Welcome


The title says it all: this blog features physics videos found everywhere on the web: animations, demonstrations, lectures, documentaries.
Please go here if you want to suggest other nice physics videos, and here if I mistakingly infringed your copyrights. If you understand French, you'll find a huge selection of physics videos in French in my other blog Vidéos de Physique.

Wednesday 31 August 2011

Coriolis effect

The merry-go-round analogy to explain Coriolis effect.




Tuesday 30 August 2011

Faraday's Law: Levitator

This Apparatus is a magnetic levitator, illustrating Lenz's law. The levitator can support an aluminum bowl about a foot in mid air in stable equilibrium.

Scanning Electron Microscope: Pt 5 of 6


Other videos in this series

Monday 29 August 2011

Eureka! Episode 29 - Radiation Waves

Viewers learn that one of the chief ways in which heat energy moves is in the form of waves. This kind of heat transfer is called radiation.

Other Eureka episodes

Sunday 28 August 2011

Saturday 27 August 2011

Physics of the trumpet 1

Resonance, standing waves in a string with both ends fixed, penny whistle.

With Nick Drozdoff.

Other videos in this series

LHC particles fined for speed?

How fast do particles travel in the LHC?

Friday 26 August 2011

Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse

At TEDxCaltech, cosmologist Sean Carroll attacks -- in an entertaining and thought-provoking tour through the nature of time and the universe -- a deceptively simple question: Why does time exist at all? The potential answers point to a surprising view of the nature of the universe, and our place in it.

Other TED Talks

Wednesday 24 August 2011

What is a Force?

Force is a central concept in physics. By analysing the forces on an object, its resulting motion can be determined. But what exactly is a force? The word force is used in everyday language in a variety of contexts, only some of which reflect the scientific definition of force. In this video, people at Victoria Park in Sydney are interviewed on their ideas of force and the forces that act on them.

Other Veritasium videos

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Antimatter

Is it safe to shake the hand of a person made of antimatter?

Monday 22 August 2011

Sunday 21 August 2011

Reflection from an impedance discontinuity

Two segments of the Bell Labs apparatus are connected. The segments have different impedance. When a pulse travels from high impedance to low impedance, it is reflected with positive polarity and transmitted with positive polarity. When a pulse travels from low impedance to high impedance, it is reflected with negative polarity and transmitted with positive polarity.

Source:  MIT TechTV

See other MIT physics demos

Saturday 20 August 2011

MIT 8.01 Classical Mechanics Lecture 23

MIT Physics Course

Professor Walter Lewin
8.01 Physics  I: Classical Mechanics, Fall 1999

Doppler effect, binary stars, x-ray binaries,  neutron Stars and black holes

See other videos in this series.



Thursday 18 August 2011

Density - Sixty Symbols

What is the density of a white dwarf or a neutron star?

Other Sixty Symbols videos



Wednesday 17 August 2011

Eureka! Episode 28 - Heat as Energy

Heat is produced whenever there is movement and friction between two objects. Since movement is a form of energy, it follows that heat must also be a form of energy.

Other Eureka episodes

Tuesday 16 August 2011

How Far Away is the Moon? (The Scale of the Universe)

If the Earth were the size of a basketball and the moon a tennis ball, how far apart would they be? Diagrams that are not to scale make us think that they're closer than they really are.

Other Veritasium videos

Sunday 14 August 2011

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism Lecture 4

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism, Spring 2002

Professor Walter Lewin

Electrostatic potential, electric energy, conservative field, equipotential surfaces.



Saturday 13 August 2011

Steel Ball Dropped in a Viscous Fluid

Five steel balls of different sizes are dropped into corn syrup. The balls reach a constant velocity shortly after entering the fluid. The velocity is constrained due to the drag balancing the force of gravity in the fluid. This demonstrates the relationship between the size of the ball and the maximum velocity it can obtain.

Source:  MIT TechTV

See other MIT physics demos

Big Numbers - Sixty Symbols

Big numbers: Avogadro's Number, number of protons in the universe, Dirac large numbers hypothesis.

Other Sixty Symbols videos

Friday 12 August 2011

Centrifugal Force (Brightstorm)

The centrifugal force...is it a real force?

Source:  Brighstorm

See other Brighstorm videos


Electric Generator

This is an alternating current generator: a conducting coil (shown in yellow) rotates inside a magnetic field (the field lines are green here). The vector "A" is perpendicular to the area of the coil (its magnitude is the area of the coil). During rotation of the coil, the magnetic flux changes and an alternating current is induced in the coil. The first graph show the magnetic flux, the other graph shows current intensity.

