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.

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Immovable Object vs. Unstoppable Force - Which Wins?

Other Minute Physics videos

 

The Story of Electricity 3

Shock and Awe - The Story of Electricity. Revelations and Revolutions: electromagnetic waves, radio communications, semiconductors, Crookes tube and the discovery of the electron, transistor, supraconductivity.



Previous episodes:   1 and 2.

Monday 28 January 2013

Tutorial and Experiments on Magnetic Levitation

In this episode Shahriar demonstrates one of the simplest magnetic levitation circuits. First, the basic concept of magnetic levitation is examined. Two different methods of detecting the location of the levitating object is presented and the Hall effect sensor method is chosen. A semi-digital overall system is implemented where a PWM control IC is employed to control the magnetic field strength. The block diagram and functionality of this IC is presented. Finally, the schematic of a dual-Hall effect sensor solution is presented. The circuit is built and tested in both open-loop and close-loop configuration. Magnetic levitation is demonstrated with the capability of adjusting the levitation location. The schematic of circuit can be downloaded from The Signal Path website.

 

ScienceCast: Record-Setting Asteroid Flyby

On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth closer than many man-made satellites. Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, astronomers have never seen an object so big come so close to our planet.

 

Sunday 27 January 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 36. Energy of Acrobats

A problem solution, nicely simplified, to acrobats Ari, Bari, and their dog Bo.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Saturday 26 January 2013

Friday 25 January 2013

The Story of Electricity 2

Shock and Awe - The Story of Electricity. The Age of Invention: Jim Al-Khalili reveals how scientists and engineers unlocked the nature of electricity in an extraordinary century of innovation and invention.

 

Thursday 24 January 2013

Rotating Saddle

Mechanical analog of a Paul Trap particle confinement—a ball is trapped in a time-varying quadrupole gravitational potential. A large saddle shape (attached to a plywood disk) is mounted on a multi-purpose turntable. The saddle shape is essentially a quadrupole gravitational potential. Rotation of this potential subjects the ball to an alternating repulsive and attractive potential, much like the time-varying electric quadrupole potential of a Paul Trap used in trapping single ions or electrons. The plastic ball used here is about 25 cm in diameter and was purchased at a toy store. The saddle consists of many layers of fiberglass and was hand-made with help from Justin Georgi. The turntable is driven at about 110 rpm with a DC motor. We have observed this ball at this speed remaining stable for over 2 hours. Slow motion footage recorded at 240 fps with a Casio EX-FH25. Thanks to Rob for letting us use the camera.

 

Hewitt-Drew-it! 35. RR Wheels

Paul links the linear-rotational speed relation to an explanation of why railroad trains stay on tracks via tapered wheel rims.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Wednesday 23 January 2013

Tuesday 22 January 2013

The Story of Electricity 1

Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force - electricity.

Episode one tells the story of the very first 'natural philosophers' who started to unlock the mysteries of electricity. They studied its curious link to life, built strange and powerful instruments to create it and even tamed lightning itself. It was these men who truly laid the foundations of the modern world. Electricity was without doubt a fantastical wonder. This is the story about what happened when the first real concerted effort was made to understand electricity; how we learned to create and store it, before finally creating something that enabled us to make it at will - the battery.

Hewitt-Drew-it! 34. Circular Motion

Paul discusses his father working as a ticket collector in a merry-go-round and ties this to a Burl-Grey problem involving circular motion.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Monday 21 January 2013

What is Touch?

In this quantum world, what does it mean to touch something? Do we really hover above the chairs we're sitting in?

Other Minute Physics videos

Sunday 20 January 2013

Mechanical Universe 11 - Gravity, Electricity, Magnetism

Unfortunately, this video has been deleted.

Balloons and acceleration

The red balloon is filled with air and is attached to the top of the box, the white balloon is filled  with helium is attached to the bottom of the box.

 As the box is accelerated, ballons move in opposite directions.

 

Saturday 19 January 2013

Low-Reynolds-Number Flows


National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films
Sir Geoffrey Taylor, Cambridge University

Other videos from this series

Film notes

Hewitt-Drew-it! 33. Machines and Energy

Paul shows how a simple lever lifts a load, and how Nellie Newton lifts loads with a pulley systems.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Friday 18 January 2013

Pi

This video discusses the history of and ongoing attempts to resolve pi. Includes a demonstration of determining pi by measuring the circumference and diameter of a circle.

