Lectures (Video)
- 1. Energy, Power, and Explosions
- 2. Oil, Coal, Batteries, Solar Cells
- 3. Atoms and Heat - Thermal Expansion
- 4. Engines and Refrigerators. Efficiency
- 5. Gravity and Satellites. Weightlessness
- 6. Orbits, Airplanes, Rockets, Balloons
- 7. Radioactivity, Cancer, Dirty Bombs
- 8. Plutonium, Fission, Fusion
- 9. Chain Reactions, Critical Mass
- 10. Nuclear Bombs, Reactors, Waste
- 11. More Nukes
- 12. Electricity and Magnetism
- 13. Transformers, Superconductors, AC-DC
- 14. Waves, UFOs, Roswell, Earthquakes
- 15. Sound and Music
- 16. Light, Information Theory, Vision
- 17. Images, Lenses, Holograms, Polaroids
- 18. Invisible Light: IR, UV, Spying
- 19. X-rays, PET and CAT scans, MRI
- 20. Global Warming. Greenhouse Effect
- 21. Climate Change. Sea Level. Storms
- 22. Quantum Physics. Uncertainty. Lasers
- 23. Transistors, Solar Cells, Xerox, Digital Photos
- 24. Relativity. Time Dilation, Space Contraction
- 25. E = mc^2, Antimatter, Tachyons, Causality
- 26. The Universe. Planets, Galaxies, Wimps and Machos
- 27. The Big Bang. Hubble Law, Dark Matter, Dark Energy
- 28. Final Review Part 1
- 29. Final Review Part 2
Introduction to Physics
Course Summary
This course is based on Physics 10/LS C70V Descriptive Introduction to Physics, Spring 2008 made available by University of California, Berkeley: Webcast.Berkeley under the Creative commons BY-NC-ND 2.5 license.
This is an introductory physics course conducted by Prof. Richard Muller in Berkeley primarily for non-science students. It covers interesting and important topics in physics, stressing conceptual understanding rather than math, with applications to current events. Topics covered include energy and conservation, radioactivity, nuclear physics, the Theory of Relativity, lasers, explosions, superconductors, and quantum physics.
Reading Material
1. Textbook: Physics for Future PresidentsRichard A. Muller, Physics for Future Presidents, W.W. Norton & Co, ISBN-13: 978-0393066272.
Sample chapters:
1. Energy (987 KB pdf)
2. Atoms & Heat (1.4 MB pdf)
Course Material
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