A Little Light Relief
Light, particularly sunlight, is believed to be good for our health. Many ancient civilisations even attributed it with mystical healing powers.Renowned for his entertaining lectures, Professor David Phillips, President of the RSC, uses his expertise....
More details | Watch nowAbolishing Time?
David Gross's Nobel Prize was for work on the 'strong' force which acts between quarks inside the atom. Now he works on string theory, hoping to understand how all the forces of nature could be united. He believes the next steps may involve throwing ....
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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....
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What is antimatter? What does it tell us about the structure of our universe? Can we ever detect it?
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Joining Philip Schlenoff is Dr. Jeff Owens, from the Physics department at Florida State University, to answer some physics and astrophysics-related questions!
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 nowCentre of mass
In finite objects, the total external force equals the total mass times the acceleration of a point called the centre of mass.
More details | Watch nowCentripetal force – how do we measure it?
A short video showing a simple classroom method of checking the way in which this force is related to mass, speed and radius.
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Uniform circular motion: angular displacement and velocity are introduced and centripetal acceleration is determined.
More details | Watch nowColor Theory
For my project I am giving a brief history of color theory with emphasis on how science and color theory have interacted. I focus on aspects like primary colors, how color is perceived, and the artists who were at the forefront of color and design. I....
More details | Watch nowCommunicating with light
Most of the data we generate and receive (whether emails, tweets, videos or mobile calls) are now carried by optical fibres, which use light to transmit vast quantities of information over trans-oceanic distances. The use of hundreds of wavelengths ....
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The main problems associated with communicating with distant space probes like Voyager 1 are investigated. The role played by diffraction in limiting the amount of power receivable on Earth is discussed. The further problems of reaching a nearby st....
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Physics' students Rosie & Carine explain the physics behind concert hall acoustics.
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 nowDark Matter, Dark Energy
Smoot's Nobel Prize was awarded for his analysis of that whisper from the Big Bang, the cosmic microwave background radiation. Today he hopes CERN's data will again transform our understanding of the universe. Young scientists Bilge Demirkoz and Benj....
More details | Watch nowDiffraction and Fourier Transforms
Energy and power
The total work done on an object equals the increase in its kinetic energy. For conservative forces, we can define potential energy.
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Fine tuning the frequencies of light gave John Hall a Nobel Prize, and helped transform the fields of precision measurement and information transmission. Iris Choi and Andrei Ghicov are young scientists excited by the ways physics can change our worl....
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On scales much bigger than the wavelength, rays explain the behaviour of interfaces, mirrors, lenses, optical instruments, including telescopes and microscopes.
More details | Watch nowGoing round in circles – how do we do it?
A presentation showing both the ideas about centripetal force and a simple classroom method of checking the way in which this force is related to mass, speed and radius.
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A magnetic tunnel junction is a device with two magnets separated by a very thin non-magnetic barrier. The two magnets can be aligned parallel or antiparallel. The electrical resistance of this devices depends on the alignment. This video illustrates....
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The inverse square law explains planetary motion - and apples falling. Newton's law, measuring G, calculating orbits.
More details | Watch nowHow can we see atoms ?
How 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 nowHuman Sound
Sound is produced in the larynx; filtering it in the vocal tract produces formants and phonemes. The acoustics, mechanics and some neurobiology of hearing. Pitch perception.
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30-minute lecture about the physics of hyperfine interactions, and about how to calculate hyperfine interactions by the WIEN2k DFT code
More details | Watch nowImproving your Memory
Interference and consonance
Superposing waves with different frequencies gives beats and Tartini tones. Removing beats gives consonance. Tuning consonances gives temperament.
More details | Watch nowIsaac Newton and Gravitation
A look at what was known when Newton started to develop his theory of gravitation and how he used these ideas and data to make his great forward step
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....
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Longboard physics
A few (surprising?) thoughts on how the wheels on a longboard or skateboard actually move.
More details | Watch nowMagnetism and Electricity
This presentation reviews how magnets work and their uses in the world today. It also explains how magnets and electricity are related and what future inventions could come from using magnets.
More details | Watch nowMeasuring the speed of pulses
A short clip showing the experimental measurement of the speed of electrical pulses in a cable - a large fraction of the speed of light.
More details | Watch nowMeasuring the speed of sound
A presentation showing how to measure the speed of sound over a short distance on a laboratory table.
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....
More details | Watch nowMobile Phones – Safe?
A presentation discussing the science of mobile phones and associated radiation. Are mobile phones safe?
More details | Watch nowMomentum
p=mv. If external forces are zero, momentum is conserved. In collisions, energy may be conserved (elastic) or not (inelastic).
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