Princeton Public Library

The physics of history, taught by David J. Helfand

eng

videorecording

The physics of history

DVD

391318300

taught by David J. Helfand

720

Great courses DVD. Science & mathematics

An undergraduate course for nonscience majors that treats the atom as a tool for revealing the quantitative history of everything--from the human diet and works of art to Earth's climate and the universe

Pt. 1. Vast reaches of time and space -- Fundamentally, what's the world made of? -- Energy in the atomic world -- The atomic basis of the senses -- Radioactivity: nature's imperturbable clock -- From detecting forgeries to the First Art -- Watching plaster dry-and dating it -- We are what we eat: the history of diet -- A plant is what it eats: tracing agriculture -- Tree rings: seasons of the past 12,000 years -- Ice cores: climate records for 800 millennia -- Ocean sediments reveal 5 million years. Pt. 2. A bad day in June: death of the dinosaurs -- The origin and early history of life -- The history of Earth's atmosphere -- The Age of the Solar System -- What happened before the Sun was born -- Atoms are star stuff: cooking up carbon -- The lives of big stars: cooking up big atoms -- Relativity: space and time become spacetime -- Almost everything is relative -- Matter vanishes; light speed is breached? -- The limits of vision-13.7 billion years ago -- The first few minutes: where it all began

live action