Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli invented a new particle to save the principle of energy conservation in certain radioactive decays he was studying.
Spinning things are strange. Why does a spinning top stand up? Why doesn't a rolling wheel fall over? How does a falling cat always manage to land on its feet? How can the Hubble Space Telescope turn around in space? How do ice-skaters spin so fast? Taking a look at gyroscopes, this lecture explores the common threads that link all spinning things. The law of Conservation of Angular Momentum is far more subtle than we may think and there are many counter-intuitive observations.
This opening lecture of the series, with musical illustrations, will use documents, poetry and images to bring the instrument to life, with a particular focus on the autobiography of the beguiling Tudor musician Thomas Whythorne.
Login
