Small is Beautiful • 2019 • episode "S1E2" • Size Matters

58:36

Jim Al-Khalili shows how investigation into the atom unravelled the mystery of creation.

S1E2 • Atom • Physics

9:02

A scientific film essay, narrated by Phil Morrison. A set of pictures of two picnickers in a park, with the area of each frame one-tenth the size of the one before. Starting from a view of the entire known universe, the camera gradually zooms in until we are viewing the subatomic particles on a man's hand.

1977 • Physics

88:46

Jim Al-Khalili investigates the amazing science of gravity, recreating groundbreaking experiments, including the moment when Galileo first worked out how to measure it. He investigates gravity waves, finds out from astronauts what it's like to live without gravity, sets out to find where in Britain gravity is weakest and so where we weigh the least, and helps design a smartphone app that volunteers use to demonstrate how gravity affects time and makes us age at slightly different rates.

2017 • Physics

45:05

Where Am I? Is a new documentary about the skills we use to find our way around. Whether you are an Inuit hunter, a foraging insect, or just someone out for a stroll, your brain is performing one of its most fundamental services – it’s navigating. Why are some of us good at finding our way, while others are not? Good navigators are able to use both memory and imagination…remembering where they have been, and imagining where they’re going. Some researchers believe we build a cognitive or mental map when we navigate, a kind of bird’s eye view of our surroundings, a view that can be rotated and examined in our mind. There has been about sixty years of argument amongst scientists about whether humans and other mammals actually form these cognitive maps or not. The advent of GPS or Global Positioning Systems has changed the discussion about navigation. GPS triggers a simpler, more automatic navigational technique that does not involve building a mental map. With GPS, we simply respond to directions and may not truly understand where we are.

S53E09 • The Nature of Things • 2013 • Physics

5:09

When you think about Einstein and physics, E=mc^2 is probably the first thing that comes to mind. But one of his greatest contributions to the field actually came in the form of an odd philosophical footnote in a 1935 paper he co-wrote -- which ended up being wrong.

TED-Ed • Physics

4:37

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, posed this famous question: If you put a cat in a sealed box with a device that has a 50% chance of killing the cat in the next hour, what will be the state of the cat when that time is up?

TED-Ed • Physics