Classical physics is about making sense of motion, gravity, light, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism, and seeing how these phenomena interweave to create the rich tapestry of everyday experience. You already know more physics than you think, says award-winning science educator Steven Pollock. He discusses brilliant thinkers Galileo, Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell to show you that classical physics is an elegant system describing how the world is put together.
Great Ideas of Classical Physics
Cover three centuries of brilliant thinkers as an award-winning professor takes you step by step through landmark concepts in physics.
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Anonymous from
GREAT IDEAS OF CLASSICAL PHYSICS
Superb course. I was pleased by the professor's scope of knowledge. I may watch it again.
Date published: 2024-06-13
Rated 5 out of
5
by
maherdr from
amazing and unique! Thanks
so easy so smooth! I never has had such exciting with listening to such deep thinking of professor Steven Pollock, his methods of teaching are unique and should be taught to other teachers in all fields, I wish he has more courses
Date published: 2024-02-25
Rated 5 out of
5
by
jeffocks from
Brilliant lecturer, exciting stuff
Newton's f=ma never sounded so exciting. The lecturer conveys exactly how revolutionary the ideas of Galileo and Newton were. The story of the development of Galileo's and Newton's problems, thought processes and theories of motion, gravity etc. are delivered with incredible clarity. The lecturer seems to have a self-imposed brief to not show us any equations, which is a pity given the number of equations he wants to refer to and which would makes things clearer. That's the only downside to this otherwise amazing tour de force of a course!
Date published: 2023-10-05
Rated 5 out of
5
by
JTR1000 from
We learned something!
Finally got around to taking a physics class. It was very informative. Nice to have an understanding of how things are interconnected. Very enjoyable.
Date published: 2023-01-29
Rated 3 out of
5
by
kalb from
disappointing
Prof too often failed to get the concepts clearly transmitted; found too much simply not interesting. Also, the Prof's speech patterns (especially pronouncing "to" as "tuh" ) were offputting.
Date published: 2023-01-26
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Ohio student from
Just what I was looking for
I regret not having taken physics in high school so many years ago and am delighted with this course. I am taking it slowly (1 disc down, 3 to go), but am learning and enjoying Dr. Steven Pollock's presentations which are enthusiastic, clearly stated and understandable.
Date published: 2022-03-25
Rated 5 out of
5
by
GSB77 from
Great Overview of Basic Physics
I had physics in college many decades ago and was looking for a more conceptual overview and review of basic concepts. This course fit that need very well. Approaching the concepts in a historical framework was especially interesting and helpful and gained more appreciation for Galileo and others besides just Isaac Newton. Professor is very engaging and clear. I feel I can go onto more advanced treatment of this subject from here.
Date published: 2022-03-07
Rated 4 out of
5
by
Phil10 from
Very well explained in layman terms. The instructor was great.
Date published: 2022-03-07
Overview
About
Dr. Steven Pollock is Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his master's degree and Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford University. Prior to taking his position at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Professor Pollock was a senior researcher at the National Institute for Nuclear and High Energy Physics. In 2013, Professor Pollock was honored with a U.S. Professor of the Year award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is also the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the University of Colorado?s Boulder Faculty Assembly Teaching Excellence Award. He has taught a wide variety of physics courses at all levels, from introductory physics to advanced nuclear and particle physics, with an intriguing recent foray into the physics of energy and the environment. Professor Pollock is the author of the multimedia textbook Physics I. He became a Pew/Carnegie National Teaching Scholar in 2001, and is a member of the American Physical Society-Nuclear Physics Division and the American Association of Physics Teachers. He has presented both nuclear physics research and his scholarship on teaching at numerous conferences, seminars, and colloquia.
01: The Great Ideas of Classical Physics
Professor Pollock opens the course with an overview of the domain of classical physics: forces and motion, matter and energy, space and time, and particles and waves.
34 min
02: Describing Motion - A Break from Aristotle
Greek natural philosophers made enormous progress 2,000 years ago but missed something essential in their analysis of nature - the scientific method. This lecture examines Galileo's challenge to ancient ideas.
30 min
03: Describing Ever More Complex Motion
Galileo's study of marbles rolling down ramps led to a distinction between velocity and acceleration. Acceleration is one of the paradigmatic ideas in physics, relating to the concept of rate of change.
