they don't work on your pc, get VLC media player off the net & they will.

If the calculus is too difficult, here is a pretty brief calculus course that will give you the necessary tools to follow the course properly. These are khanacademy videos. There are good physics, chemistry & math videos @ that link.

Also, the physics videos at that link are extremely helpful, & would aid your understanding the classroom lectures, as they are slightly more difficult than the mechanical universe but the khanacademy lectures will teach you how to understand the difficult parts of the classroom lectures

gentillabdulla

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

Okay, before you go and finish the videos, if you want to learn this stuff right I think you should just relax.

There are accompanying lectures that I found on itunes only very recently.

These lectures are meant to accompany the first 20 or so lectures of the mechanical universe.

I really recommend you try to coordinate them with the mechanical universe videos so that you'll learn this stuff as best as possible on first exposure, and take notes.

Here are the videos, these are classroom lectures. The lecturer in the videos talks about what mechanical universe lecture will coincide with what video of his, so I'd say watch the first two of these new ones before moving on

They are in .mp4 format, if they don't work on your pc, get VLC media player off the net & they will.

If the calculus is too difficult, here is a pretty brief calculus course that will give you the necessary tools to follow the course properly. These are khanacademy videos. There are good physics, chemistry & math videos @ that link.

Also, the physics videos at that link are extremely helpful, & would aid your understanding the classroom lectures, as they are slightly more difficult than the mechanical universe but the khanacademy lectures will teach you how to understand the difficult parts of the classroom lectures

Thanks I only got through the first 10 on the mechanical universe.

I understood everything, , and found them as interesting to me as an 11 year old girl is interested in Hannah Montanna.

Will be looking through the rest of the lectures soon.

And if you don't mind why not take a shot at this iq workout that is similar to Mensa?(I took it myself it doesn't do anything.)

Try and beat my score of 28 out of 30.

Here.....
http://www.mensa.org/workout.php