Electricity from Zero

From zero all the way to a degree. Season 0 has no formulas: what electricity really is, what matter is made of, and what fills the "nothing". After that we start calculating: high-school electricity, licensed electrician, practical engineer and a degree.

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Season 0: What Is Reality, Anyway?

1. 0.1 Into the Wire: matter is almost empty
2. 0.2 What Fills Space? Fields, and the story of the ether
3. 0.3 What Is Matter? Particles that are ripples in a field
4. 0.4 The Map and the Territory: what we really know · coming soon

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▶9:05

Episode 0.1

Into the Wire: What Is Electricity, Really?

What really happens in the half second between flipping the switch and the light coming on?

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Chapters (10)

1. 00:00 Opening: The Light Bulb
2. 00:34 The Word: from amber to Ezekiel
3. 01:49 Stop One, The Wire: electrons slower than a snail
4. 03:15 Conventional Current and Electron Flow
5. 04:09 Stop Two, The Crystal: a sea of electrons, conductors and insulators
6. 05:00 Stop Three, The Atom: a cloud, not planets
7. 05:42 Stop Four, The Nucleus: a pea in the middle of a stadium
8. 06:35 The Way Back Out: you've never touched anything
9. 07:43 What Was Only a Picture?
10. 08:05 Ending and an Open Question: what fills the "nothing"?

▶21:01

Episode 0.2

What Fills Space? Fields, and the Story of the Ether

So what pushed your finger back?

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Chapters (21)

1. 00:00 Opening: The Finger That Got Pushed Back
2. 00:32 Action at a Distance: Newton's problem
3. 01:24 Faraday's Lines of Force
4. 02:29 Which Way Do the Arrows Point?
5. 03:17 Ripples in the Field: light is a wave
6. 04:27 Positive Charge or Electron?
7. 05:21 The Ether, and Michelson and Morley
8. 06:40 Einstein Kills the Ether, and Brings It Back
9. 07:36 What's the Difference Between a Field and the Ether?
10. 08:12 Full Space: the fields of the universe
11. 09:29 What Does the Higgs Field Do?
12. 10:32 So Why Does the Electron Crawl?
13. 11:42 The First Ripple
14. 12:59 A Ripple Both Ways, Current One Way
15. 14:05 A Drifting Swarm
16. 15:52 What Happens Without Atoms?
17. 17:11 Why Only a Third of the Speed of Light?
18. 18:00 Back to the Bulb: where does the energy travel?
19. 19:12 How It All Connects
20. 19:32 What Was Only a Picture?
21. 19:50 Ending and an Open Question

▶58:53

Episode 0.3

What Is Matter?

We dim a bulb until the light arrives in single clicks, and ask: is light a wave or grains?

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Chapters (15)

1. 00:00 Opening: Click. Click. Click.
2. 01:20 Two Stones in a Pond: interference
3. 02:24 Paintballs
4. 03:05 One Electron at a Time
5. 05:11 What Does "Quantum" Mean?
6. 06:03 A Guitar String: the trapped wave
7. 07:47 One Color for Each Step
8. 12:56 The Dance That Never Stops
9. 14:10 A Smooth Field, and Grains
10. 30:29 Where Does Your Mass Come From?
11. 42:30 Two in Every Seat: the Pauli exclusion principle
12. 48:42 So What Happens When No One Is Looking?
13. 50:04 Does Consciousness Create Reality?
14. 53:43 What Was Only a Picture?
15. 57:13 Ending and an Open Question

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