Physics in Your Life

Overview

An award-winning professor brings physics down to earth from everyday examples to universal principles. How can a laser correct your vision? What forces keep an airplane aloft? How does a CD encode a symphony and play it back? What exactly is zero G? What’s the perfect way to cook egg custard? These questions involve physical principles that relate not only to interesting aspects of our daily lives but also explain such phenomena as the cause of hurricanes, the formation of neutron stars, the ability of water to dissolve different substances, and other fundamental features of reality.

Professor Wolfson is known as the Mr. Wizard of physics education. His superb teaching skills, amazing on-screen experiments, and passion for physics will have you on the edge of your seat for every lesson. You will start with a nuts-and-bolts description of how a refrigerator works and end up with a profound insight into the ultimate fate of the cosmos. Each module of this course is devoted to a specific realm of physics: sight and sound (CDs, DVDs, rainbows, optical fiber, musical instruments); motion (automobiles, airplanes, interplanetary probes, space flight); electricity and magnetism (motors, generators, videotapes, credit cards, wireless technology); computers (transistors, circuits, microprocessors, motherboards, and peripherals); heat (thermodynamics); and a potpourri module of miscellaneous topics (GPS, nuclear physics, medical imaging, and more).

“This is not a standard introductory physics course,” says Professor Wolfson. “It’s not a course that’s going to lay out a lot of physical principles, and then give you a few minor examples of them. Rather, it’s going to focus more directly on the application of those principles in your everyday life.”

Course Structure

01: Realms of Physics

Professor Richard Wolfson introduces the field of physics and describes the fundamental role it plays in our lives. He discusses the difference between classical and modern physics and outlines the course scope.

Duration: 32 min

02: The Amazing Disc

This lecture uses compact discs and DVDs as metaphors for the whole realm of physics, especially for the phenomena of light and sound.

Duration: 30 min

03: The Wonderful Wave

Most of our contact with and knowledge about the world comes from waves. This lecture explores basic wave behaviors and properties, and everyday phenomena.

Duration: 30 min

04: Seeing the Light

We learn how images are formed in the eye and how the principles of optics are used in everything from telescopes to microscopes, CD players to cameras.

Duration: 30 min

05: Is Seeing Believing?

Nature and technology have a variety of tricks for altering the path of light, some of which form images while others result in such beautiful optical effects as rainbows. The optical fibers that carry our email and web pages exploit such “tricks.”

Duration: 30 min

06: Music to Your Ears

Sound is a propagating disturbance that carries energy but not matter. Sound waves are important not only for hearing but for probing structures as diverse as the Sun and developing fetuses.

Duration: 30 min

07: May the Forces Be With You

The single most important concept in physics is that forces cause not motion but change in motion. This lecture introduces Newton’s famous three laws of motion.

Duration: 30 min

08: Aristotle’s Revenge

Friction is a hidden force that obscures the simplicity of Newton’s laws. Without friction, we couldn’t walk, run, or dance; start, stop, or steer a car; or even balance.

Duration: 31 min

09: Going in Circles

Motion in curved paths, especially circles, is important in everything from atoms to cars to satellites to galaxies, yet few ideas in physics are so confusing.

Duration: 30 min

10: Taking Flight

We look at how balloons and airplanes achieve flight. Newton’s laws provide a simple but full explanation for flight. A more sophisticated explanation involves the physics of fluid motion.

Duration: 31 min

11: Into Space

This lecture investigates the physics of space flight, from orbits to the misnamed state called “zero gravity.” We also look at many applications of space technology.

Duration: 30 min

12: A Conservative Streak

Under the right conditions, energy and momentum are conserved—that is, their values do not change. This explains many of the interactions that occur.

Duration: 31 min

13: The Electrical Heart of Matter

This lecture looks at aspects of electricity, including electric charge and electric fields, and the role electricity plays in holding matter together.

Duration: 30 min

14: Harnessing the Electrical Genie

Current is the net flow of electric charge. Voltage is the energy imparted per unit charge. Together, they give us electric power. Electric charge flows more easily in some materials than others, and these differences are exploited in technology.