 

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism Lecture 25

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism, Spring 2002

Professor Walter Lewin

Driven LRC Circuits Resonance Metal Detectors (Beach/Airport)

Other lectures from the same course

Thursday 17 January 2013

Helium flow

Helium flows up in a gutter and blows up the candle.

 

Mechanical Universe 10 - Fundamental Forces

Unfortunately, this video has been deleted.

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Science at Cal - Jeffrey Silverman - Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Runaway Universe

Some of the brightest and most fascinating objects in the Universe are exploding stars known as supernovae. These colossal outbursts result from the deaths of stars and for a time can outshine the entire galaxy in which they are found. Observations of very distant supernovae provided the first evidence that our Universe is accelerating in its expansion, likely due to a repulsive and mysterious "dark energy." It was these observations that were recently awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Dr. Jeff Silverman studies and observes supernovae with Prof. Alex Filippenko, and recently received his PhD from UC Berkeley. He was born and raised in Anaheim, CA just down the street from Disneyland and graduated from Rice University in Houston, TX in 2005. In the Fall, Jeff will be returning to Texas as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Hewitt-Drew-it! 32. Ballistic Pendulum

Paul explains how the classic ballistic-pendulum problem cannot be solved with energy conservation alone.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Marie Curie: Great Minds

Hank tells us the story of his favorite genius lady scientist and radioactive superhero, Marie Curie.

Other Sci-Show videos

Monday 14 January 2013

New Light on Dark Energy

Is dark energy really accelerating the universe? Join Andrew Fraknoi and three Berkeley Lab cosmologists as they delve into nature's greatest mystery. Greg Aldering explores type 1 supernovae. Shirley Ho measures the cosmos through baryon oscillation and Eric Linder asks out of the box questions about the cosmos; could it be something even stranger than dark energy driving the universe? Series: "Science at the Theater" [2/2012]

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Experiment

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that it is impossible to simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle with infinite precision. In our everyday lives we virtually never come up against this limit, hence why it seems peculiar. In this experiment a laser is shone through a narrow slit onto a screen. As the slit is made narrower, the spot on the screen also becomes narrower. But at a certain point, the spot starts becoming wider. This is because the photons of light have been so localised at the slit that their horizontal momentum must become less well defined in order to satisfy Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Other Veritasium videos

Parsec - Sixty Symbols

Why do astronomers use parsecs instead of light-years? And what is parallax?

Other Sixty Symbols videos

Sunday 13 January 2013

Percent Oxygen in Air

This video demonstrates how to determine the percent of oxygen in air using some simple equipment.

 

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism Lecture 24

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism, Spring 2002

Professor Walter Lewin

Transformers, car coils,  RC Circuits

Other lectures from the same course

Saturday 12 January 2013

Exotic Metals vs. Magnet (including uranium)

Magnetic properties of various metals.

 

Weighted Hacksaw Blade

A hacksaw blade has a weight attached to each end. The center of the blade is tightly held in a vise. The two halves of the blade then behave like coupled oscillators.

See other MIT physics demos

Mechanical Universe 09 - Moving in Circles

Unfortunately, this video has been deleted.

Friday 11 January 2013

Science at Cal - Jason Dexter - Black holes - What do they look like?

Despite their dark name, black holes power some of the brightest objects in the Universe. Jason Dexter will discuss the observational evidence for the existence of black holes, the types of black holes that can be seen and the reasons why. What is an accretion disk that forms around a black hole? Jason will attempt to answer this question and others, as well as describe what the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way will look like when Astronomers manage to image it in the near future.

Jason Dexter got his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley. He is interested in astrophysical black holes, and what we can learn from the light emitted by gas falling into them.


 


Hewitt-Drew-it! 31. Conservation of Energy

Paul extends the block of ice on a ramp to a bead sliding down a wire, to the motion of acrobats Ari, Bari, and their dog Bo.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Thursday 10 January 2013

Lecture 4 | Modern Physics: Classical Mechanics (Stanford)

Lecture 4 of Leonard Susskind's Modern Physics course concentrating on Classical Mechanics. Recorded November 5, 2007 at Stanford University.

Other lectures from this course

The Most Sophisticated Mirror in the Universe

Hank summarizes the five reasons why infrared telescopes were supposed to be impossible to build, and then describes how a team of scientists and engineers overcame those obstacles to build the James Webb Space Telescope.

Other Sci-Show videos

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Argonne OutLoud Public Lecture Series: Nuclear Energy

On November 15, 2012, Argonne National Laboratory opened its doors to the public for a presentation/discussion titled "Getting to Know Nuclear: Past, Present and Future." The speaker was Argonne researcher Roger Blomquist. The event was the latest in the Argonne OutLoud Public Lecture Series.

