Alexander Müller
K. Alexander Müller shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with J. Georg Bednorz in 1987 'for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials'. At the age of 9 Mller was given a radio (a single vacuum tube receiv....
More details | Watch nowAntimatter
What is antimatter? What does it tell us about the structure of our universe? Can we ever detect it?
More details | Watch nowBig Bang – a tour of the Large Hadron Collider
Dr Brian Cox takes us on a tour of the Large Hadron Collider where the conditions moments after the Big Bang are to be recreated.
More details | Watch nowCosmic X-ray sources
Riccardo Giacconi , USA was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2002 for 'for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources.
More details | Watch nowHow X-rays cracked the structure of DNA
An elegantly simple optical diffraction demonstration with an inexpensive laser pointer is used to show the way in which x-rays can reveal the structure of crystals, and in particular, the double helix structure of DNA.
More details | Watch nowIvar Giaever
Ivar Giaever won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his investigations of tunneling in semiconductors and superconductors. Giaever worked on metal thin films and tunneling and took a Solid State physics course. Although he knew nothing about Superconductivi....
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Helen Sharman, the UK's first astronaut, gives a vibrant account of her personal experience of life in space using models and film to illustrate the key scientific concepts involved in spaceflight. Among other things she discusses the way Newton's Th....
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Light is reflected off a flexible shiny surface fixed to the end of a plastic tube. When one speaks into the tubes sound vibrations pass down the tube and make the surface vibrate. The reflected light is therefore sent off from the surface in a con....
More details | Watch nowMillie Dresselhaus
Mildred Dresselhaus was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in a poor section of the Bronx. She was a Fullbright Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University (UK) in 1951-52 and obtained a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1958. Mill....
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A presentation discussing the science of mobile phones and associated radiation. Are mobile phones safe?
More details | Watch nowNuclear Power Plant Safety – What’s the Problem?
A significant proportion of our electricity is generated by thermonuclear reactions. The dangers attached to these processes and the radioactive products are well known and publicised. Much less well known are the measures taken to ensure that the hi....
More details | Watch nowPiezoelectricity
Some minerals such as quartz can produce electricity simply by squeezing or bending them - these are called piezoelectric crystals. Here is a simple and cheap demonstration you can do.
More details | Watch nowRichard Feynman – The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures – Part 1
A gentle lead-in to the subject, Feynman starts by discussing photons and their properties.
More details | Watch nowSizing Things Up
Dr Tara Shears explains that one of Science's greatest achievements is to have accurately measured everything from the width of the universe to the diameter of a quark. This film features an animated zoom in from the universe to the heart of a hydrog....
More details | Watch nowSuperfluidity in Helium 3 – Nobel Physics Prize 1996
Together Osheroff and Richardson talk about their different scientific research backgrounds which leads a fascinating discussion on their joint work for the Noble Prize.
More details | Watch nowTemperature and States of Matter
Temperature Scales
John Murrell explains scales and colour changes with temperature, boiling and melting,
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