Duration: 31 min

15: A Magnetic Personality

Magnetism arises from moving electric charges. We use this relationship in a huge number of ways, from motors and loudspeakers to clocks and circuit breakers.

Duration: 31 min

16: Making Electricity

To make electric current and keep it flowing, we need devices that can separate positive and negative charge and keep them separate. Here we look at devices from everyday batteries to solar cells.

Duration: 31 min

17: Credit Card to Power Plant

Electromagnetic induction is the basis for electric generators and a host of applications—from devices that read credit cards to tape recorders, bicycle speedometers, and electric toothbrush chargers.

Duration: 30 min

18: Making Waves

Everything we know about electromagnetism is described by Maxwell’s equations. Maxwell’s equations lead us directly to the nature of light, radio, x-rays, and other electromagnetic waves.

Duration: 30 min

19: The Miracle Element

Professor Wolfson uses a series of six lectures to take us from the atomic level all the way up to a complete computer. This first lecture examines the intriguing properties of the element silicon, essential to modern electronics.

Duration: 31 min

20: The Twentieth Century’s Greatest Invention?

One of the most important inventions of the 20th century is the transistor, a tiny semiconductor device at the heart of every electronic gadget, from the simplest radio to the most complex supercomputer.

Duration: 31 min

21: Building the Electronics Revolution

The revolution that enabled modern electronics came in the early 1960s, when engineers learned to combine multiple transistors and other electronic devices on a single piece, or “chip,” of silicon.

Duration: 30 min

22: Circuits – So Logical!

The fundamental building blocks of computers are digital circuits that store and process information in the form of binary numbers.

Duration: 30 min

23: How’s Your Memory?

We investigate how individual electronic memory cells work and how they’re assembled into voluminous computer memories.

Duration: 31 min

24: Atom to Computer

We learn what goes into a complete computer, comprising a microprocessor, motherboard, and different peripheral devices.

Duration: 31 min

25: Keeping Warm

This lecture introduces a number of ideas related to heat, including the flow of heat, temperature and how it is measured, and energy balance.

Duration: 31 min

26: Life in the Greenhouse

Professor Wolfson discusses the process of energy balance as it applies to Earth’s climate and how human activity may be altering that climate.

Duration: 30 min

27: The Tip of the Iceberg

We investigate changes in state between liquids, solids, and gases, and how these affect different substances, including water, which has some unusual properties.

Duration: 31 min

28: Physics in the Kitchen

The kitchen is full of examples of physics, especially relating to heat transfer. We explore refrigeration and the many styles of cooking, including broiling, boiling, steaming, and microwaving.

Duration: 31 min

29: Like a Work of Shakespeare

The writer C. P. Snow compared the second law of thermodynamics to the works of Shakespeare as being something every educated person should know.

Duration: 30 min

30: Energy in Your Life

How much energy does it take to supply our energy needs? Professor Wolfson inventories our energy use and gives a visceral demonstration of what that implies.

Duration: 30 min

31: Your Place on Earth

Featuring a potpourri of physics applications, Professor Wolfson begins a five-lecture series which opens with a look at the Global Positioning System (GPS), a constellation of satellites that can pinpoint a location on Earth within inches.

Duration: 30 min

32: Dance and Spin

The physics of rotational motion leads to some surprising phenomena, with roles in such everyday occurrences as bicycle riding, ice skating, and weather.

Duration: 30 min

33: The Light Fantastic

The laser is among the most important inventions of the 20th century. We explore different types of lasers and their uses.

Duration: 31 min

34: Nuclear Matters

Nuclear physics is inextricably part of our lives—in energy, defense policy, medicine, airline security, and even in smoke detectors and radiocarbon dating.

Duration: 30 min

35: Physics in Your Body

Beginning with the mechanics of how the human body works, we then investigate medical techniques that use physics, particularly medical imaging tools such as PET, CAT, and MRI.

Duration: 31 min

36: Your Place in the Universe

Professor Wolfson closes with a philosophical look at where we humans fit into the universe, particularly how the material from which we are made comes, ultimately, from stars and from processes that commenced during the Big Bang.

Duration: 31 min