physics

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Richard Feynman: No Ordinary Genius

In this 90-minute BBC documentary from 1993, we see a glimpse of Richard Feynman at his best. Feynman and other figures from his life are interviewed extensively, revealing a portrait of a complex mind -- a man who was willing to live with doubt, uncertainty, and incorrectness as part of the human condition. It's wonderful. A representative quote: "His way of thinking was not typical." No doubt. Check it out: The film was also adapted into a book. Some of my favorite prior coverage of... READ ON

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Australian Toilets Don't Flush Backwards Because of the Coriolis Effect

Toilet image via Shutterstock File under "News to Me": you know that old story about how northern hemisphere toilets flush counter-clockwise, and southern hemisphere toilets (and buckets, drains, and such) flush clockwise, due to the Coriolis effect? It's bogus! Today I learned that while the Coriolis effect is significant for hurricanes, it's not strong enough to make toilets flush in different directions at different points on the Earth. The real cause of "backwards"-flushing toilets is just that... READ ON

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Lectures for a New Year: 2011 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate (The Theory of Everything)

Time for some fairly deep physics -- strap yourselves in! For many decades, notions of a "theory of everything" have floated around scientific circles: can the universe be explained by a "unified theory," in other words a theory that unifies the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics? Each of these theories works well in their realms (the very big and the very small), but trying to tie them together doesn't work easily. String theory is one of several possible ways to do this -- but there... READ ON

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Lectures for a New Year: A Physics Classic from 1960

In 1960, University of Toronto physics professors Patterson Hume and Donald Ivey produced a half-hour educational film explaining basic principles of physics. They called it Frames of Reference, and used the opportunity to make the seemingly-boring topic of physics education actually pretty fun (or at least as fun as an educational film from 1960 featuring dudes in suits could be). Using visual gags and a series of engaging experiments featuring themselves and hockey pucks, the professors explained how... READ ON

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Quantum-Locked Superconducting Floating Discs Will Freak You Out

Short version: prepare to have your mind blown by scientastic weirdness (also known as "quantum levitation"). Longer version: exploiting the Meissner effect, scientists from Tel Aviv University (and others) have created an interesting scenario with super-cooled superconducting discs, cooled to -185ºC and suspended above (or below) magnetic fields. Okay, that "longer explanation" still doesn't do it justice. Watch this floating insane-o-disc and prepare to start Googling to see whether it's a hoax:... READ ON

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Richard Feynman on His Father

In this five-minute clip from The BBC's The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out, physicist Richard Feynman talks about his father, and how Feynman was taught by his father, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and good old-fashioned experimentation. It's a nice look into the origins of Feynman's thought processes, and how he attempted to pass them on to his own children. Sample quote: "[My father] knew the difference between knowing the name of something, and knowing something." My favorite moment starts... READ ON

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Symphony of Science: The Quantum World!

Featuring Morgan Freeman, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Cox, Richard Feynman, and Frank Close, the latest installment of the Symphony of Science is educational and fun -- it's about quantum physics, and offers a cursory introduction to the topic. Of course you can only do so much in a three-and-a-half minute auto-tuned song, but I was impressed. The ending (a bit from Feynman) really made me smile. Enjoy: Lyrics after the... READ ON

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Remembering Richard Feynman

In this TEDxCaltech talk, physicist Leonard Susskind talks about his old friend Richard "Dick" Feynman. Susskind relates a series of stories about Feynman the man, the scientist, and the teacher. It doesn't really get good until four minutes in; the whole talk is fourteen minutes long. Sample quote: "What Feynman hated more than anything else was intellectual pretense, phoniness, false sophistication, jargon. [Recounts a story about philosophers discussing whether machines could develop minds.] The... READ ON

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Frames of Reference: 1960 Physics Video

This is a hoot: Frames of Reference is a 1960 video produced by MIT's Physical Science Study Committee as "part of its course in physics." It's a half-hour video showing various demonstrations of physics, with a dry sense of humor. You can watch a streaming version below or download DVD quality versions from Archive.org. From the Archive.org description of the film: This PSSC film utilizes a fascinating set consisting of a rotating table and furniture occupying surprisingly unpredictable spots... READ ON

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Why is it so hard to balance on a bicycle that's not moving, and easy on one that is?

Reader Brian writes in to ask "Why can you stay on a bicycle when moving, but not when it's standing still?" Think of something like a table or a couch. It has four legs that touch the floor and form a base of support (a polygon formed by an object's contact points with the ground) and as long as the table or couch's center of gravity (the mean location of the gravitational force acting on an object, or the effective point at which gravity acts) is above this base of support, it'll be statically stable,... READ ON