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Classical Mechanics
16mins
“The messy reality of it is that all of these very smart people, including Isaac Newton, were talking to other people.”
Times dilate and lengths contract near the speed of light. Bizarre and confusing? Sure. But under relativity, it can't be any other way.
1hr 18mins
“Everyone's image of [Ancient Rome] is based on modern movies. In some ways, I think those were rather impressive, but they got some things terribly wrong.”
9mins
“The universe clicks along in perfect accord with the laws of physics forever.”
1hr 26mins
“I like to say that physics is hard because physics is easy, by which I mean we actually think about physics as students.”
From high school through the professional ranks, physicists still take incredible lessons away from Newton's second law.
Here on Earth, we commonly use terms like weight (in pounds) and mass (in kilograms) as though they're interchangeable. They're not.
Straddling the bounds of science and religion, Newton wondered who set the planets in motion. Astrophysics reveals the answer.
Discover how Quantum Bayesianism challenges traditional quantum mechanics by focusing on the role of the observer in creating quantum reality.
A human hand has the power to split wooden planks and demolish concrete blocks. A trio of physicists investigated why this feat doesn’t shatter our bones.
Lord Kelvin is thought to have said there was nothing new to discover in physics. His real view was the opposite.
The Parthenon embodies the ideals of perfection Classical Greeks sought from architecture. The neighboring Erechtheion offers something else.
The combined intellectual heft of multiple “big thinkers” delivered arguably the most successful scientific theory in history.
Scientists can make substantial progress without fully understanding exactly what they're doing.
Einstein tried to disprove quantum mechanics. Instead, a weird concept called entanglement showed that Einstein was wrong.
Like Dua Lipa, he had to create new rules.
The quantum world is one in which rules that are completely foreign to our everyday experience dictate bizarre behavior.
It's literally the one and only trick that separates top-notch physicists from crackpots, dropouts, and those who can't cut the mustard.
An average undergraduate student in physics is better than the AI.
From physics and alchemy to theology and eschatology, Isaac Newton’s research was rooted in a personal pursuit of the Divine.
Going to smaller and smaller distance scales reveals more fundamental views of nature, which means if we can understand and describe the smallest scales, we can build our way to […]
Are space and time real like atoms are, or is spacetime just a calculational tool? When most of us think about the Universe, we think about the material objects that […]
The concept of ‘relativistic mass’ has been around almost as long as relativity has. But is it valid? No matter who you are, where you are, or how quickly you’re moving, […]
No matter how accurately you place two Plinko chips, you cannot count on the same outcome twice. Of all the pricing games on the iconic television show The Price Is Right, […]
The pendulum didn’t tick right when they brought it here: the start of a fascinating story. For nearly three full centuries, the most accurate way that humanity kept track of […]
And why Einstein’s quest for unification was doomed from the start. If you wanted to answer the question of what’s truly fundamental in this Universe, you’d need to investigate matter and […]
The transition across a quantum barrier is known as quantum tunneling, and the amount of time it takes for such a transition to occur had never been measured before. For […]
Never draw a conclusion, no matter how ‘obvious,’ without doing the experiment first. We all love our most cherished ideas about how the world and the Universe works. Our conception […]