Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

BBC · 2011 · Presenter: Jim Al-Khalili

Until recently, electricity was seen as a magical power. It could slay the living, revive the dead, and bend the laws of nature. It is now the lifeblood of the modern world, fueling our lives and underpinning every aspect of technological advancement. Without it, we would be lost. Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force.

Al-Khalili takes us on a journey from the pioneers of electrostatic demonstrations to the age of electromagnetic waves. It's a human story of the history of electricity, with twists and turns I did not know.

Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity on Teachers Pay Teachers

E P I S O D E S

1. SPARK
This episode presents a nice history of early electrical devices and practitioners. Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force - electricity. Episode one tells the story of the very first `natural philosophers' who started to unlock the mysteries of electricity. They studied its curious link to life, built strange and powerful instruments to create it and even tamed lightning itself.

Atom

BBC · 2007 · Presenter: Jim Al-Khalili

The story of the discovery that everything is made from atoms, one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history, and the brilliant minds behind it.

Atom on Teachers Pay Teachers

E P I S O D E S

1. CLASH OF TITANS 
The modern understanding of the atom unfolded in the early years of the twentieth century. Baffling discoveries made by ingenious experimental scientists challenged the foremost theoretical physicists of the era. Rival factions fought over competing models. The players were human, with human strengths and weaknesses. Hard-fought victories were matched by crushing defeats. At the end of it all, a contemporary model of the atom emerged. Heads up: the expletive abbreviated “BS” is uttered in this episode.

Featured scientists: Ludwig Boltzmann, Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, and Max Born.

Universe Revealed

PBS NOVA · 2021 · Narrator: Talithia Williams

 

In this five-part series, NOVA delves into the vastness of space to capture moments of high drama when the universe changed forever. State-of-the-art animation gives us astonishing, photo-realistic glimpses of the birth of a star in a stellar nursery, the chaos created as two galaxies collide, and the power of a super-massive black hole as it flings a star across space so violently that it's still traveling 10 million years later. NOVA even takes viewers back on the ultimate time travel voyage, to witness the birth of space and time itself. Informed by huge advances in scientific understanding, the series brings us face-to-face with the most surprising characters in the cosmos and reveals how their fates are intertwined with our own. Take a ringside seat for the greatest show in the universe.

I confess feeling simultaneous embarrassment and exhilaration while watching this series, as I learned something I did not know in each episode. Don't get me wrong: you could fill the Grand Canyon with Things I Don't Know, even if you limit it to Things I Should Know. I'll take the hits to my ego to add "Fermi bubbles" to my vocabulary. 

I think this series incorporates nicely into NGSS Physics of the Universe. Especially Segment 6. And there is a refreshing diversity among the on-screen content experts that has been missing from astronomy documentaries of yesteryear.

Watch this on the biggest screen you can manage. The visuals are gorgeous, and the sounds fill the room.

Universe Revealed on Teachers Pay Teachers

E P I S O D E S

1. AGE OF STARS
The sun is our life-giving source of light, heat, and energy, and new discoveries are unraveling its epic history. Join NOVA on a spectacular voyage to discover the sun’s place in a grand cycle of birth, death and renewal that makes this the age of stars. Witness how stars of every size and color came to populate our universe; how stars stage a dramatic exit when they explode as supernovae, which can outshine an entire galaxy; and how, billions of years in the future, the age of stars will lead ultimately to an age of darkness.

Featuring Gibor Basri, Sownak Bose, Emma Chapman, David Charbonneau, Christopher Chen, Payel Das, Courtney Dressing, Rana Ezzeddine, Lucie Green, Ghina Halabi, Nia Imara, Kelly Korreck, Philip Muirhead, Eugene Parker, Raman Prinja, Grant Tremblay, and Anjali Tripathi.

Beyond the Elements

PBS NOVA · 2020 · Presenter: David Pogue

Picking up where he left off in NOVA's popular special, Hunting the Elements, David Pogue sets out on a worldwide quest to find the key molecules and chemical reactions that have paved the way for human civilization, life, and even the universe as we know it. And along the way, he uncovers the simple principles that produce such a dizzying diversity of matter from elements on the periodic table.

Beyond the Elements on Teachers Pay Teachers

E P I S O D E S

1. REACTIONS
Just about every solid, liquid, or gas in the world as we know it begins with reactions between individual atoms and molecules. Host David Pogue dives into the transformative world of chemical reactions, from the complex formula that produces cement to the single reaction that’s allowed farmers to feed a global population by the billions—a reaction that when reversed, unleashes the powerful chemistry of high explosives.

Featuring Eric Buchanan, Edward Cussler, Joseph Franek, John Goetz, Juliette Gorson, Theodore Gray, John Hayes, Mandë Holford, Cory Marquart, and Tom Pleva.

Hunting the Elements

PBS NOVA · 2011 · Presenter: David Pogue

HUNTING THE ELEMENTS

Where do nature's building blocks, called the elements, come from? They're the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, technology columnist and lively host of NOVA's popular "Making Stuff" series, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe's most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second.

Hunting the Elements on Teachers Pay Teachers

Student document and answer key are provided as a Google Docs on Google Drive.

Chemistry: A Volatile History

BBC · 2010 · Presenter: Jim Al-Khalili

Series in which Jim Al-Khalili traces the story of how the elements, the building blocks that make up our entire world, were discovered and mapped.

Chemistry: A Volatile History on Teachers Pay Teachers

E P I S O D E S

1. THE DISCOVERY OF THE ELEMENTS

The story of how the elements were discovered and mapped begins with the alchemists who questioned that the world was made up of earth, air, fire and water.

2. THE ORDER OF THE ELEMENTS 

Professor Jim Al-Khalili looks at how the early scientists' bid to decode the order of the elements was driven by false starts and bitter disputes.