Potential energy provides a powerful model for understanding why the world has worked the same way since the beginning of time. This phenomenon is a kind of "self-sustaining vibration" that lies beyond the regime of applicability of the linear theory of the externally-driven simple harmonic oscillator.[45][46]. "The Quantum Mechanical Universe" (episode 52), 25:37 and following. Accordingly, celestial mechanics is the backbone of the subject and its climax is Newton's solution of the Kepler problem. [10][11] This was later expanded to 60 episodes, a number then cut back to the eventual total of 52 for budget and production-schedule reasons. And the result of all that was the mechanical universe, a universe that inexorably worked out its destiny according to precise, predictable, mechanical laws. Maxwell discovers that displacement current produces electromagnetic waves or light. The sheer difficulty of the problem he faced and the elegance of the method he applied to solve it are abundantly clear. The world of electricity and magnetism, and 20th-century discoveries of … Beyond the Mechanical Universe. The opening sequence used for the first 26 episodes lists the show's title as The Mechanical Universe, whereas the latter 26 episodes are titled The Mechanical Universe ...and Beyond. The work of Wheatstone, Ohm, and Kirchhoff leads to the design and analysis of how current flows. Negative reactions generally had less to do with the intrinsic perceived quality of the episodes than with the time the science-history material took away from content seen as "critical exam-preparing instruction". That is the nature of the world we live in. [16], In order to present detailed mathematical equation derivations, the show employed a technique its creators called the "algebraic ballet". The world of electricity and magnetism, and 20th-century discoveries of relativity and quantum mechanics. A last look at where we've been and a peek into the future. [26] He observed that detailed viewership figures were difficult to obtain, but when the show had been broadcast in Miami during Saturday mornings, the producers were able to obtain Nielsen ratings. Blinn felt that Cosmos had taken itself "too seriously", and so he aimed to include more humor in the Mechanical Universe animations. The companion text [...] was placed on library reserve for the course but was not extensively utilized by students.[31]. Olenick, T.M. [40][41], Goodstein received the 1999 Oersted Medal for his work in physics education, including The Mechanical Universe. Furthering the understanding of how electric charges exert forces and do work. A Movie List for Nerds and Beautiful Minds by gildedapple. [3][4] Each episode opens and closes with bookend segments in which Caltech professor David Goodstein, speaking in a lecture hall, delivers explanations "that can't quite be put into the mouth of our affable, faceless narrator". [27] During the fall of 1986, roughly 100 PBS stations carried The Mechanical Universe, and by the fall of 1987, over 600 higher-education institutions had purchased it or licensed the episodes for use. The basics of the capacitor, with a historical emphasis on. [7] The TV production team added fake wood paneling to the lecture hall so that it would more closely resemble that seen in the show The Paper Chase. Electromagnetic induction makes it easy to generate alternating current while transformers make it practical to distribute it over long distances. [2], Produced starting in 1982, the videos make heavy use of historical dramatizations and visual aids to explain physics concepts. [2], Similarly, a 1988 review in Physics Today suggested that the programs would not function well on their own as a telecourse, but would work much better as a supplement to a traditional classroom or a more standard distance-learning course such as Open University. Season: OR . The law of Biot and Sarvart, the force between electric currents, and Ampère's law. Shedding light on the mathematical form of the gravitational, electric, and magnetic forces. To cover this, additional reaction shots of a full lecture hall were filmed later, so that the illusion of a complete audience could be created in editing. [17] The goal was to avoid putting the viewers' "brains into a 60-cycle hum", without sacrificing rigor; the creators intended that students could learn the overall gist of each derivation from the animation, and then study the details using the accompanying textbook. [2], The room seen in the bookend segments is the Bridge lecture hall at Caltech. Einstein is motivated to perfect the central ideas of physics, resulting in a new understanding of the meaning of space and time. Year: Unknown. [23], Annenberg/CPB provided the funding for the production of The Mechanical Universe. [37] Writing for Wired magazine's web site, Rhett Allain cited the series as an example of videos that could replace some functions of traditional lectures. With the quest for low temperatures came the discovery that all elements can exist in each of the basic states of matter. The discovery of electromagnetic induction in 1831 creates an important technological breakthrough in the generation of electric power. [34] In a 1993 review of the series, a science historian stated that he had used episodes in his classes for several years, naming "Kepler's Three Laws" and "The Michelson–Morley Experiment" as his personal favorites. If I know the precise position of some particle at some instant of time, I cannot have any idea of where it's going or how fast. However, as more-recent expositions have emphasized, the catastrophic oscillations that destroyed the bridge were not due to simple mechanical resonance, but to a more complicated interaction between the bridge and the winds passing through it—a phenomenon known as aeroelastic flutter. How falling bodies behave and an introduction to the. [29] A considerably more enthusiastic evaluation came from physicist Charles H. Holbrow, who told Olenick, "These materials will constitute the principal visual image of physics for decades". Episode List. Einstein arrived at the Lorentz transformation from a deeper conceptual understanding, creating a theory full of surprises like the. By careful and precise measurement, Michelson and Morley tried to detect the Earth's motion through this medium, the ". Moving in Circles. Some concepts apply generally to all vector fields and are useful both in electromagnetism and in the study of fluid flow. Modern scientists have learned even more. The latter were state of the art at the time, incorporating almost eight hours of computer animation created by computer graphics pioneer Jim Blinn. Volta invents the electric battery using the internal properties of different metals. [28] The reviewers also found the "algebraic ballet" of computer-animated equations too fast to follow: "After a short time, one yearns for a live professor filling the blackboard with equations". In 1887, an exquisitely designed measurement of the earth's motion through the ether results in the most brilliant failure in scientific history. The "nuts and bolts" of how electrical circuitry was made practical, featuring. S1, Ep10. [50] Caltech also posted on YouTube a series of short videos made by Blinn to demonstrate the show's computer animation at SIGGRAPH conferences. [39] Other awards received by The Mechanical Universe include the 1986 Gold Award from the Birmingham International Film Festival, two "Cindy" awards from the International Association of Audio Visual Communicators (1987 and 1988), a Gold Award (1985) and a Silver Award (1987) from the International Film and TV Festival of New York, Silver (1986) and Gold Apple (1987) awards from the National Educational Film and Video Festival, and a Gold Plaque (1985) from the Chicago International Film Festival. This adaptation, for which a dozen high-school teachers and administrators were consultants, was supported by a $650,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Episode 2: The Law Of Falling Bodies - The Mechanical Universe The highlight of the Kepler film is a segment in which we are shown an exquisite graphical realization of the way in which Kepler actually figured out that the orbits of the planets are elliptical rather than circular.