Episodes

Epsiode 1 - Why Elephants Can’t Dance

What is the right size for an animal? This lecture investigates the effects of size on the animal kingdom. Mark’s experiments uncover the physical rules that govern the strength, life span and even movement of animals.

Episode 2 – Why Chocolate Melts and Jet Engines Don’t

What physics dominates in the microscopic world and how can we manipulate the rules to achieve incredible things?

Epsiode 3 - Why Moutains Are So Small

What forces shape the big things in our world and can we overcome them to build big enough to reach space?

Episode 2 – Why Chocolate Melts and Jet Engines Don’t

What physics dominates in the world beneath our finger nails and how can we manipulate the rules to achieve incredible things? This lecture investigates the microscopically small world that we have created inside mobile phones, jet planes and chocolate. We demonstrate that as things are shrunk down they behave differently because the physics acting on them is different. By zooming into the micro level we discover that all things are made of crystals.

To demonstrate the importance of crystal structure, Mark will compare the melt in the mouth properties of chocolate, one of the most sophisticated man-made materials; with the jet engine, an incredible engineering feat, that wouldn’t have been possible without computer modeling of crystal structures. The lecture culminates with a look at the atomic scale and the emerging science of quantum physics. 

Credits
3 x 60'