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This is the second lecture series of my complete online introductory undergraduate college course. This video series was used at William Paterson University and CUNY Hunter in online classes as well as to supplement in-person course material. Notes and links are present in the videos at the start of each lecture.
0:00:01 - lecture 1: The Dawning of Astrophysics
0:22:16 - lecture 2: Galileo, the Father of Science
0:49:32 - lecture 3: Galileo's Denouement
1:02:29 - lecture 4: Newton's Laws as well as his Guidelines
1:27:32 - lecture 5: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Equation?
1:57:11 - lecture 6: And Yet It Moves: Galileo Vindicated
2:15:29 - lecture 7: Wave Motions Everywhere
2:34:17 - lecture 8: The Emerging Ideas about Light
2:45:56 - lecture 9: Newton's Corpuscles of Light: So Close, but So Far....
2:58:57 - lecture 10: The End of Newton's Theory of Light
In this lecture set, I discuss the accomplishments of Nicolas Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler in the advancement of science. We talk about the transition to a heliocentric model, and how the groundwork was laid for it to be supported eventually by Newton. Then, I move onto the accomplishments (and failures) of Galileo Galilei, Father of Modern Science. Next, we see the effect of Galileo's work around him and the work that surrounded him. Jeremiah Horrox predicted and observed a transit of Venus, the book Galileo should have written was finally done, the Geocentric model holds its head up for one more fight, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa legend was born. This leads us to Newton's Laws of Motion, and his Law of Gravity. We also talk about centers of mass and other things related to the understanding of orbits. They provide a framework for predicting the motions of the planets around the Sun. And how everything moves. Next, we take a diversion into the nature of mathematics. I find that a lot of people have a fear of math. I make it a point in my classes to overcome that fear if at all possible. After that, we discuss exactly how we know the Earth moves. We learn about parallax and stellar aberration. Finally, we can say for certain that the Earth moves, even though we don't feel it. Thus science gives us one of the first answers that goes against "common sense," but is nonetheless true. Following this, it's another chalk-and-talk, where I describe what wave motion is and how it applies to water, sound and light. Then, we begin the discussion of the origin of our current understanding of the nature of light. We learn about the progress of both the particle and wave explanations of light through history. The penultimate lecture leads us to Newton's contribution to the understanding of light. We learn about his corpuscles and how they are not waves. As we traverse the history of light and understand how it grows with time, we see how great minds tried to wrestle with big ideas as the ideas arose and the experiments that supported them became possible. We see their missteps and we learn from them. We also see how the science endeavor is a truly human one, with all our foibles and strengths on display. Finally, we see how the theory of light advances. Young's double-slit experiment and Fresnel's investigation of diffraction puts the nail into Newton's corpuscles. The solidification of the wave theory of light, however, will circle around to bite the world in the backside.