Why Is It So?

1. The Idea of the Center of Gravity

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All of the weight of an object is at its center of gravity, says Miller. However, the center of gravity is not always at a point on the object. This leads to a few amazing balancing acts based on one principle: an odd-shaped system can stay in balance when its center of gravity is below the point of support.

2. Newton's First Law of Motion-Inertia

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Newton's First Law has two parts, and Professor Miller does his best to teach them together. His demonstrations include familiar magic tricks, such as the board under a sheet of newspaper.

3. 3. Newton's Second Law of Motion – The Elevator Problem

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F=ma is the standard shorthand for Newton's Second Law. But Professor Miller shows more depth, using two toy cars accelerating toward each other. He also expands F=ma into W=mg for falling bodies on Earth.

4. Newton's Third Law of Motion – Momentum

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The Earth must recoil when Professor Miller jumps. It's the first of many illustrations that confirm, ""To every action there is always an equal and contrary reaction.""

5. Energy and Momentum

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From the outset, Miller emphasizes the difference between energy and momentum, first with the toy cars and then with a steel ball running a track. Miller then introduces the various kinds of energy.

6. Concerning Falling Bodies and Projectiles

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Laws of motion and energy, discussed in earlier programs, converge in the real and virtual demonstrations Miller does on falling bodies and projectile motion. One principle says that horizontal motion does not affect vertical motion.

7. The Simple Pendulum and Other Oscillating Things

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Anything can be a pendulum, says Professor Miller, and anything can oscillate. In fact, the period of a pendulum depends only on its length. Miller sets up demonstrations of various oscillating nodies. He also presents a puzzle about springs.

8. Adventures with Bernoulli

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A family of 120 bore the name Bernoulli, and they were all geniuses. Miller points out how the Bernoulli principle affects our everyday lives: why two ships must not pass too closely on the sea, how a stream of air can suspend a ball above it, and many other things.

9. Soap Bubbles and Soap Films

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Miller's experiments on soap films show the pressure on soap bubbles, plus the fact that soap films always form a surface of least energy.

10. Atmospheric Pressure – The Properties of Gases

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The atmosphere exerts an enormous force (15 pounds of pressure per square inch). Miller crushes steel cans, ruptures rubber, and breaks a wood plank with the atmosphere on his side.

11. Centrifugal Force and Other Strange Matters

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Miller writes ""centrifugal"" in quotation marks because there is no force acting radially on rotating bodies. Balls, candles, hoops, and weights experience torques of which Miller says little.

12. The Strange Behavior of Rolling Things

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All hoops roll alike, says Miller, and all disks beat all hoops when they race downhill. Thus Miller sends disks, hooops, and spheres rolling.

13. Archimedes' Principle

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When a body is submerged in a liquid, it buoys up with a force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced. Miller shows this with a very clever set up involving cylinders submerged in water. He also points out a little of Archimedes' finest achievements. His greatest? Finding the ratio of volumes between a sphere, a cone, and a cylinder of equal height.

14. Pascal's Principle – The Properties of Liquids

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Blaise Pascal said liquids are incompressible. Any force exerted on a liquid is felt in all parts of the liquid without lessening of the force. Miller uses a pulley system to drive home that fact.

15. Levers, Inclined Planes, Geared-Wheels and Other Simple Machines

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With a great many tools before him, Professor Miller sets out to prove that all tools and machines are linked to the two simplest: the lever and the inclined plane.

1. The Ideas of Heat and Temperature

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From the outset, Miller distinguishes heat from temperature. Objects of the same temperature can have different amounts of heat.

2. Thermometric Properties and Processes

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What evidence do we have that poiny yo a change in tremperature of objects? Miller suggests these properties: expansion, electrical resistance, magnetism, thermoelectric power, and color.

3. How to Produce Heat Energy

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Professor Miller rattles off several types of energy, and adds that heat energy is a degenerate form. Whenever work is done, heat is a by-product. Thus Miller takes a nail out with a hammer, pumps a bicycle pump, slides a string around the neck of a perfume bottle and bends a paper clip to generate small amounts of heat.

4. Thermal Expansion of Stuff – Solids

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The classic ball-and-ring experiment leads to dilemmas involving metal plates with tiny holes in them. This and other demonstrations go unresolved, entirely according to Miller's instructional philosophy.

5. Thermal Expansion of Stuff – Gases and Liquids

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Gases and liquids have strange expansion properties, depending on the change in temperature. But Miller is a strange and enchanting physicist. He does experiments with freely-expanding gases.

6. The Strange Thermal Behavior of Ice and Water

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To carry one gram of ice water to one gram of water vapor, says Miller, requires a good deal of energy. Miller has abundant demonstrations on ice and water. In some of these demonstrations, a bit of ice melts and refreezes.

7. Heat Energy Transfer by Conduction

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In this first of three shows on transferring heat energy, Miller proposes some unusual things. Much of it involves the imagination of viewers.

8. Heat Energy Transfer by Convection

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Miller shows the strange fact that damp air is lighter than dry air. He also reflects on a hub of different metals and how one can show the rates at which metals conduct heat away. His most fascinating fact: there are three times ten to the nineteenth power molecules of gas in one cubic centimeter of air.

