I don’t really watch TV now but I used to love the annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on the BBC. Each year a different professional scientist is asked to present three one hour lectures on their particular area of expertise. It is aimed at children but doesn’t talk down to its audience teaches about real science. They are usually full of some pretty amazing demonstrations and mini experiments. The first ones I really remember were in the 1980s, but I became hooked and very much enjoyed Professor Richard Dawkins’ lecture Growing Up In The Universe from 1990 when I was at University. A couple of years ago Professor Bruce Hood did a fantastic lecture on how the brain works, which I was excited about because I had met him a year earlier at a science conference in Manchester. The Royal Institution has an excellent website that I link to from the blog (and which is fully unlocked at school) which hosts videos of their most recent lectures and some historical ones too. This year’s is not yet up but it will be once its run on iPlayer has finished.
I have not seen this year’s lectures. They were on BBC 4 and so for those of you in the UK you can watch them using iPlayer here. For those of us not in the UK we can either watch an illegal version on YouTube or wait until they are transferred to the Royal Institution website. If you are at all serious about your science you should try to watch them. They will give you the current understanding of a topic and it will often be something that builds on work we do in class. It will also be something you could discuss in an interview. The Royal Institution’s YouTube channel is also spectacular and filled with short, fascinating videos.
This year’s lectures were on energy production and fuel use with an emphasis on future technology. I think they will be very interesting. Let me know if you get to see any of them.
No questions today but Happy New Year to you all. If you are after things to do, make sure you have read all of this holiday’s posts and followed any links I have posted to other articles on the site.
Comments