The Mechanical Universe

The Mechanical Universe... And Beyond, is a 52-part telecourse filmed at the California Institute of Technology, and produced by Caltech and INTELECOM Intelligent Telecommunications (a non-profit consortium of California community colleges). The series introduces university level physics, covering topics from Copernicus to quantum mechanics.

Contents

• Episode 1 introduction the mechanical universe
• Episode 3 derivatives the mechanical universe
• List of episodes
• Funding
• References

Produced starting in 1985, the videos make heavy use of historical dramatizations and visual aids to explain physics concepts. The latter were state of the art at the time, incorporating almost 8 hours of computer animation created by computer graphics pioneer Jim Blinn. Each episode opens and closes with a "phantom" lecture by Caltech professor David Goodstein. After more than a quarter century, the series is still often used as a supplemental teaching aid, for its clear explanation of fundamental concepts such as special relativity.

The Mechanical Universe lectures are actual freshman physics lectures from Physics 1a and 1b courses at the California Institute of Technology. The room seen in the videos is the Bridge lecture hall.

The series can be streamed from services including Dailymotion and YouTube or purchased from Caltech.