GC review: Understanding the Quantum World
So…
It isn’t all anime all the time here at Chez Bujold, as I force reading breaks on my aging eyes. (A person should not be seeing double through one eye. That’s just wrong.) I change it up with the occasional Great Course, of which I have become a fan and connoisseur.
It’s been interesting to see their technical development over the years, from back in the 90s when all they basically did was stick a professor up behind a podium and let him geek out about his or her favorite subject for however-many half-hour lectures, to the 00s and into the 2010s, where they began to deploy more pictures and visual aids, to the most recent, which finally begin to access the full-on teaching potential of the visual medium. (You can date the period of any given set of lectures by the sets.) In the early days, one can sense, the company was mainly thinking of people accessing the lectures through audio means, and they still sell audio versions of much of their material. But for visual thinkers like myself, pictures (and models, thank you Prof. Ressler) are a lot more powerful and memorable.
Understanding the Quantum World is a truly superior presentation by a truly superior lecturer, Professor Erica W. Carlson, that brilliantly utilizes visual teaching. Step by step, she leads the viewer from the simple to the profound. A great deal of jargon from the world of quantum physics has been picked up and used in modern metaphor; if nothing else, these lectures will show you where all those terms actually come from and what they mean when they’re at home (and, probably, how a lot of people are using them wrong.)
She manages to almost completely substitute visual pictures for the math, which works among other reasons because so much would seem to depend on fundamentals of quantum geometries. I found myself constantly torn between thinking this was the weirdest stuff ever, and realizing it made so much sense. Or, like the particle and the wave, both at once.
I need to watch it, like, two or three more times, not because the presentation missed any steps, but just because binge-watching was likely not the best approach, though I wanted to see how the plot came out. Second time through I expect to get/retain a lot more. And I have it on DVD, so I can, hah.
Recommended for: everybody.
Ooh: on sale this week. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/cours...
Great Courses list prices are heart-stopping, but they have frequent deep-discount sales, and most public libraries have some of the courses for free. One can also frequently pick up used editions for less on Amazon, Half-Price Books, and so on. And now they have streaming, which I admit I haven’t sampled yet, go them.
Ta, L.
(Feel free to mention other favorite GCs & similar in the comments. Because not all TV is trying to win the race for the bottom.)
It isn’t all anime all the time here at Chez Bujold, as I force reading breaks on my aging eyes. (A person should not be seeing double through one eye. That’s just wrong.) I change it up with the occasional Great Course, of which I have become a fan and connoisseur.
It’s been interesting to see their technical development over the years, from back in the 90s when all they basically did was stick a professor up behind a podium and let him geek out about his or her favorite subject for however-many half-hour lectures, to the 00s and into the 2010s, where they began to deploy more pictures and visual aids, to the most recent, which finally begin to access the full-on teaching potential of the visual medium. (You can date the period of any given set of lectures by the sets.) In the early days, one can sense, the company was mainly thinking of people accessing the lectures through audio means, and they still sell audio versions of much of their material. But for visual thinkers like myself, pictures (and models, thank you Prof. Ressler) are a lot more powerful and memorable.
Understanding the Quantum World is a truly superior presentation by a truly superior lecturer, Professor Erica W. Carlson, that brilliantly utilizes visual teaching. Step by step, she leads the viewer from the simple to the profound. A great deal of jargon from the world of quantum physics has been picked up and used in modern metaphor; if nothing else, these lectures will show you where all those terms actually come from and what they mean when they’re at home (and, probably, how a lot of people are using them wrong.)
She manages to almost completely substitute visual pictures for the math, which works among other reasons because so much would seem to depend on fundamentals of quantum geometries. I found myself constantly torn between thinking this was the weirdest stuff ever, and realizing it made so much sense. Or, like the particle and the wave, both at once.
I need to watch it, like, two or three more times, not because the presentation missed any steps, but just because binge-watching was likely not the best approach, though I wanted to see how the plot came out. Second time through I expect to get/retain a lot more. And I have it on DVD, so I can, hah.
Recommended for: everybody.
Ooh: on sale this week. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/cours...
Great Courses list prices are heart-stopping, but they have frequent deep-discount sales, and most public libraries have some of the courses for free. One can also frequently pick up used editions for less on Amazon, Half-Price Books, and so on. And now they have streaming, which I admit I haven’t sampled yet, go them.
Ta, L.
(Feel free to mention other favorite GCs & similar in the comments. Because not all TV is trying to win the race for the bottom.)
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the great courses have sales constantly. They also have a thing now where you can pay a monthly fee and stream most of it.
Amazonaute wrote: "the great courses have sales constantly. They also have a thing now where you can pay a monthly fee and stream most of it."There's a $10/month offer on The Great Courses Plus that is amazing!
https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/3...
Thank you, Lois, for turning me on to The Great Courses. I highly recommend 'Understanding the Universe', and I learned enough French from their French course to navigate a recent trip to Paris without much difficulty.
I spend a lot of time listening to Great Courses on medieval, early modern, and religious history. The only bad ones I've come across are because I cannot stand tone or voice of the lecturers, not the content itself.
I highly recommend The Story of Human Language. John McWhorter is an excellent lecturer, and this is a wonderful course for anyone interested in language.
Angela wrote: "I highly recommend The Story of Human Language. John McWhorter is an excellent lecturer, and this is a wonderful course for anyone interested in language."Ah, yes, that one was excellent. One I liked even better (for obvious reasons) was
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/cours...
...ouch, not on sale right now. I'd watched it from my library, but I wouldn't mind owning it. (Oh, and Amazon Prime has it -- for a price -- huh. There's another new source.)
Ta, L.
Honestly, I get an email a few times a week with a massive sale. they rotate through their collection constantly. I would just wait for it to come around.
Having been a Robert Sapolsky fan since his first book "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" I enjoyed his Great Courses, "Being Human, Life Lessons from the frontiers of science" and "Biology and Human Behavior". I had it in audio but DVD would have been better.
Lois wrote: "Angela wrote: "I highly recommend The Story of Human Language. John McWhorter is an excellent lecturer, and this is a wonderful course for anyone interested in language."Ah, yes, that one was exc..."
That one's available through their subscription service: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/w...
For what you spend on that one course, you could have TWO YEARS of the subscription service. All you can eat.
When I was a freshmen at the University of Puget Sound, I took a course called "An Introduction to the Physical Sciences." The professor called it "Physics for Poets". He turned out to be the same professor that taught all of the highest level courses in quantum mechanics. He stressed the importance of understanding the concepts without getting lost in the minutiae of the mechanics. One of the best courses I ever took.
Mind-boggling.
My favorite to date is Gary Wolfe's HOW GREAT SCIENCE FICTION WORKS. 24 half-hours.