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Great Ideas of Classical Physics

By: Steven Pollock, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Steven Pollock
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Summary

Classical physics is about how things move, why they move, and how they work. It's about making sense of motion, gravity, light, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism, and seeing how these phenomena interweave to create the rich tapestry of everyday experience. It is, in short, the hidden order of the universe. And if it sounds complicated to you, Professor Pollock hopes you will think again - because you already know more physics than you think, In this mind-expanding series of 24 lectures, Professor Steven Pollock takes you step by step through the great ideas of classical physics, demonstrating that its landmark concepts - such as Newton's laws of motion - are intuitively understood by anyone who has ever ridden a bike, thrown a ball, slid across ice, or simply picked up an object and set it down.

Created over the course of three centuries by a series of brilliant thinkers, including Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, and James Clerk Maxwell, classical physics is an elegant system of ideas that connect a range of seemingly unrelated phenomena - everything from the acceleration of a car, to the orbit of a planet, to the deflection of a compass needle, to the baking of a cake, to the flow of electricity through the light bulb illuminating these words.

All these - and much more - are linked by the basic principles you will learn in these lectures - presented largely without math. Instead, Professor Pollock relies on metaphor, life experience, ordinary logic, and common sense to present the discoveries, theories, insights, methods, and philosophical points of view at the heart of classical physics.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2006 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2006 The Great Courses

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Lovely popularisation of classic concepts

Very nicely presented and inspirational. A revelation for me as I never thought physics can be presented in this way. Don't expect to become a theoretical physicist after this lecture though ... you still need the good old pen and paper and a mountain of practice.

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Fascinating Overview of 300 years of Physics

This course covers about 250 years of physical theory and experiments, starting from Newtonian mechanics and ending with the beginnings of the quantum and relativistic revolutions. It does so in an engaging and insightful way, without concentrating too much on the mathematics, rather looking at simple everyday examples and easy to understand experiments.

The lecturer is clearly very talented at bringing complex ideas down to a level understandable by the non-scientist and he has chosen some of the most interesting scientific ideas to discuss.

I learned a great deal from this course, and the stuff I knew before was definitely getting rusty. My favourite bit was certainly the explanation of Maxwell's equations, and the connection between electromagnetism and light.

This course is extremely enjoyable and I thoroughly recommend it.

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Outstanding series!

Great ideas of classical physics for regular people; it should say.
Short lectures, about half hour each, so they are easy to pause and leave for letter when your brain starts to overload with information.
That being said, the lectures are amazingly well-written, and not matter how much or how little you know about physics, this series will grip you and leave you wanting more.

really, really recommended. I cannot stress this enough, You should give it a listen.

Good performance by Professor S. Pollock as well. Very happy about that

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great course

I enjoyed it all the way. thank you very much. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about physics.

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great lecturer

I am familiar with all these topics in detail, and studied them thoroughly myself, but I downloaded this book after listening to another book of Steven Pollock about particle physics. what a joy it is to listen to this professor. His enthusiasm is addictive. Want me to go back to university again and learn more and more. I am going to read and/or download all his books.

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Excellent as far as it goes

Recommended for those about to work on the mathematics . It really needs an accompanying course to practice the relevant equations. Say a pre-university revision book!

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