Recently I caught this video describing some of the new captioning features on YouTube, and it spurred me into finally captioning all of the Tabletop Explainer videos. One of the coolest things was a new “automatic timing” feature. To produce captioning, all you need is a transcript. You just upload the transcript, and Google will synchronize the text with your video’s audio–no need to enter time codes. To see it in action, watch the video below. It should jump straight to the automatic timing description.
For those of you interested in such things, “Yes” I will be finishing the relativity series. It’s just that the animation will take a little time, and I’ve had other priorities. Until then, however, enjoy this latest Explainer.
Now you can find out where you are even if you don’t have GPS. Learn how to find south along with your latitude and longitude using only a few household items. I should note, that in using the home-made quadrant cited, the precision of your findings will be rather low. Don’t worry, you’ll be within a few hundred miles. ;)
A few months ago a pretty cool site was brought to my attention–dotSUB. It’s a video sharing site that allows registered users to transcribe and translate shared videos. That’s right. It means your videos can be made accessible to both the hearing impaired and those who don’t speak your language. The process is pretty simple, and I’m currently uploading and transcribing the Tabletop Explainer. You’ll start to see “dotSUB” buttons below embedded videos.
So if you speak two or more languages, head over for some translating fun. Here’s an example of a subtitled video. As of this posting, it’s only available in English. Want to change that? Register. View this link; then choose a language under “Translate This Film.”
Last time we covered the two postulates of special relativity, and next time we’ll use geometry to derive some of its consequences, but first we need to learn some nomenclature. It’s not exciting, but it will prove helpful in the long run.
The bizarre consequences of special relativity arise from two postulates, two things which once accepted lead to Einstein’s space-time. In this series of five episodes, we will introduce and build upon these postulates to derive the consequences of special relativity.
The quadrant is a simple tool for measuring the altitude (angle) of an object above the horizon. This episode makes use of a printable template found at: http://www.davidcolarusso.com/handouts/quadrant.pdf
Einstein may have believed God doesn’t play dice, but God need not conform to Einstein’s beliefs. This piece explores the phenomenon of quantum mechanical tunneling whose explanation requires us to accept the reality of quantum mechanics. It’s not a trick; it’s reality.
Update: People have been asking for the math. So here it is. The Sun’s core temp is ~13.6 MK. For hydrogen nuclei the Coulomb barrier is roughly 0.1 MeV. This corresponds to a temperature in excess of 1 GK! Luckily, tunneling and the distribution of speeds among nuclei lower the actual temperature required. So without tunneling even the Sun’s core isn’t hot enough for fusion. To see most of this worked through, check out this link: http://burro.cwru.edu/Academics/Astr221/StarPhys/coulomb.html
for a less mathematical explanation, try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Requirements
In the movie Speed a bus is forced to jump an unfinished portion of highway to avoid setting off a bomb on the bus rigged to explode should it go below fifty miles an hour. Of course, they make it, but we want to know if this could really happen.
A fast-paced time-laps demo of how to build your own electric motor, this segment was a lot of fun to make. I hope you enjoy it. Plus, you can now subscribe to the Tabletop Explainer via iTunes.