Other animations by Yves Pelletier

Thursday 11 August 2011

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Egg Experiment to Demonstrate Inertia

If you spin a raw egg and then stop it, it will start spinning again without you having to touch it. A boiled egg, on the other hand, stops and stays stopped. Why is this? Well a raw egg contains a yolk that moves inside the egg independently of the shell. If you stop the shell, the yolk inside continues to move due to its inertia and it therefore gets the egg spinning again.

Other Veritasium videos

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Exploring the universe: Schools Lecture 2009

The Institute of Physics Schools and Colleges Lecture 2009 is delivered by astronomer Dr Andrew Newsam. This lecture will reveal how:

  • Modern telescopes can be used by astronomers to look at the universe in ever greater detail;
  • Progress in technology allows astronomers to observe things further and further away and therefore further back in time;
  • Astronomical observations can be used to learn more about the origins and future of the universe.


Monday 8 August 2011

Field Lines in a Toroidal Solenoid

This animation illustrates the magnetic field lines created by a series of loops that form a torus. The animation shows how increasing number of current loops confines the magnetic field to the interior of the torus.

Other animations by Penn State Schuylkill

Sunday 7 August 2011

MIT 8.01 Classical Mechanics Lecture 22

MIT Physics Course

Professor Walter Lewin
8.01 Physics  I: Classical Mechanics, Fall 1999

Kepler's Laws - Elliptical Orbits - Satellites - Change of Orbits - Orbiting Ham Sandwich!

See other videos in this series.

Saturday 6 August 2011

Magnetic Field - Sixty Symbols

Check out this super powerful magnet - just don't get too close with a video camera!

Other Sixty Symbols videos


Friday 5 August 2011

Circuit Skills: Fiber Optics

Not all electronic signals are communicated via electricity. By transmitting information in the form of light, we can avoid many limitations inherent to traditional wiring. And on top of all that - fiber optics are just straight-up cool!

Sport vs Physics

2004 lecture by Dr Dave James (Sheffield University) as part of the Institute of Physics Schools and Colleges Lecture Tour.

Physics applied to sprint, pole vault, javelin, wheelchair racing, soccer and tennis.

(Found in Physics and Physicists)

Other videos by Institute of Physics

Thursday 4 August 2011

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Scanning Electron Microscope: Pt 3 of 6

Other videos in the series

Eureka! Episode 26 - Buoyancy

Showing viewers that objects immersed in a liquid are buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced, this program explains the principle of buoyancy.

Other Eureka episodes

Tuesday 2 August 2011

The Difference Between Mass and Weight

There is a common perception that weight and mass are basically the same thing. This video aims to tease out the difference between mass and weight by asking people what makes a car difficult to push. The standard answer is that it is difficult to push because it's heavy. But heaviness is a measure of weight, the gravitational pull of the Earth attracting the car to Earth's center. When the car is pushed on a flat road, the force of gravity does not oppose the motion. Instead the resistance felt is an indication of the car's mass which determines its inertia. Inertia is the property of matter that means it tends to resist acceleration - the greater the mass, the less the acceleration for a given amount of force.

Other Veritasium videos

Julius Sumner Miller - Pascal Principle

Sciences demonstrations #14:  Pascal Principle

Pascal principle, hydraulic press...

Other physics demonstrations by Julius Sumner Miller



Monday 1 August 2011

Degrees of Angle - Sixty Symbols

We look at astronomy and nanotechnology in this film about angles, focusing especially on the tilt of the Earth's axis and the pole star (aka polaris). More at http://www.sixtysymbols.com/

Other Sixty Symbols videos

Yale: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics, Lecture 16

ASTR 160 - Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics
Spring 2007
Source: Yale University, Open Yale Courses


Lecture 16:  Hubble's Law and the Big Bang

The third and final part of the course begins, consisting of a series of lectures on cosmology. A brief history of how cosmology developed into a scientific subject is offered. The discovery of dark energy, along with dark matter, played a crucial role in the development of cosmology. The lecture then discusses the discovery of spiral nebulae in 1920, as well as the "Great Debate" over what they were. Hubble's famous redshift diagram is presented as the basis for Hubble's Constant and Big Bang cosmology. The difficulty of measuring distance of objects in space, and how to do it using the parallax method and the standard candle method, are discussed. Measure brightness using the magnitude scale is explained. Class ends with a review of logarithms.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction to Cosmology
03:34 - Chapter 2. Spiral Nebulae and Hubble's Redshift Diagram
17:35 - Chapter 3. Measuring the Distance of a Star: The Parallax Method
25:13 - Chapter 4. Measuring Brightness: The Standard Candle Method
38:06 - Chapter 5. Absolute and Apparent Magnitude
48:04 - Chapter 6. Conclusion

Other lectures from this course