Horizon Science Channel

The sixteenth episode of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. This one is about mirrors, adaptive optics, some stuff on quantum mechanics, how the eye works, and the moon's orbit. Covers parts of chapters 25 and 26 of the text below and topic 6 for AP 2. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

A quick description of the KATRIN experiment, currently running in Karlsruhe Germany. It is designed to measure the masses of neutrinos using a giant, blimp-looking spectrometer. The image is not photoshopped. Image from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KATRIN media gallery).

Episode twenty one of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. This is nuclear radiation and nuclear structure. Covers chapter 31 of the text below. It addresses topic 7 for the AP physics 2 course. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

There has been some controversy about this question. An experiment at CERN is running a test to see if anti-Hydrogen falls differently in a gravitational field than regular Hydrogen. This experiment would use antimatter directly. However, earlier gravity experiments to test the Weak Equivalence Principle claim to have already excluded this possibility. I go through their arguments here. Image is the row of trees outside of Wilson Hall at Fermilab, taken from the Fermilab photo archives.

These are two old videos that I merged into one so that you get both the explanation and the sounds in a single shot. The first part gives a description of how I converted the exoplanet discoveries from NASAs Kepler mission into sounds. The second half is the sounds.

The seventh episode of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. We talk about gravity, the equivalence principle, Kepler's laws, noninertial reference frames, and the olympics. 0:00 Introduction and review 1:00 Gravity 8:05 Equivalence Principle 16:40 Testing gravity with mirrors on the moon 29:00 Why gravity wins 34:00 Fake News Forces 48:00 Kepler's Laws 1:00:30 Olympic sports Covers chapter 6 of the text below and topic 3 for AP 1 and topic 7 for AP Mechanics. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

Sean Kenny from the Rock Logic podcast, talking about the nuclear industry and Generation IV nuclear reactors. https://rocklogicwithseankenny.com/ Note that there is a section removed (it should be easy to see) where I gave a completely erroneous explanation of pebble bed nuclear reactor design. If you want to see my wrong explanation, you'll need to check out the original Twitch VOD. Also note that this attempt at high quality sound failed as well. I now know two things that do not work.

Off-the-cuff overview of a set of physics experiments that measured the quantum states of Earth's gravitational field using a beam of neutrons. Some relevant references: https://www.nature.com/articles/415297a/ https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0301145 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.1362.pdf

Episode twenty two of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. This is nuclear medicine topics—mostly imaging. Covers chapter 32 of the text below. It addresses topic 7 for the AP physics 2 course. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

This is a brief description of the Cavendish experiment, conducted in the late 1700's, to measure the mass (density) of the Earth. It is equivalent to measuring the value of Newton's constant, G.

A discussion about anticipated science from the Mars Perseverance rover with Dr. Elisabeth Hausrath from the UNLV Geoscience department. Special emphasis on the sample return aspects of the mission. Dr. Hausrath is a member of the science team for the mission.

The second part of my discussion with Sam Gregson talking about the anomalous signal from the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab. The experimental measurement of the muon magnetic dipole moment disagrees with the best estimate from theory by more than four-sigma—a value that starts turning heads in the particle physics community. If confirmed, this would be strong evidence for a newly discovered physical process or particle. Given that 95% of the energy density of the universe is of unknown origin, such results are of great interest to scientists from around the world. Image Credit: Fermilab

OK. So, it isn't really physics, but since I work in this discipline, and since it won the physics Nobel Prize, we'll call it "honorary physics". I talk about the design and early results of NASA's Kepler Mission. I was a member of the science team for this mission (through the Participating Scientist Program). Thumbnail is of Kepler 11, taken from the NASA media gallery.

The third episode of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. Now, we add physics to the mathematical framework that we've built up in the previous two installments. We cover Newton's laws, the fundamentals of force, and get a preview of some of the conserved quantities that we will explore next time. 0:00 Introduction 1:50 Physics joins the party 16:50 Forces 38:30 Defining a system 45:30 How to win a tug of war 57:13 It's E&M all the way down 1:13:25 Fake News Forces 1:22:10 Q&A Basically chapter 4 of the text below and topic 2 for AP 1 and AP Mechanics. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

A review of some physics experiments that probed the existence of extra spacial dimensions at small scales. They also were instrumental in constraining some of the properties of dark energy. The primary research group is the Eot-Wash group at the University of Washington: https://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwash/ The three papers, in particular, that we explore (one is a recent result from a Chinese group) are below. They all appeared in Physical Review Letters. https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11761 https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0611184.pdf https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.051301 Image of Calabi-Yao manifold.

The second episode where I dig into the deep aspects of the material that is covered in AP physics classes—hopefully providing interesting insights that would otherwise be overlooked. Here I discuss kinematics—how we map what we observe onto a mathematical framework. 0:00 Introduction 6:10 Geometry 28:45 Mapping reality onto coordinate systems 54:00 Q&A Basically chapters 2 and 3 of the text below and topic 1 for AP 1 and AP Mechanics. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

This is a somewhat long overview of the design of the LIGO gravitational radiation detector. LIGO detected the first inspiral of stellar-mass (30~ish solar mass) black holes in 2015. There is a lot to unpack, especially regarding the science. I'll probably have to revisit it to go into some of those details. Image from R. Hurt/Caltech-JPL

The fourteenth episode of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. This one is about magnetism, electroweak theory, and some circuits. Covers parts of chapters 20 and 21 of the text below and topic 9 for AP 1, 4 for AP 2, and 1, 2, and 3 for AP E&M. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

A discussion with Jason Barnes about the upcoming Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan.

This video shows the energy consumption for the US through 2020 and compares it to the 2019 numbers. It uses the flow chart produced each year by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Details and historical charts can be found at: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/

The eighth episode of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. We move from particles to continuous media and talk about incompressible fluids. 0:00 Introduction and review 1:00 Continuous medium 11:00 Bernoulli's equation (conservation of energy) 24:05 Some examples (airplanes, water fountains, dark matter detectors) 36:30 Pascal and Archimedes 47:00 Capillaries 1:01:00 Laminar and Turbulent Flow 1:06:40 Water Fountains (conservation of matter) 1:15:45 Equations of State (compressible fluids intro) Covers chapters 11 and 12 of the text below and topic 1 for AP 2. OpenStax textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-ap-courses

This is my attempt to showcase the Pierre Auger observatory. It is an enormous cosmic ray observatory, located in Argentina near the Chilean border. Big detector (3000 square kilometers) = rare events. Image from ASPERA/Novapix/L. Bret

I give an overview of some high pressure physics techniques and then go into some detail about the discovery of room temperature superconductivity using some of these techniques. Image from Salamat Lab

An hour-long discussion with Alison Morrow about science reporting, the academy and media as institutions, and how to solve all the world's problems. Livestreamed on Twitch (twitch.tv/horizonsci) January 14, 2021.

The tenth episode of our deep dive into the material that is covered in AP physics classes. This video gives an overview of different heat engines. It's a bit of a departure. Less deep content, more practical explanation.