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.

Sunday 30 June 2013

What on Earth is spin? - Brian Jones

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-on-earth-is-spin-brian-jones

Why does the Earth spin? Does a basketball falling from a spinning merry-go-round fall in a curve, as it appears to, or in a straight line? How can speed be manipulated while spinning? In short, why is the spinning motion so special? Brian Jones details the dizzyingly wide array of ways that spinning affects our lives.

 Lesson by Brian Jones, animation by Flaming Medusa Studios.

 

Saturday 29 June 2013

The basics of the Higgs boson - Dave Barney and Steve Goldfarb

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-basics-of-boson-dave-barney-and-steve-goldfarb

 In 2012, scientists at CERN discovered evidence of the Higgs boson. The what? The Higgs boson is one of two types of fundamental particles and is a particular game-changer in the field of particle physics, proving how particles gain mass. Using the Socratic method, CERN scientists Dave Barney and Steve Goldfarb explain the exciting implications of the Higgs boson.

 Lesson by Dave Barney and Steve Goldfarb, animation by Jeanette Nørgaard.

 

Friday 28 June 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 49.Satellite Speed

Paul shows how a satellite's orbital speed in close Earth orbit relates to Earth's curvature.

 

Thursday 27 June 2013

Fundamentals Of Ballistics

Fundamentals Of Ballistics is a United States Army training film from the late 1940's which explains the principles of physics involved in the design and functioning of weapons and ammunition. The film has a strong focus towards the artillery applications of ballistic weapons.

 

Wednesday 26 June 2013

Space Flight: The Application of Orbital Mechanics

This is a primer on orbital mechanics originally intended for college-level physics students. Released 1989.

 

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 48.Ocean Tides

Paul explains how the Moon, and also the Sun, cause ocean tides.

 

Monday 24 June 2013

The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know

Google Tech Talk
January 6, 2011
Presented by Ron Garret.

 Richard Feynman once famously quipped that no one understands quantum mechanics, and popular accounts continue to promulgate the view that QM is an intractable mystery (probably because that helps to sell books). QM is certainly unintuitive, but the idea that no one understands it is far from the truth. In fact, QM is no more difficult to understand than relativity. The problem is that the vast majority of popular accounts of QM are simply flat-out wrong. They are based on the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which has been thoroughly discredited for decades. It turns out that if Copenhagen were true then it would be possible to communicate faster than light, and hence send signals backwards in time. This talk describes an alternative interpretation based on quantum information theory (QIT) which is consistent with current scientific knowledge. It turns out that there is a simple intuition that makes almost all quantum mysteries simply evaporate, and replaces them with an easily understood (albeit strange) insight: measurement and entanglement are the same physical phenomenon, and you don't really exist.

 Dr. Ron Garret was an AI and robotics researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab for fifteen years. He was the lead engineer on the first release of AdWords, and the original author of the Google Translation
Console.

 

Sunday 23 June 2013

Planck maps the dawn of time

Scientists have traced a unique new map of the first light of the universe, and raised profound questions about the Big Bang.The image of the cosmic microwave background they have released was taken by ESA's Planck satellite, and its results could have a significant impact on the field of cosmology.


Acquired by ESA's Planck space telescope, the most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background -- the relic radiation from the Big Bang -- was released this year, revealing the existence of features that challenge the foundations of our current understanding of the Universe.



The following animation explains how the wealth of information that is contained in the all-sky map of temperature fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) can be condensed into a curve known as the power spectrum.

The temperature of the CMB exhibits fluctuations on a variety of angular scales on the sky. The animation shows six different maps that depict the relative 'power', or strength, of the fluctuations at different angular scales. The maps correspond to different regions of the curve, starting at angles of ninety degrees on the left side of the graph, through to the smallest scales -- just a fraction of a degree -- on the right hand side.
By studying the peaks in the power spectrum curve, cosmologists can extract information regarding the ingredients of the Universe, such as ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy, and the overall geometry of the Universe.

Credits: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

Saturday 22 June 2013

ScienceCasts: Strange Flames on the International Space Station

Researchers experimenting with flames onboard the International Space Station have produced a strange, cool-burning form of fire that could help improve the efficiency of auto engines.

