The Illusion of Reality • episode "S1E3" Atom

Category: Physics

How studying the atom forced us to rethink the nature of reality itself.

Make a donation

Buy a brother a hot coffee? Or a cold beer?

Hope you're finding these documentaries fascinating and eye-opening. It's just me, working hard behind the scenes to bring you this enriching content.

Running and maintaining a website like this takes time and resources. That's why I'm reaching out to you. If you appreciate what I do and would like to support my efforts, would you consider "buying me a coffee"?

Donation addresses

patreon.com

BTC: bc1q8ldskxh4x9qnddhcrgcun8rtvddeldm2a07r2v

ETH: 0x5CCAAA1afc5c5D814129d99277dDb5A979672116

With your donation through , you can show your appreciation and help me keep this project going. Every contribution, no matter how small, makes a significant impact. It goes directly towards covering server costs.

Atom • 3 episodes •

The Clash of the Titans

The story of the groundbreaking scientific discovery that everything is made from atoms.

Physics

The Key to the Cosmos

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

Physics

The Illusion of Reality

How studying the atom forced us to rethink the nature of reality itself.

Physics

You might also like

How To Teleport

Teleportation is sci fi's most exciting way to travel. Imagine zapping your molecules through space on a transporter beam right out of Star Trek - Dr Michio Kaku reveals how we might all one day be saying 'beam me up Scotty'.

S1E4Physics of the Impossible • 2009 • Physics

How to Build a Starship

Hurtling across the galaxy in a starship powered by anti-matter isn't some sci fi writer's impossible dream, as Dr Michio Kaku proves when he reveals his blueprints for a spacecraft that can journey to the stars. Alpha Centaurii is nearer than you think.

S1E7Physics of the Impossible • 2009 • Physics

Beautiful Equations

Artist and writer Matt Collings takes the plunge into an alien world of equations. He asks top scientists to help him understand five of the most famous equations in science, talks to Stephen Hawking about his equation for black holes and comes face to face with a particle of anti-matter. Along the way he discovers why Newton was right about those falling apples and how to make sense of E=mc2. As he gets to grips with these equations he wonders whether the concept of artistic beauty has any relevance to the world of physics.

2010 • Physics

Einstein's Nightmare

How Albert Einstein thought he'd found the fatal flaw in quantum theory because it implies that sub-atomic particles can communicate faster than light.

S1E1The Secrets of Quantum PhysicsPhysics

The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics

The idea that there is a possibility of many worlds or multi universal theory is very new even though you may have learned about it in movies and comic books. Explore how this thinking was developed in the world of quantum mechanics and philosophy.

2019 • Physics

That Shrinking Feeling

Hannah is going the other way by asking whether everything could, in fact, be smaller. But going smaller turns out not to be much safer... First, we shrink the Earth to half its size - it starts well with lower gravity enabling us to do incredible acrobatics, but things gradually turn nasty as everyone gets altitude sickness - even at sea level. Then we visit Professor Daniel Lathrop's incredible laboratory, where he has built a model Earth that allows us to investigate the other effects of shrinking the planet to half size. The results aren't good - with a weaker magnetic field we would lose our atmosphere and eventually become a barren, lifeless rock like Mars. In our next thought experiment, we shrink people to find out what life is like if you are just 5mm tall. We find out why small creatures have superpowers that seem to defy the laws of physics, meet Jyoti Amge, the world's smallest woman, and with the help of Dr Diana Van Heemst and thousands of baseball players reveal why short people have longer lives. Lastly, the Sun gets as small as a sun can be. We visit the fusion reactor at the Joint European Torus to find out why stars have to be a minimum size or fusion won't happen. And if our Sun were that small? Plants would turn from green to black, and Earth would probably resemble a giant, frozen eyeball. Which all goes to show that size really does matter.

S1E2Size Matters with Hannah Fry • 2018 • Physics