Catalog Search Results
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Examine the circuits that enable your devices to "remember" everything from contact information to your browsing history to the keystrokes you type on your computer. Compare random-access memory versus sequential memory as well as volatile and non-volatile memory.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Probe the quantum events that underlie color vision, discovering the role of the retinal molecule in detecting different frequencies of photons as they strike cone cells in the eye’s retina. Also investigate the source of color blindness, most common in men, as well as its inverse, tetrachromacy, which is the ability to see an extra channel of color information, possessed by some women.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Begin the show with card tricks in which mathematics is clearly being used, but the secret is not easy to figure out. Learn the invariant principle: Some qualities stay the same in a deck even though the order of cards is changing. End with what Professor Benjamin calls the "tear-able" trick, being careful to use cards that you don't mind wrecking.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
While the Venusian carbon dioxide atmosphere has resulted in a runaway greenhouse effect and the hottest surface temperature in the solar system, the Earth and Venus actually contain about the same amount of carbon. Explore the forces that resulted in the extreme atmospheric differences between these two otherwise-similar planets.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Examine the nuances of alternating and direct currents, see how transformers use electromagnetic induction to transform voltage levels in AC circuits, and observe the role of diodes and capacitors in regulating current. See how the DC power supplies that charge our cell phones are constructed so that they convert alternating to direct current.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Discover how transistors can be used to increase voltage, current, or power of an electronic signal while faithfully reproducing the signal's time variation. See how biasing and load-line analysis play key roles in amplifiers, and help prevent distortion. Learn to design a simple one-transistor audio amplifier that increases the voltage of audio-frequency signals.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Learn how electronic devices "talk" to each other by using flip-flops to send computer "words" one bit at a time, and observe how recipient devices reassemble incoming bits using serial-to-parallel conversions. See how Universal Serial Bus (USB) connections transmit communications between devices, and how the T flip-flop is utilized as a frequency divider in quartz watches.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Fly through the corona of what is by far the largest, most massive, and most significant object in the solar system: the Sun. With its gravity, heat, light, magnetic fields, and plasma storms, learn how the Sun affects every object in the solar system, and follow the race to learn more about coronal mass ejections before one destroys trillions of dollars in electronics on Earth.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Admire the magic of the number nine. An ancient technique called "casting out nines" lets you pick out the missing digit in a bewilderingly long series of operations. Then learn to determine two-digit cube roots and also find the age of a volunteer who has hidden the number in a complicated calculation, all with the help of the number nine.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Semiconductors make possible the transistors at the heart of electronics, including integrated circuits and computers. Learn how the atomic configuration of semiconductors makes them unique, and how engineers adjust their properties to make two types of semiconductors - P and N. Witness the critical role that PN-junctions play in semiconductor devices.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Among Einstein’s insights was that light comes in discrete packets of energy called photons. Explore the photoelectric effect, which prompted Einstein’s discovery. See a do-it-yourself project that demonstrates the photoelectric effect. Close by surveying applications of the quantum theory of light to phenomena such as lasers, fluorescent dyes, photosynthesis, and vitamin D production in skin.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Define what "feedback" means in electronics, and how it can be used in a circuit. Learn how negative feedback utilizes communication between the output and input of an amplifier, and how operational amplifiers use this phenomenon to create thought-controlled robotic arms, intelligent light bulbs, and optical tracking systems.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Fans of science fiction know that a collision with an asteroid has the potential to obliterate civilization as we know it. With 20,000 asteroids identified in near-Earth orbit, how can collision be avoided? Learn why these rocky bodies, and those in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, never accreted into planets and how we might harness their resources for future space travel.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Get to know your planets with help from Professor Sabine Stanley's thrilling ride of discovery, illustrated by the phenomenal images NASA has gathered through its telescopes, cameras, and laboratories on Earth and among the stars. A Field Guide to the Planets offers a fuller picture of what scientists know about our solar system - and how much there is yet to learn.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Learn why large gain - infinite gain, in fact - as well as low output resistance and high input resistance are characteristics of the ideal amplifier. See how an integrated-circuit operational amplifier, or "op-amp," puts all these things together and also how the op-amp can be used as a simple comparator.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Explore card tricks in which the cards are shuffled, dealt, and flipped over in interesting ways, leading to surprising outcomes. Discover Hummer's principle: an endless source of mystifying, crowd-pleasing tricks, based on random mixing of cards combined with a simple procedure that preserves a pattern that seems positively magical.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The surprising detection of gas giant planets orbiting extremely close to other stars has led to the realization that planets can form in one part of a stellar system and then migrate to another part. Did that happen in our own solar system? Learn about the evidence for a "Late Heavy Bombardment" on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
What a fascinating world Voyager 2 revealed in 1986 during its short flyby of Uranus! Learn why Uranus seems to orbit "on its side" surrounded by a delicate system of 13 rings and 27 moons, how we discovered its multi-polar magnetic field, and why scientists think Uranus might contain an ocean made of liquid diamond, with floating chunks of solid "diamond-bergs!"
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Ponder two celebrated and thought-provoking responses to the apparent incompatibility of quantum mechanics and classical physics. Bell’s theorem shows that attempts to reconcile the two systems are futile in a certain class of theories. Next, Schrodinger’s cat is a thought experiment implying that a cat could be both dead and alive if the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics holds.
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