Have you ever been doing thermodynamics in a closed system and noticed that there’s a finite number of ways that things can be arranged, and they tend towards disorder? Of course you have, we all have. That’s entropy. And here in our Universe, entropy is on the rise. Let’s learn about entropy in its specific, […]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
One of the most amazing implications of Einstein’s relativity is the fact that the inertial mass of an object depends on its velocity. That sounds like a difficult thing to test, but that’s exactly what happened through a series of experiments performed by Kaufmann, Bucherer, Neumann and others. Download the show [MP3] | Jump to […]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
An object at rest stays at rest, and object in motion tends to stay in motion. This is inertia, defined famously by Isaac Newton in his First Law of Motion. Download the show [MP3] | Jump to Shownotes | Jump to Transcript (more…)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Put that pedal to the metal and accelerate! It’s not just velocity, but a change in velocity. Let’s take a look at acceleration, how you measure it, and how Einstein changed our understanding of this exciting activity. (more…)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Why don’t we have insects the size of horses? Why do bubbles form spheres? Why does it take so much energy to broadcast to every star? Let’s take a look at some non-linear mathematical relationships and see how they impact your day-to-day life. (more…)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
An object at rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Isaac Newton dismantled the traditional idea that objects would tend to slow down over time, and described the concept of inertia: the amount an object will resist changes in its motion.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Our entire civilization depends on energy: getting it, converting it, burning it, and conserving it. But how do physicists think about energy? How do they measure and quantify it. And what is energy’s special relationship with mass?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
You know how a police siren changes sound when it passes by you? That’s the doppler effect. It works for sound waves and it works for light waves. Astronomers use the doppler effect to study the motion of objects across the Universe, from nearby extrasolar planets to the expansion of distant galaxies. Doppler shift is […]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
At the earliest moments of the Universe, there were no separate forces, energy or matter. It was all just the same stuff. And then the different forces froze out, differentiating into electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force. Today we’ll look at the problem that has puzzled physicists for generations: is there a single […]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
After a quick Dragon*Con break, we’re back to our tour through the fundamental forces of the Universe. We’ve covered gravity and electromagnetism, and now we’re moving onto the strong and weak nuclear forces. We didn’t think they’d really need to be separate episodes, so we’re putting them together. And then we’ll cap the whole series […]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