31 min
04: Astronomy as a Bridge to Modern Physics
Speculations on Earth's place in the universe, the nature of planets, and the structure of the solar system were at the heart of the development of classical physics. This lecture looks at the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo.
30 min
05: Isaac Newton - The Dawn of Classical Physics
The turning point in the development of classical physics traces to Isaac Newton. This lecture covers Newton's background and the first two of his laws of motion, involving inertia (mass), acceleration, and force.
30 min
06: Newton Quantified - Force and Acceleration
The master idea for this course is Newton's statement of the relationship between force and acceleration: F = ma. This formula determines almost all of classical physics. It is at once simple and deep.
31 min
07: Newton and the Connections to Astronomy
Thinking about circular motion led Newton to an understanding of planetary motion, closing the loop with Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus, and making sense of a Sun-centered solar system and its connection to everyday motion.
30 min
08: Universal Gravitation
Newton's deduction of the law of gravity involved some speculation, just a little math, and a lot of creativity. Remarkably, it succeeded in unifying terrestrial and celestial phenomena into one framework.
30 min
09: Newton's Third Law
Newton's third law of motion ("for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction") can be exasperatingly counterintuitive at first, but it makes perfect sense in terms of a new quantity, momentum.
29 min
10: Conservation of Momentum
Introducing the concept of momentum broadens the power of physics and results in the Newtonian world-view of the universe as a deterministic clockwork, based on only a few basic underlying and unified principles.
31 min
11: Beyond Newton - Work and Energy
A century after Newton, a new concept more abstract than force gained popularity: energy. Energy forms the basis of understanding everything from chemistry and biology to geology and engineering.
30 min
12: Power and the Newtonian Synthesis
The concept that energy can move from place to place and change forms helps explain why things behave as they do. The rate at which energy flows from one system to another (the power) explains even more.
30 min
13: Further Developments - Static Electricity
In Newton's day, electricity and magnetism were mere curiosities. By the 19th century, serious investigation into these phenomena began. Though heralded as "new" forces of nature, they still fit within the Newtonian framework.
31 min
14: Electricity, Magnetism, and Force Fields
In his studies of electricity and magnetism, Michael Faraday introduced the radical idea of the force "field." Sources create a field around them, and other objects then respond locally to that field.
31 min
15: Electrical Currents and Voltage
This lecture covers electrical concepts such as charge, voltage, and current. Progress in understanding electricity in the 19th century led to rapid developments in applied physics.
31 min
16: The Origin of Electric and Magnetic Fields
Electricity and magnetism are distinct but intimately related. This lecture explores the myriad connections between them, leading to a deeper understanding of the unity of electromagnetic physics.
31 min
17: Unification I - Maxwell's Equations
In one of the great triumphs of classical physics, James Clerk Maxwell summarized two centuries of research on electricity and magnetism in four famous equations, explained here in words and concepts.
30 min
18: Unification II - Electromagnetism and Light
Published in the 1860s, Maxwell's equations made a startling prediction: Electric and magnetic fields should interact to produce electromagnetic waves - of which visible light is only a tiny range of a vast spectrum.
31 min
19: Vibrations and Waves
Vibrations and the associated phenomenon of waves are everywhere in the natural world. Understanding the big ideas of waves plays a key role in the developing story of physics.
30 min
20: Sound Waves and Light Waves
One hundred years after Newton described light as a stream of particles, Thomas Young turned the world of optics on its head when he demonstrated that light was not made of particles but was in fact a wave phenomenon.
32 min
21: The Atomic Hypothesis
Atoms provide a unifying principle even greater than Maxwell's equations. Energy, structure of materials, chemistry, heat, optics, and much more become simpler to describe and explain at a fundamental level.
29 min
22: Energy in Systems - Heat and Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is the study of heat and energy. When there are large numbers of particles, average quantities become easier, not more difficult, to predict. This is the heart of thermodynamics.
31 min
23: Heat and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
One of the last great developments of classic physics was the discovery of a new property of systems, entropy, defined colloquially as "you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game."
31 min
24: The Grand Picture of Classical Physics
Classical physics is defined in part historically and in part by a philosophical outlook: The world is ordered, and there is a limited set of fundamental ideas that explain and predict all natural phenomena.
31 min
