The MECHANICAL UNIVERSE

Subject: Telecourse/Physics/Science
Grades: 9-12-Adult
Length: 26 episodes @ 30 minutes
Distributors: PBS
School Record Rights: Fair Use
Web Site:
http://www.pbs.org/als/guide/courselistings/courses/mech_univ2/index.html

The Mechanical Universe is the first term of an introductory course in physics which uses advanced computer animation, scientific experiments, and a full array of visual techniques to teach classical mechanics. Lessons include the instruction in calculus required to work with the concepts presented in the course. Each half-hour segment of The Mechanical Universe uses creative teaching techniques designed to enhance learning. The programs bring together original location footage, physics experiments and demonstrations, historical reenactments, and computer animation. In between the professor's lectures lie unusual teaching aids such as hot air balloon events, symphony concerts, bicycle shops, and Coast Guard rescues used to illustrate points made and give the program a modern focus and relevance.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS

101) Introduction to The Mechanical Universe
This introductory preview enters an Artistotelian world in conflict, introduces the revolutionary ideas and heroes from Copernicus through Newton, and links the physics of the heavens to the physics of the earth.

102) The Law of Falling Bodies
The rise of Galileo on the inclined plane. With the conventional wisdom of the Aristotelian world view, almost everyone could see that heavy bodies fell faster than lighter ones. Then along came Galileo. His genius deduced that the distance a body has fallen at any instant is proportional to the square of the time spent falling. And his imaginative experiments proved that all bodies fall with the same constant acceleration.

103) Derivatives
The function of mathematics in physical science. From a theoretical concept to a practical tool, the derivative rose to determine the instantaneous speed and acceleration of a falling body. Differentiation developed further to calculate how any quantity changes in relation to another. The power rule, the product rule, the chain rule - the rules of differentiation are essential vocabulary in the mathematics language of physics.

104) Inertia
The rise of Galileo and his fall from grace. Copernicus conjectured that the earth spins on its axis and orbits around the sun. Considering its implications, a rather dangerous assumption that prompted rather risky questions: why do objects fall to earth rather than hurtle off into space? And in this heretical scheme of things in which the earth wasn't at the center, where was God? Risking more than his favored status in Rome, Galileo helped to answer such questions with the law of inertia.

105) Vectors
Physics must explain not only why and how much, but also where and which way. Physicists and mathematicians invented a way of describing quantities that have direction as well as magnitude. Laws that deal with such phenomena as distance and speed are universal. And vectors, which describe qualities such as displacement and velocity, universally express the laws of physics in a way that is the same for all coordinate systems.

106) Newton's Laws
A refinement on Galileo's law of inertia, Newton's first law states that every body remains at rest or continues in uniform motion unless an unbalanced force acts on it. His second law, the most profound statement in classical mechanics, relates the causes to the changes of motion in every object in the cosmos. Newton's third law explains the seemingly extraordinary phenomenon of interactions: for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

107) Integration Newton and Leibniz
arrived at the conclusion that differentiation and integration are inverse processes. Their exciting intellectual discovery, dramatically rerun to reflect the times, ended in an extremely controversial dead heat.

108) The Apple and The Moon
The first authentic steps toward outer space. Seeking an explanation for Kepler's theories, Newton discovered that gravity describes the force between any two particles in the universe. From an English orchard to Cape Canaveral and beyond, Newton's universal law of gravity reveals why an apple but not the moon falls to earth.

109) Moving in Circles
The original Platonic ideal, with derivatives of vector functions. According to Plato, starts are heavenly beings that orbit the earth with uniform perfection -- uniform speed and perfect circles. Even in this imperfect world, uniform circular motion makes perfect mathematical sense.

110) The Fundamental Forces
All physical phenomena of nature are explained by four forces. Two nuclear forces -- strong and weak - dwell within the atoms. The fundamental force of gravity ranges across the universe at large. So does electricity, the fourth fundamental force, which binds the atoms of all matter

111) Gravity, Electricity, Magnetism
The gravitational force between two masses, the electric force between two charges, and the magnetic force between two magnetic poles - all of these forces take essentially the same mathematical form. Newton's script suggested connections between electricity and magnetism. Acting on scientific hunches, Maxwell saw the matter in an entirely new light.

112) The Millikan Experiment
How does science progress? Through painstaking trial and error, illustrated with a dramatic re-creation of Robert Millikan's classic oil-drop experiment. Understanding the electric force on a charged droplet and viscosity, he measured the charge of a single electron.

113) Conservation of Energy
The myth of the energy crisis. According to one of the major laws of physics, energy is neither created or destroyed.

114) Potential Energy
The nature of stability. Potential energy provides a clue, and a powerful model, for understanding why the world has worked the same way since the beginning of time.

115) Conservation of Momentum
If the mechanical universes is a perpetual clock, what keeps it ticking away till the end of time? Taking a clue from Descartes, momentum - the produce of mass and velocity - is always conserved. Newton's laws embody the concept of conservation of momentum. This law provides a powerful principle for analyzing collisions.

116) Harmonic Motion
The music and mathematics of nature. The restoring force and inertia of any stable mechanical system cause objects to execute simple harmonic motion, a phenomenon that repeats itself in perfect time.

117) Resonance
The music and mathematics of nature, part II. As Galileo noted, the swings of a pendulum increasingly grow with repeated, timed applications of a small force. When the frequency of an applied force matches the natural frequency of a system, large-amplitude oscillations result in the phenomenon of resonance. Resonance explains why a swaying bridge collapses with a high wind, and how a wine glass shatters with a higher octave.

118) Waves
The medium disturbances of nature. With an analysis of simple harmonic motion and a stroke of genius, Newton extended mechanics to the propagation of sound.

119) Angular Motion
An old momentum with a new twist. Kepler's second law of planetary motion, which is rooted here in a much deeper principle, imagined a line from the sun to a planet that sweeps out equal areas in equal times. Angular momentum is a twist on momentum - the cross product of the radius vector and momentum. A force with a twist is torque. When no torque acts on a system, the angular momentum of the system is conserved.

120) Torques and Guroscopes
Why a spinning top doesn't topple. When a torque acts on a spinning object, the angular momentum changes, but the objects only processes. The object may be a child's toy, or a part of a navigation system, or Earth itself.

121) Kepler's Three Laws
The wandering mathematician. Kepler's three laws described the motion of heavenly bodies with unprecedented accuracy. However, the planets still moved in paths traced by the ancient Greek mathematicians - the conic section called an ellipse.

122) The Kepler Problem
The combination of Newton's law of gravity and F=3D ma. The task of deducing all three of Kepler's laws from Newton's universal law of gravitation is known as the Kepler problem. Its solution is one of the crowning achievements of Western thought.

123) Energy and Eccentricity
Tracing the path of a comet. The precise orbit of a heavenly body - a planet, asteroid or comet - is fixed by the laws of conservation of energy and angular momentum. The eccentricity, which determines the shape of an orbit, is intimately linked to the energy and angular momentum of the heavenly body.

124) Navigating in Space
Getting from here to there. Voyages to other planets require enormous expenditures of energy. However, the amount of energy expended can be minimized by using the same force that drives the planets around the solar system.

125) From Kepler to Einstein
The orbiting planets, the ebbing and flowing of tides, the falling body as it accelerates - these phenomena are consequences of the law of gravity. Why that is so leads to Einstein's general theory of relativity, into the black hole and beyond.

126) Harmony of Spheres
The music of spheres.