100 results found for physics

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....

Jonathan talks to a real exoert about the science of balance.

Joining Philip Schlenoff is Dr. Jeff Owens, from the Physics department at Florida State University, to answer some physics and astrophysics-related questions!

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s LHC accelerator in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations was the culmination of a decades-long search that had started in 1964 with the proposal of this unique particle, a signature of the origin of the....

This video shows a terrific selection of superconducting demonstrations and explanations.

30-minute lecture about the physics of hyperfine interactions, and about how to calculate hyperfine interactions by the WIEN2k DFT code

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 ....

Using a data-logger to analyse the performance of a longboard.

A few (surprising?) thoughts on how the wheels on a longboard or skateboard actually move.

Jonathan describes his adventures with a longboard and some different methods of making a speedometer for it.

Abbie describes why bridges must be designed to counteract the effects of unwanted vibrations.

Physics' students Rosie & Carine explain the physics behind concert hall acoustics.

Early lighthouses used coil and wood fires before moving on to gas and then electricity powered lights.  Massive improvements took place by using a lens system around the light.  The development of the Fresnel lens brought what we now regard as the....

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....

New carbon targets requires reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by 50% for 2030. This house believes that it will be impossible to meet the emissions reductions required to fulfil these obligations without the use of nuclear power.  Taking the pr....

A light-hearted look at the difference between real and ideal gases.

The best in the world!

During the Renaissance in Venice, composers such as the Gabrieli and Moneverdi created some of their greatest masterpieces for performance in the great churches on festive occasions. But what would the music have sounded like, given its complexity an....

Sir Arnold Wolfendale FRS is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Durham, and former Astronomer Royal. In 1912, Victor Hess embarked on a perilous balloon ascent and discovered the 'Cosmic Radiation', actually a beam of atomic particles....

With the start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, particle physics entered a new era. The LHC will provide a deeper understanding of the universe and the insights gained could change our view of the world, and the lecture will present some o....

The physics of the eye, its performance and colour vision: refraction and accommodation; photoreceptors and resolution; compromises in visual performance.

On scales much bigger than the wavelength, rays explain the behaviour of interfaces, mirrors, lenses, optical instruments, including telescopes and microscopes.

White light comprises colours in the visible spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum. Speed of light. Young's experiment and waves. Quanta and photons.

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.

Reflecting waves gives standing waves, which can be resonances. Standing waves on strings and in pipes and plates.

Superposing waves with different frequencies gives beats and Tartini tones. Removing beats gives consonance. Tuning consonances gives temperament.

Frequency, amplitude, envelope and spectrum affect pitch, loudness and timbre. All are discussed and quantified here.

Seeing atoms using electons rather than lenses

Moving either source or receiver produces a frequency shift called the Doppler effect, which we measure and analyse.

Sound is a longitudinal wave of variations in pressure and density. We derive and measure its speed.

The wave equation and its physical origin. Power in a wave and its relation to intensity in radiation.

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....

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.

In an extended medium, inertia and a restoring force can lead to waves, which reflect at boundaries, either erect or inverted.

Inertia and restoring forces can, with low friction or damping, lead to oscillations and resonance. We analyse the mechanics of vibrations.

The inverse square law explains planetary motion - and apples falling. Newton's law, measuring G, calculating orbits.

Dr Cristina Lazzeroni, a Royal Society University Research Fellow from the University of Birmingham, reveals the secrets of the world's largest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider and how the LHC experiments hope to answer big questions about the ....

The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built. It is capable of recreating the very energetic conditions last seen in the universe a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, and allows particle physicists to study the fundamental ingr....

Torques produce angular acceleration, moment of inertia 'resists' it. Rotational kinetic energy and angular momentum.

Peeling sticky tape emits energy that extends into the X-ray regime, reports a study in Nature. The research provides evidence for a phenomenon that was first observed more than 50 years ago.nnIt is well known that unwinding sticky tape produces spar....

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....

Awarded a Nobel Prize for using lasers to control and cool atoms, producing the Bose-Einstein condensation, Bill Phillips is eager to hear about new theories from young scientists like Hannah Venzl. An exciting dialogue develops between them on a boa....

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....

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 ....

p=mv. If external forces are zero, momentum is conserved. In collisions, energy may be conserved (elastic) or not (inelastic).

Emily Dougherty presents on the nature and physics of lightning.

Shalini Golla presents on the science behind light.

Kelly Schwirian presents on nuclear power in the United States.

How we are affected by the very widespread manifesations of diffraction.

John talks about diffraction and the limits it puts on our ability to image atoms. Can we make an electron-microscope without lenses?

In finite objects, the total external force equals the total mass times the acceleration of a point called the centre of mass.

Looking at how hard disk drives can be improvedn

The total work done on an object equals the increase in its kinetic energy. For conservative forces, we can define potential energy.

Professor Harrison Prosper of FSU Physics Department looks at the science behind the recently released movie 'Angels and Demons', starring Tom Hanks and based upon a Dan Brown novel. Prof. Prosper discusses topics such as antimatter, dark matter, dar....

A short video showing a simple classroom method of checking the way in which this force is related to mass, speed and radius.

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.

A short clip showing the experimental measurement of the speed of electrical pulses in a cable - a large fraction of the speed of light.

A presentation showing how to measure the speed of sound over a short distance on a laboratory table.

Carefully distinguish mass and weight. Hooke's law quantifies deformation. Contact forces have normal and frictional components.

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....

A short video explaining how to measure temperature.

John Murrell explains scales and colour changes with temperature, boiling and melting,

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.

Although essentially a very simple device the Gieger Counter is an exquisitely sensitive detector of ionising radiation. It can detect a single particle. Here we demonstrate its use in detecting radiation from minerals and describe in simple terms ho....

A Breathtaking Journey into the Innermost Structure of our Universe.  Runner up: Best use of Animation and Best Short Documentary for the 2002 International Festival of Cinema and Technology.

Dr Tara Shears explains why scientists are convinced that Dark Matter exists and how a new experiment called the Large Hadron Collider might finally tell us exactly what this mysterious missing mass is made of.

If equal amounts of matter and anitmatter were created at the birth of the universe then why does our universe seem to be made almost entirely from matter? Dr Tara Shears tells us how this mystery could be explained by the Large Hadron Collider exper....

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.

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....

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the biggest science experiment ever built. Scientists from all over the world are heading to CERN with the aim of recreating particles from the beginning of the universe. Dr Brian Cox takes us on a scientific jour....

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....

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.

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....

Are we on the verge of that holy grail of science, a single theory that explains everything from planets to atomic particles, and if we ever get there, will it be the end, or the beginning of physics?  Physicists have theories covering everything fr....

What is antimatter? What does it tell us about the structure of our universe? Can we ever detect it?

A presentation discussing the science of mobile phones and associated radiation. Are mobile phones safe?

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....

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.

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....

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....

Together Osheroff and Richardson talk about their different scientific research backgrounds which leads a fascinating discussion on their joint work for the Noble Prize.

A gentle lead-in to the subject, Feynman starts by discussing photons and their properties.

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....

F=ma (laws 1&2). Forces come in pairs that add to zero (3). Newton's laws apply in inertial frames of reference. Some common approximations made in applying them.

In simple harmonic motion, displacement, velocity and acceleration vary sinusoidally with time, but with different phases.

Uniform circular motion: angular displacement and velocity are introduced and centripetal acceleration is determined.