External Knowledge Training

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Physics - Introductory Berkeley course

All notes by John Eagles

1

Today i started watching this introductory course in physics. It's a UC Berkeley course given by Richard Muller. He explains physics without using many equations. In this particular lecture he comments quite a bit on 9/11 related physics and dwells on terrorist shoe bombs. He advises the government in such matters, so his views seem a bit politically colored. But he really knows how to present laws of physics in a very understandable and close-to-life manner. I've learned quite some new things from watching this lecture.

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Summary of topics lectured about:

1. Calories of food
2. Peripheral vision of the eyes detect especially motion
3. Solar technology
4. Tilt of the earth & the seasons
5. Global warming in relation to the forming of clouds. When the climate heats up, more clouds may form and may counter the greenhouse effect.
6. Canada is 2nd in the world after Saudi Arabia for its oil reserves, but Canada has it stored in oil sand and it's more expensive
7. Natural gas & shale gas in comparison to oil
8. Coal reserves: The USA has most reserves, then comes Russia and then China, Australia and India. These reserves are big in terms of energy compared to the world's oil reserves.
9. Coal and methane can turned into gasoline, but it's still risky in case the oil prices are lowered.
10. In politics, there's conflict between the issues of global warming and energy security.
11. Coal is the cheapest form of energy.
12. IPCC errors
13. Sequestering CO2 and making clean use of coal
14. CCS = Carbon Capture & Storage
    

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Topics in this video:

1. Size of atoms
2. Density of atoms
3. What makes atoms move, what gives them the kinetic energy?
4. Temperature = how much energy do things have
5. Thermometers
6. Scales of Celcius, Fahrenheit
7. Liquid nitrogen experiments
8. There are ca 1000 x more molecules in a fluid than in a gas of the same substance per volume
9. Temperature of absolute zero on the Kelvin scale means there is no energy
10. In the Kelvin scale the amount of energy is proportional to the temperature
11. A fire extinguisher has liquid CO2
12. Your subjective temperature measurement
13. Hot air rises because it's less dense
14. Conduction, convection, radiation

Lecturer is Bob Jacobsen

4 - Thermodynamics intro =

1. The ideal gas law (relationship between volume & temperature)
2. Movements of small and bigger molecules and atoms
3. Energy efficiency of engines
4. Refrigerators
5. Air conditioners
6. Entropy = a measure of disorder