Atom by Professor Jim Al-Khalili

Posted by: TomK on 20 August 2007

Anybody been watching this? Sadly hidden away on BBC4 when it would have been a Horizon special on BBC2 a few years ago. I found the hairs on the back of my neck standing up at the 1927 picture of Einstein, Lorenz, Bohr, Born, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, etc. Marie Curie was also there. If there had a world cup for physicists this would have been the winning team.

I found myself thinking it was so fascinating I wished I'd studied it at uni and then realised I had studied it at uni so why wasn't it so fascinating back then? Why was it so boring I could hardly stay awake during lectures? A combination of dull lectures and perhaps I wasn't actually as talented as I thought I was (to put it mildly

).

Anyway it was nice to have my interest rekindled and I look forward to reading the accompanying book.

Posted on: 20 August 2007 by Stephen B

Darn. Missed it.

I'll have to watch out for the repeats.

Posted on: 21 August 2007 by BigH47

Just another in a long line of excellent BBC productions. Despite views to the contrary expressed on this very forum.

Howard

Posted on: 21 August 2007 by droodzilla

Agreed, excellent doco series - nothing really new to me, but it vividly evoked the intellectual excitement of the time, and of my initial encounter with the ideas of QM. As the OP remarked, this is the kind of thing that Horizon used to do so well, but which is now relegated to BBC4.

Posted on: 21 August 2007 by acad tsunami

I have not been able to watch it but I know some of Jim Al-Khalili's work. He is not a born again materialist and therefore I am sure he makes this subject interesting.

Posted on: 22 August 2007 by TomK

quote:
Originally posted by acad tsunami:
... He is not a born again materialist and therefore I am sure he makes this subject interesting.

Sorry acad but I'm not sure what this means.