Catalog Search Results
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (29 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Explore the current state of fission power, now in its third generation since the dawn of the nuclear age, with a fourth generation in the works. Today's nuclear plants are designed to produce power more cheaply, more safely, with less waste, and less risk of proliferation than earlier designs. Survey the latest technology, from advanced light water reactors to molten salt and thorium reactors.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2000.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
In 1905 a young Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein resolved the crisis that flowed from the Michelson-Morley result. When Einstein discarded the ether concept and asserted that the principle of relativity holds for all of physics, mechanics as well as electromagnetism, he was making a simple claim with almost unimaginably profound implications.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (28 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Einstein spent the last decades of his life searching for a unified field theory that would unite general relativity with Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism. But by then, quantum theory had superseded Maxwell's work, rendering the entire exercise futile. See how this quest has nonetheless stimulated ideas for unification in proposals such as string theory.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2009.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (28 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
At the beginning of the 20th century, Max Planck and Albert Einstein proposed revolutionary ideas to resolve puzzles about light and matter. You explore Planck's discovery that light energy can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete amounts called quanta, and Einstein's application of this concept to matter.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2000.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Shortly after publishing his 1905 paper on special relativity, Einstein realized that his theory required a fundamental equivalence between mass and energy, which he expressed in the equation E=mc2. Among other things, this famous formula means that the energy contained in a single raisin could power a large city for an entire day.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Turn to the problem of thermal energy flow and volume. This phenomenon causes materials to expand when heated and contract when cooled. Analyze these events at the atomic scale, and study the unusual behavior of water when it freezes - an attribute that is essential to life as we know it.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2009.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (28 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
When two particles are part of the same quantum system, they may be entangled with each other. In their famous "EPR" paper, Einstein and his collaborators Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen used entanglement to argue that quantum mechanics is incomplete. You chart their reasoning and Bohr's response.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (32 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Explore the force that helps hold the atomic nucleus together, called the strong force. Chart the discovery of this mysterious mechanism - which only works at extremely short range - and see how it led to concepts such as quarks, gluons, and the color force, which is responsible for the strong interaction.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2000.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
In mechanics (the branch of physics that studies motion), the principle of Galilean relativity holds - meaning that the laws of mechanics are the same for anything in uniform motion. Is the same true for the laws of electromagnetism?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Explore other basic concepts that are critical to thermodynamics. These include the idea of a system, boundary conditions, processes that occur within systems, the meaning of the state of a system, the definition of equilibrium, and a much-misunderstood quantity called entropy.
31) The Great Questions of Philosophy and Physics: Episode 1,Does Physics Make Philosophy Superfluous?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Trace the growth of physics from philosophy, as questions about the nature of reality got rigorous answers starting in the Scientific Revolution. Then, see how the philosophy of physics was energized by a movement called logical positivism in the early 20th century in response to Einstein's theory of relativity. Though logical positivism failed, it spurred new philosophical ideas and approaches.
32) The Great Questions of Philosophy and Physics: Episode 2,Why Mathematics Works So Well with Physics
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (35 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Physics is a mathematical science. But why should manipulating numbers give insight into how the world works? This question was famously posed by physicist Eugene Wigner in his 1960 paper, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences." Explore proposed answers, including Max Tegmark's assertion that the world is, in fact, a mathematical system.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (33 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Study molar and partial molar quantities, which are indispensable for describing what happens when materials are combined. Focus on the case of water mixed with ethanol, which adds up to a surprising volume. These ideas lead to one of the most important variables in thermodynamics: chemical potential.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (33 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Finish the course by surveying the many uses of radiation on Earth and beyond. Passive detectors identify radioactive contamination and clandestine nuclear bomb tests. Cosmic rays can be used to "X-ray" ancient buildings and learn the secrets of their construction. And, see why some scientists speculate that humans thrive on Earth thanks to an ancient bath of radiation from a supernova explosion.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2009.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
You explore the mystery of why atoms are stable. Niels Bohr suggested that quantum theory explains atomic stability by allowing only certain distinct orbits for electrons. Erwin Schrödinger discovered a powerful equation that reproduces the energy levels of Bohr's model.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Study the fusion reactions that take place inside the Sun. First, consider the formidable barrier that hydrogen nuclei must overcome to fuse into helium. Then, see how the mass and temperature of a star govern the types of reactions it can support. One product of stellar reactions is neutrinos, ghostly particles that pass through the Earth (and us) in colossal numbers.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Take a deeper step into the quantum world, observing how the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED, unites quantum mechanics with special relativity. Discover that the handy sketches of subatomic behavior called Feynman diagrams (named after physicist Richard Feynman) are really equations in disguise.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Consider why mathematics is such an effective tool for describing nature. Then focus on mathematician Emmy Noether's remarkable insight that links symmetries in the equations of a physical system to conservation laws, such as the conservation of energy and conservation of momentum.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Compare proof for the reality of atoms with evidence for the existence of Santa Claus. Both are problematic hypotheses! Trace the history of atomic theory and the philosophical resistance to it. End with Bas van Fraassen's idea of "constructive empiricism," which holds that successful theories ought only to be empirically adequate since we can never know with certainty what is real.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (35 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Take a behind-the-scenes tour of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, where Professor Weinstein and his colleagues use high-energy electron beams to probe the structure of the nucleus. Dr. Weinstein also explains other types of particle accelerators and their purposes, including the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.
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