9. Heat Energy Transfer by Radiation

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Radiation of heat can travel at the speed of light, but how quickly an object can radiate heat, is another matter.

10. Evaporation, Boiling, Freezing

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Miller has a grand demonstration in which he freezes water by boiling it at a rather low pressure.

11. Miscellaneous Adventures in Heat

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Miller again crushes a steel can by first lowering its pressure and then pouring ice water over it. Using a block of dry ice and a silver coin, he hints to the Trevelyan rocker. A good deal of time is devoted to the viscosity of liquids and gases.

12. The Drama in Real Cold Stuff – Liquid Nitrogen

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All manner of objects are frozen in liquid nitrogen, and their properties change in startling ways. A balloon shrinks in volume (Boyle's Law); a metal coil supports a weight. And of course, lots of other things get broken, from a flower to rubber balls.

13. Physics of Toys: Mechanical

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Perhaps no other physicist played with toys more than Prof. Miller. And Miller played with toys to find out ""Why is it so?"" In this first of three programs on the physics of toys, Miller recounts principles learned in Episodes 1, 6, and 8. His toys include a walking Pluto dog, a circus smokestack, and a unicyclist (which Miller calls a ""monocyclist"").

14. Physics of Toys: Acoustic, Thermal

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Miller goes to his collection of acoustic toys: a button on a string, a bird whistle, a xylophone, and an accordion among them. Some of the principles in these toys will go into Miller's programs the next season.

15. Physics of Toys: Electrostatic, Magnetic, Miscellaneous

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Miller concludes his physics of toys lecture with toys of all categories. The physics involved in each would take a good half-hour to disclose. He includes a a gyroscopic toy, a musical top, and the dunking duck.

1. Waves: Kinds and Properties

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""What is a wave?"" is a simple question that is not easy to answer. Miller wishes to answer the question by showing different kinds of waves. But it is the class of acoustic waves that will be the major subject of the next six programs.

2. Sound Waves – Sources of Sound

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For sound to be heard, there has to be something to compress. Miller vibrates metal, tears cloth, and blows streams of air through holes to discuss the propagation of sound waves.

3. Vibrating Bars & Strings – The Phenomenon of Beats

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Miller excites musical bars and tuning forks to demonstrate beats, a disruptive musical aspect. When he holds a vibrating bar at the nodes, the bar still vibrates. And he holds a vibrating string to demonstrate harmonics and overtones.

4. Resonance – Forced Vibrations

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Every vibrating body has a a corresponding frequency and pitch. Miller uses tuning forks that resonate with sounding pipes and vibrating strings.

5. Sounding Pipes

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Miller excites pipes by driving air through them and heating them. The most enchanting element comes from heating pipes with wire screens lodged in them. He calls it ""filling them with music."" The physics of thermally excited pipes is difficult to understand, but a joy to hear.

6. Vibrating Rods and Plates

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Miller strikes rods at the beginning of the program, creating different nodes depending on where he holds the bar. Then comes his artistic masterpiece: vibrating plates sprinkled with sand and bowed with a bow. Wonderful artistic designs result from that bowing.

7. Miscellaneous Adventures in Sound

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Miller has set up a Blackburn pendulum. At its bottom is a funnel which he fills with salt and lets go at a certain position. The funnel swerves around, and the falling sand produces Lissajous figures.

8. Electrostatic Phenomena: Foundations of Electricity

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From a simple observation of attraction between a charged rod and small bits of matter, comes all our knowledge of electrostatics and electricity. Miller charges objects by conduction and induction.

9. Adventures with Electric Charges

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The Van Der Graaf Generator is the focus of this program. Miller sets up an astonishing set of demonstrations, such as the ""Mad Professor's Hair.""

10. Adventures in Magnetism

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Everything is magnetic to more or less degree, says Miller. He suggests making an iron bar a magnet just by aligning it properly and striking it at one end. Then he introduces the electromagnet. And just how strong is a magnetic force? It's a puzzler.

11. Ways to Produce Electricity

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One does not produce electricity. It is abundant around us. Miller simply shows ways electricity can be seen or do work. Miller makes a voltaic cell, explaining that lead plates in storage batteries are not all lead. He also sheds light (literally) on electromagnetic induction.

12. Properties and Effects of Electric Currents

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Miller reproduces Hans Christian Oersted's experiment that showed electricity produces magnetism. Then Miller also copper-plates a small lead slab in a solution of copper sulfate amd cooks a hot dog on an electric system.

13. Adventures in Electromagnetism

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Miller reproduces Faraday's experiment that led to electromagnetic induction. More powerful is the experiment on an electric charge.

14. Further Adventures in Electromagnetism

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15. Miscellaneous and Wondrous Things in E & M

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16. Mars Landing 2012: The New Search for Life

Air Date: 2012-09-08

Mars Landing 2012: The New Search for Life provides detailed coverage of NASA’s incredible Curiosity rover and its recent landing on the surface of Mars. The mission: to search for evidence of past or present Martian life. This one-hour special will focus on the science and the technology involved to bring this mission to fruition using a combination of field reporting, hosted interviews and informed news updates. We’ll have scientists, technicians and big picture thinkers — those who have dedicated their careers and passion to this project.