The Italian Job

Here are the video highlights from our public lecture in Turin, Italy.

I've also posted some photos from our trip on Flickr.



There's more to come from this trip because we filmed some extra videos about Primo Levi (who was from Turin) and of course the famous Shroud of Turin.

One of these videos has been posted already.



(Our thanks to COST for supporting our trip to Turin)

The Planck Length

Making videos for Sixty Symbols often involves dealing with concepts that the human brain can't really comprehend.

A great example this week was our video about the Planck Length.

Written as a decimal number, it is simple enough.

0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 metres

Or to use the scientific notation that scientists insist upon, it is 1.616252(81)×10⁻³⁵ meters.

Seems simple enough, until you realise that it's something like
100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times SMALLER THAN A PROTON!

Here's our main video, featuring Professor Roger Bowley and Professor Laurence Eaves.



And here's some extra footage from Professor Eaves, including some interesting stuff about the far more accessible Planck Mass!



By the way, for those who don't know there is lots of interesting stuff from behind the scenes on Sixty Symbols at our special Flickr page, including scans of the scientists impromptu scrawlings.

Approaching 100

A viewer just pointed out that Sixty Symbols (our collection of physics and astronomy videos) is approaching its 100th video post.

We're currently on 98.

I sometimes like doing something fun to mark these milestones.

Any ideas?

Here's a little compilation put together our 200th video on the Periodic Table of Videos...

Tales from Turin

We're back from a very hot Turin, Italy.

The main purpose of the trip was to give a live chemistry demo at an event called Science in the City (part of ESOF2010 - the Euroscience Open Forum).

The lecture went well and you can expect to see some video highlights very soon.

But while in Turin we took the opportunity to make some other films for The Periodic Table of Videos.

Firstly, we shot a few bits about Turin's very own Primo Levi, who is renowned for his writing about chemistry.

The picture below shows Professor Poliakoff sitting in Levi's old lecture theatre. We also spent time in Levi's old labs.


And of course we couldn't visit Turin without making a film about its famous Shroud.

What does a mysterious holy relic have to do with chemistry, I hear you ask?

Well, our main focus will be on radiocarbon dating - a process famously associated with this much-discussed linen cloth.

The Professor revealed a few things I never realised about radioactive carbon - and even shared an unexpected link between himself and the Turin Shroud.

The videos are being edited as we speak and you should start seeing them soon.

(Our thanks to COST for supporting our trip to Turin)

See us in Turin

The Periodic Table of Videos is traveling to Turin, Italy.

We've got a couple of films we'd like to make, but more importantly we'll be giving a public lecture and demonstration.

It's a chance for those who happen to live nearby to come and find out more about us and meet Professor Martyn Poliakoff, who features in so many of our films.

Come along on Tuesday 6th July, 6pm, at Circolo dei Lettori (via Bogino 9, Torino).

We've only given one lecture like this before, which was held in our home city of Nottingham.

Here's a video from that day...

The Biblical Director's Cut

Here's something I didn't know much about until recently - the Bible has a sort of "director's cut".

And these Biblical equivalent of DVD extras contain some cracking stories about beheadings, dragons and saucy sex scandals!

I'm currently making short films about them for the Bibledex video project at the University of Nottingham.

Now I'm not a religious expert (far from it), but I'll try to explain.

Essentially there are the 66 books in the standard Bible that most people probably have heard of (though a lot of them are pretty obscure too - how much do you know about the book of Haggai or 2 Thessalonians!?)

I've already made videos about each of these 66. You can watch them either on Bibledex or YouTube.

But then there's another collection of books called the deuterocanonical books (often just shortened to the apocrypha).

These are books that didn't make it into the so-called protestant "canon" so you won't find them in many Bibles (or you will find them in a special isolated section, between the Old and New Testaments).

But not everyone has ditched these books.... For example, the Catholic Church DOES include them in the "main" Bible.

They include books like 1 and 2 Maccabees, Judith and Tobit - plus some interestingly-named stories such as Bel and Dragon!

Now the issue of what makes the Bible is endlessly complicated and I'm not brave or knowledgeable enough to enter that vexed discussion.

However I've nearly finished a series of short videos about these extras and it seems they include some cracking stories, many of which I'd never heard of.

Here are a few of the videos I've done. See more at Bibledex (and scroll down to the apocrypha) or on YouTube - Bibledex.

PS: Watch out for the squirrel behind Pete in our Judith video!

Achtung: More Words

Do you know why U2 called their album Achtung Baby? Why Spanish headwear is worn in Ireland? What "fooding" is?

Well I do (now) because of my latest project, Words of The World.

Check out the main site because it is starting to shape and look quite striking - or follow us via YouTube if that is your thing!?

The latest ecclectic collection of words added to the video collection include Achtung, Balkan, Cuisine, Terroir and Mantilla.

The "Balkan" film, featuring David Norris, is one I especially enjoyed and found enlightening.

He explains why the famous peninsula in Europe shouldn't really be called Balkan... And why the common use the word Balkanization means the opposite of what it should!

But I think all the word videos are fascinating and contain great snippets of information and academic insight!

Go on - watch some and learn something!