Thease are the "Physics for Future Presidents" Lectures, streamed over google video from the university of california.

 

http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=Physics+for+Future+Presidents

Go find one that intrests you, they are really good :¬)

Thanks for the link. I spent the last hour watching "Physics 10 - Lecture 18 - Quantum II", which was quite interesting. Whilst I knew a lot of it, he threw in little extras which I found very interesting.

 

So he introduced energy gaps, levels & bands, at a simplistic level, but he then went on to show why other bands were not possible. It's related to when the electron wave catches up with itself and the waves are out of phase and cancel out. As the electron cannot, in real life, cancel itself out you can conclude that such an orbit or energy level cannot exist.

 

Another example would be that an electron in a superconductor is in the ground state, obvious. The interesting expansion was that if an electron collided with something then it would not gain enough energy to enter the next highest energy level, therefore it cannot collide in the first place.

 

Whilst I didn't think it was the most inspiring lecture, nor did it have the "x-factor", it was thought provoking and quite interesting. I hope to watch another one of those as soon as I have the time.

 

Thanks again.

I too found that episode fasinating, I am somone who did not know that stuff before, maybe this thread should be stickied.

"Physics 10 - Lecture 10: Electricity and Magnetism II" shocked me at how simple the levatation at 51:15 was. Why don't we have more technoligy based on this?

 

(sorry axidental doubble post)

bump

his explanation of waves is amazing