 

Neutrinos - Sixty Symbols

Billions of these mysterious particles are blasted down from the sun and pass through our bodies undetected.

Other Sixty Symbols videos

Tuesday 8 January 2013

Some facts about relativity

I think the title "Common physics misconceptions" is rather misleading, but the video is fun, as usual.

Other Minute Physics videos

 

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism Lecture 23

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism, Spring 2002

Professor Walter Lewin

Review for Exam 2 (magnetism).

Other lectures from the same course

Monday 7 January 2013

ScienceCasts: Dark Lightning

Researchers studying thunderstorms have made a surprising discovery: The lightning we see with our eyes has a dark competitor that discharges storm clouds and flings antimatter into space. Astrophysicists and meteorologists are scrambling to understand "dark lightning."

 

Voltage doublers

From the United States Department of Defense.  Explains the theory of operation of a voltage doubler.  Traces charge an discharge paths for the capacitors.  Determines peak output voltage and ripple frequency.


Mechanical Universe 08 - The Apple and the Moon

Unfortunately, this video has been deleted.

Sunday 6 January 2013

Acoustic levitation

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a way to use sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing different pharmaceuticals. While the connection between levitation and drug development may not be immediately apparent, a special relationship emerges at the molecular level.

Read more:  http://www.anl.gov/articles/no-magic-show-real-world-levitation-inspire-better-pharmaceuticals

 

Hewitt-Drew-it! 30. Work-Energy Theorem

Paul enlists Nellie Newton to illustrate the work-energy theorem to solve a motion problem.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Saturday 5 January 2013

3 Physics Experiments that Changed the World

Cavendish experiment (gravity), Young double-slit experiment (interference of light) and Rutherford gold foil experiment (atomic nucleus).

Other Sci-Show videos


Space Junk & The Swiss 'Janitor Satellite'

Space junk is a real problem. NASA now tracks around 20,000 pieces of debris orbiting Earth, most of them larger than 10cm across. Since the average speed of a collision between orbiting objects is 10 km/s these pieces of trash can cause a lot of damage despite their small size. Scientists in Switzerland have a plan to clean up space junk - it involves creating a 'Janitor Satellite' that will seek out pieces of space junk to drag back into the atmosphere causing them to burn up. This video was created for the Aussie science show Catalyst on the ABC.

Other Veritasium videos

 

Friday 4 January 2013

Synchrotrons and Preserving the Tudor Warship Mary Rose

 Ritimukta Sarangi, staff scientist in the Structural Molecular Biology group at SSRL, a subdivision of SLAC, delivered the Public Lecture, "Saving the Mary Rose: Synchrotrons and the Preservation of a Tudor Warship." (October 2, 2012)

Sarangi's talk, explains how synchrotron-generated X-rays were used to help preserve a 500-year-old warship after it was salvaged from the bottom of the Atlantic in 1985.

The warship was the Mary Rose, built in 1511 and the flagship of King Henry VIII. She sank in 1545 while en route to confront the French fleet in battle. The ship lay undersea for 440 years before being raised, and her salvaging was not the end of her troubles. The restored Mary Rose is being constantly treated to preserve the wood structure, but in 2002 a new problem arose that began rapidly destroying the ship.

Sarangi tells the story of how research at SSRL uncovered the cause of the problem and a way to help. As Sarangi says, "This lecture will present the amazing story of archeology, chemistry, and physics that preserves this precious artifact and gives us a glimpse back into Tudor times."

Lecturer: Ritimukta Sarangi, SLAC

Momemtum at high velocity

When velocity is very high, momentum is not the product of mass and velocity.

Other Minute Physics videos

 

Thursday 3 January 2013

Why is Stephen Hawking a big deal? - Sixty Symbols

Stephen Hawking just scooped a $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize.

Other Sixty Symbols videos

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism Lecture 22

MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism, Spring 2002

Professor Walter Lewin

Hysteresis, electromagnets, Bohr Magneton

Other lectures from the same course

Wednesday 2 January 2013

Mechanical Universe 07 - Integration

Unfortunately, this video has been deleted.

Fluid coupling

United States Department of Defense, 1954. Fluid coupling in automatic transmissions.

 

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 29. Potential and Kinetic Energy

Paul derives kinetic energy from Newton's second law, and illustrates energy transfers for a block of sliding ice.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Epic leaps

Physics and extreme sports.

Other VSauce videos