Physics

-- Behind every Olympic victory is an incredible amount of physics, biomechanics, and engineering. With the Olympic Games in full swing, let’s take a look at the science behind three of its most popular events: running, swimming and gymnastics.

Presented by Greg Kestin, Laura Jeanty, and Brian Clark Lecture Part 1 Lecture Part 2 Lecture Part 3

On December 20th, 1951, four glowing light bulbs in Arco, Idaho heralded the first use of nuclear power for electricity generation [1]. Today, twenty-nine countries operate nuclear power plants, and these produce about 14% of the world’s electricity [2].…

In 2004, Konstantin Novoselov, Andre Geim and their colleagues from Manchester, UK and Chernogolovka, Russia reported the existence of graphene, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon that is 1 atomic layer thick. This discovery took the world by surprise…

-- The past two decades have brought rapid advances in technology that have greatly influenced our daily lives. But have these technologies introduced new health risks along with new conveniences? Unfortunately, the development of electronic gadgets…

--It’s ten seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve, but by whose watch? Like all standards, measurements of time are arbitrary, and only as good as the precision of each ‘tick.’ As no clock is perfect, each will eventually speed up or slow down, making…