Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2010

philip2009 · 29 Dec 2010 at 12:36

Now playing on BBC 4 - 28,29,30th of December at 8PM - and also on iPlayer if you miss one.

mark66 · 29 Dec 2010 at 12:50

Cheers, always loved these. Good for all ages too

Morba · 29 Dec 2010 at 13:07

Terry Hollands is on one, might have been last nights. Gotta be worth a watch.

philip2009 · 29 Dec 2010 at 13:54

Yep, Terry Hollands is in the first lecture.

Cosimo · 29 Dec 2010 at 14:03

I missed last nights. Cheers for this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x1ygp

TheMightyTen · 29 Dec 2010 at 16:02

The RI Christmas lectures haven't been the same since Bryson Gore got his Doctorate and stopped bringing in the demonstrations

Will still watch though as I have for the last 30 years

Even got to go and see Frank Close do The Cosmic Onion in '93 (As a responsible adult!!! LOL)

TheVoice · 29 Dec 2010 at 19:27

I used to love these when I was a kid! Haven't seen them in ages.

Meridian · 29 Dec 2010 at 21:26

The best to watch was probably the late Eric Lathewaite. Carl Sagan was good, but suffered from the fact that there wasn't much he could show in the studio.

M

ShakenNstirred · 29 Dec 2010 at 22:51

watched these when i was growing up
will watch it on catchup

ic1male · 30 Dec 2010 at 17:10

The bloke doing this year's is annoying me. He's like a bungling oaf.

ShakenNstirred · 30 Dec 2010 at 17:17

ic1male said:
The bloke doing this year's is annoying me. He's like a bungling oaf.

yeah he`s not very good lol
going on about dropping a hamster off a roof lol
talking to kids about that isnt good

meghatronic · 30 Dec 2010 at 20:09

I found them incredibly difficult to watch. It's like the guy is acting out a book about things not to do when teaching. He's all over the place. For shame.

Doohickey · 30 Dec 2010 at 22:49

It's pretty disjointed so far. I appreciate that it's very challenging to explain ideas to kids that adults would find hard to grasp, but I think he's darting from one thing to the next too haphazardly. Hard to follow.

Mik3 · 30 Dec 2010 at 23:37

Meridian said:
The best to watch was probably the late Eric Lathewaite. Carl Sagan was good, but suffered from the fact that there wasn't much he could show in the studio.

M

Carl Sagan! whats this? Is that in the link Simulatorman posted?

Digitalle · 30 Dec 2010 at 23:45

Wasn't too enamoured with the presenter this year, as opposed to the last 4-5 who have all been really really excellent. Great fun though none the less.

Also nice to see it back on the Beeb.

Cosimo · 30 Dec 2010 at 23:49

Mik3 said:
Carl Sagan! whats this? Is that in the link Simulatorman posted?

He's not in that link but his lectures are in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpIjXuKCQHg

You might also want to take a little look here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/SagansCosmos

ic1male · 30 Dec 2010 at 23:56

Interesting. What was Carl Sagan on about when he said there was a new planet discovered between Saturn and Uranus?

EDIT: NM. It was 2060 Chiron, an object with characteristics of both a comet and asteroid.

Mik3 · 31 Dec 2010 at 00:02

simulatorman said:
He's not in that link but his lectures are in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpIjXuKCQHg

You might also want to take a little look here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/SagansCosmos

Cheers. I've already seen them.

Ceryndrion · 31 Dec 2010 at 00:36

For those of you out there that might enjoy something a little more in depth than the royal institution will go into (given that it is aimed at kids), back in 2006, the University of Berkeley made a series of webcasts called "Physics for future presidents" which basically is a series of short(ish) lectures about the core principles of physics.

Starts with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ysbZ_j2xi0 and runs for about 20 or so lectures, each about 90 minutes long. Now of course, these are proper lectures, so are not quite as showy as the RI ones, but to me, are much more interesting. Hope that someone will enjoy them too..

ic1male · 31 Dec 2010 at 00:38

There's also some interesting stuff on iTunes U(niversity). I was in hysterics at some mad Dutch professor teaching physics at MIT.