 

Friday 21 June 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 47.Tunnel Through Earth

Paul considers a tunnel bored through Earth and your motion if you were to fall into it.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

 

Wednesday 19 June 2013

The Vacuum is NOT Empty

An atom is mostly empty space, but empty space is mostly not empty. The reason it looks empty is because electrons and photons don't interact with the stuff that is there, quark and gluon field fluctuations.

It actually takes energy to clear out space and make a true 'empty' vacuum. This seems incredibly counter-intuitive but we can make an analogy to a permanent magnet. When at low energies, like at room temperature, there is a magnetic field around the magnet due to the alignment of all the magnetic moments of the atoms. But if you add some energy to it by heating it, the particles gain thermal energy, which above the Curie temperature makes their magnetic moments randomly oriented and hence destroying the magnetic field. So in this case energy is needed to clear out the field, just as in the quantum vacuum.

 Special thanks to Professor Derek Leinweber, find out more about his research here.

 

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Neutrinos: Nature's Ghosts?

Dr. Don Lincoln introduces one of the most fascinating inhabitants of the subatomic realm: the neutrino. Neutrinos are ghosts of the microworld, almost not interacting at all. In this video, he describes some of their properties and how they were discovered. Studies of neutrinos are expected to be performed at many laboratories across the world and to form one of the cornerstones of the Fermilab research program for the next decade or more.

 

Hewitt-Drew-it! 46. Gravity Inside Earth

An application of the gravitational equation to Earth's interior is treated.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

Monday 17 June 2013

Lagrange Points - Sixty Symbols

Discussing Lagrangian (Lagrange) points, orbits and gravity.

Buy the original animation art: http://bit.ly/10UZRQb (to support the artist)
Speaking is Professor Mike Merrifield. Animations by Pete McPartlan.

 

Sunday 16 June 2013

Why the Sky ISN'T Blue

The sky appears blue because of Rayleigh scattering...but why doesn't it appear violet? If the hard disk of a laptop spins in the space station, does the laptop spins? What if you were able to pass the event horizon of a black hole and come back? Is there such a thing as randomness?

 And other questions...

 

Saturday 15 June 2013

What is Supersymmetry? (Fermilab)

In this video, Fermilab's Dr. Don Lincoln describes the principle of supersymmetry in an easy-to-understand way. A theory is supersymmetric if it treats forces and matter on an equal footing. While supersymmetry is an unproven idea, it is popular with particle physics researchers as a possible next step in particle physics.

 

Fermilab's Dr. Don Lincoln explains some of the reasons that physicists are so interested in supersymmetry. Supersymmetry can explain the low mass of the Higgs boson, provide a source of dark matter, and make it more likely that the known subatomic forces are really different facets of a single, common, force.

 

Oxford Sparks: Towards Absolute Zero

Oxford sparks presents a ride to the land of the extremely cold. Find out more, and read the science behind the animation at http://www.oxfordsparks.net/animation/coldchem .

 

Saturday 8 June 2013

Hewitt-Drew-it! 45. Gravity

Paul shows how the equation for gravity is a guide to thinking.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos

 

Thursday 6 June 2013

Oxford Sparks: A quick look around the LHC

Oxford Sparks presents a visit to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. Find out more and explore other LHC resources at http://www.oxfordsparks.net/animation... No protons were harmed in the making of this animation.

Alice & Bob in Wonderland: Why doesn't the moon fall down?

Why doesn't the moon fall down? Join Alice & Bob in nine fun-filled, animated adventures as they wonder about the world around us.

 Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

 

Perimeter Classroom Activity: Demonstrating Trilateration for GPS

Perimeter's Dave Fish demonstrates activities for students to learn more about physics. In this classroom activity, students see how GPS determines a location.

 Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

 

Tuesday 4 June 2013

Public Lecture—Black Holes and Galaxies: A Love-Hate Relationship

Silvia Bonoli, a post-graduate researcher with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophyics and Cosmology, delivered this SLAC Public Lecture, titled "Black Holes and Galaxies: A Love-Hate Relationship."

Bonoli's talk details how the supermassive black holes lurking at the hearts of most galaxies affect the evolution of those galaxies, and how the galaxies provide raw material for the black holes' growth.

 

How to Turn Sound Into Light: Sonoluminescence

Another awesome thing the Mantis Shrimp does...

 

Hewitt-Drew-it! 44. Weightlessness

Phil Physiker contrasts mg with and without a support force.

Other Hewitt-Drew-it! videos