The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures

[Russ35]

Just a heads up for anyone else that enjoys watching these lectures that the 2009 lectures are buried away on more4, starting Monday 21st @ 7pm and then each night till Christmas day

Edited by Russ35 on Wednesday 1st December 13:44

[Russ35]

You can watch a lot of the past Lectures on the Royal Institutions website http://www.rigb.org

The 2 stand out for me are Carl Sagan from 1977 and Richard Dawkins from 1991

David Attenborough's from 1973 also appears to be there, but I cannot find Heinz Wolff's from 1975, so it might be a bit hit and miss which are available.

List of the past Christmas Lectures here

[Russ35]

BBC used to show them between Christmas and New Year and then repeated them at Easter. I cannot remember when CH5 showed them last year. It was only by chance that I noticed on Sunday that they were on this week.

[Russ35]

This years shows are buried away on BBC4, at least they are back on the BBC.

They are on December 28th, 29th and 30th @ 8pm

This years host is Dr Mark Miodownik who is a materials scientist.

Taken from the RI website

Why Elephants can't dance said:

We are all familiar with watching ants labouring for hours on a hot sunny day lifting crumbs or dragging bits of leaf back to their ant hill – but have you ever wondered how hard it is for them? They are often carrying 300 times their own weight, which is impressive when you consider that the world's strongest man can only lift three or four times his own weight. Are the materials that make up ant muscles much better than ours, or are we just not trying hard enough? Other weird effects of size come to light once you start delving into the subject. The amount of sleep that mammals need is in proportion to their size, and all animals have the same number of heartbeats but mice use them up quicker than elephants. Mark tells the story of the materials science of animal size, how we have pieced together some of the physical rules that govern the strength, life span and dance moves of animals.

Why chocolate melts and jet planes don't said:

As we zoom into the microscopically small realm beneath our fingertips to explore the tiny world we have created inside mobile phones, jet planes and chocolate, curious things start to happen. Gravity becomes less and less important, while stickiness and quantum mechanics start to dominate. This is the wild west of science, where anything and everything seems possible, but is it? Can we create invisibility cloaks, self-healing phones and super-strong jet planes just by controlling the scale of things? Journey into the inner space of the things around us to find out how the very small affects the very large. Mark shows that even the taste of chocolate depends on the size of extraordinary crystals which are designed to only melt in your mouth.

Why mountains are so small said:

In 2009 the world's tallest building the Burj Khalifa was opened in Dubai; at almost half a mile high it is an engineering marvel. But will future generations think it puny and laugh at us? Could we build a tower to reach the moon? We ask whether this engineering challenge is remotely possible and show that one of the major hurdles is the force that keeps space together – gravity. The curious way that gravity affects large things is nothing to the effect that time has on them. Not just a few years, or even decades but eons of time. Could this explain why Earth's mountains are small fry compared to other mountains in the universe? How big to is too big for a glacier, a mountain or a planet?

[Russ35]

Heads up for this years lectures - 'Meet Your Brain'


BBC 4 - 8pm - 27/28/29 December

The Royal Institution said:

The Christmas Lectures will return to BBC Four once again this Christmas with renowned experimental psychologist Prof Bruce Hood delivering a demonstration packed, three-part series called Meet Your Brain.
The three-part series will be broadcast on BBC Four at 8.00pm on 27, 28 and 29 December

Episode 1 Whats in Your Head said:

Why does your brain look like a giant walnut, how does it fit in enough wiring to stretch four times around the equator and why can a magnet on your head stop you in mid-sentence? In the first of this year's Christmas Lectures, Professor Bruce Hood gets inside your head to explore how your brain works. He measures the brain's nerve cells in action, reads someone's mind from 100 miles away and reveals how the brain ultimately creates its own version of reality.

Episode 2 Whos in Charge Here said:

Your brain is constantly being bombarded with information, so how does it decide what to trust and what to ignore, without you even being aware? Professor Bruce Hood leads us through the second of this year's Christmas Lectures - testing the limits of our memory, finding out how we learn, how our brain takes shortcuts and why multi-tasking can be dangerous. Bruce will make you say the wrong thing and fail to see what's right in front of you. Can you really believe your eyes? Possibly not.

Episode 3 Are You Thinking What Im Thinking said:

Have you ever seen a face in a piece of burnt toast, or given your car a name? Why do you feel pain when someone else is hurt? Why are people so obsessed with other people? In the last of this year's Christmas Lectures, Professor Bruce Hood investigates how our brains are built to read other people's minds. With a little help from a baby, a robot and a magician, Bruce uncovers what makes us truly human.

Edited by Russ35 on Monday 5th December 13:42