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.

Thursday 21 February 2013

Cosmic Rays Mystery Solved - Sixty Symbols

New observations seem to settle the question of where cosmic rays come from.

Other Sixty Symbols videos

 

What Is The Universe?

Other Minute Physics videos

What Is Light? Young's Double Slit Experiment

Light is so common that we rarely think about what it really is. But just over two hundred years ago, a groundbreaking experiment answered the question that had occupied physicists for centuries. Is light made up of waves or particles?

Other Veritasium videos

 

Friday 15 February 2013

Demystifying the Higgs Boson with Leonard Susskind

(July 30, 2012) Professor Susskind presents an explanation of what the Higgs mechanism is, and what it means to "give mass to particles." He also explains what's at stake for the future of physics and cosmology.

 

CERN in 3 minutes

CERN in a nutshell.


 

Thursday 14 February 2013

Science at Work

Six days. Three frontiers. One amazing lab. From 2010 to 2012, a film crew followed a group of scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermilab and filmed them at work and at home. This 40-minute documentary shows the diversity of the people, research and work at Fermilab. Viewers catch a true behind-the-scenes look of the United States' premier particle physics laboratory while scientists explain why their research is important to them and the world.

 Scientists included: Brendan Casey, Herman White, Craig Hogan, Denton Morris, Mary Convery, Bonnie Fleming, Deborah Harris, Dave Schmitz, Brenna Flaugher and Aron Soha.

 

CERN NEWS: A Long Shutdown for the LHC

On 14 February at 7.24 am, the shift crew in the CERN Control Centre extracted the beams from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), bringing the machine's first three-year running period to a successful conclusion. 8 TeV collision energy was enough to find a new particle, but that's not the maximum energy the LHC was designed for. For the LHC to reach its nominal energy of 14 TeV, extra work is now needed.

 

Mechanical Universe 16 - Harmonic Motion

Unfortunately, this video has been deleted.

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Monday 11 February 2013

Quantum Lightswitch: A New Direction in Ultrafast Electronics

Joshua Turner, a staff scientist at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser, delivered the Jan. 29 SLAC Public Lecture, "Quantum Lightswitch: A New Direction in Ultrafast Electronics."

Turner's talk highlighted research in manipulating atoms' electrons that could revolutionize computer data storage and retrieval. While today's computer hard drives rely on tiny magnets, which are a result of the direction in which electrons spin, Turner explained the novel concept of "orbital electronics," and how it could speed up data storage and retrieval thousands of times by controlling how electrons orbit the atomic nucleus. He also described how experiments at LCLS, which can identify ultrafast magnetic properties on the scale of atoms and molecules, may light the way toward such technology breakthroughs.

Turner received a doctoral degree in experimental condensed matter physics from the University of Oregon, a master's degree in physics from Boston University, and bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Sunday 10 February 2013

AC vs DC

We all know Thomas Edison, his accomplishments are legendary, over 1000 patents were issued to this prolific inventor. Nikola Tesla, noted Serbian academic, was another inventor from the same period, trained in Europe as an engineer, he emigrated to the United States where he never attained the stature of Edison but arguably accomplished more. He is the inventor of our modern electrical power grid. This video summarizes this accomplishment and the role that both Edison and Tesla played in this accomplishment.

 

ScienceCasts: Pink Planet at Sunset

The planet Mercury is about to make its best apparition of the year for backyard sky watchers. Look west at sunset for a piercing pink planet surrounded by twilight blue.

 

Saturday 9 February 2013

Friday 8 February 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 39.Torque

We drop in on Paul's class as he discusses the concept of torque.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Vorticity

The experiments in this film illustrate the concepts of vorticity and circulation, and show how these concepts can be useful in dunderstanding fluid flows.
National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films,  1961

With Ascher H. Shapiro, MIT

Other videos from this series

Film notes



Tuesday 5 February 2013

Monday 4 February 2013

Mechanical Universe 14 - Potential Energy

Unfortunately, this video has been deleted.

Sunday 3 February 2013

Channel Flow of a Compressible Fluid

The purpose of this film is to demonstrate several effects of compressibility which are important in any attempt to produce or control a supersonic internal flow.  The heart of the subject is the behavior of a compressible gas flowing at high speed through a converging-diverging nozzle.  Tne film therefore begins with the phenomenon of choking, or sonic flow at a throat.  Some examples of shock waves and expansion waves are shown in passing.  Finally, the film takes up the problem of bringing a supersonic stream efficiently to rest.

National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films,  1968

With Donald Coles, California Institute of Technology

Other videos from this series

Film notes

Saturday 2 February 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 37.Centripetal Force

Paul talks about centripetal force, banked curves and tangential velocity.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

ScienceCasts: A Naked-Eye Comet in March 2013

A comet falling in from the distant reaches of the solar system could become a naked-eye object in early March. This is Comet Pan-STARRS's first visit to the inner solar system, so surprises are possible as its virgin ices are exposed to intense solar heating.