In praise of Professor Stannard

So I watched the whole series of videos last night (see previous post).  On another blog I recently blew off a bit of steam about how infuriating some language learning materials can be.  Now the material Stannard presented in the video series was far more complicated than anything you could present in a language course, but it was just so easy to watch.  He covered the questions behind determining the size of the universe, he talked about string theory, he talked about the relativistic effects of "time dilation" and "length contraction".  And I walked away from it happy and contented.  Why?  Did he manage to give me a full understanding of these concepts in these little 10 minute snippets?  Heck no. But he made it OK to not understand.  Not by simply telling me that it was OK not to understand everything, because if he'd told me that, it would have felt like an excuse -- in the past, lots of teachers have told me it's OK not to understand, but I still find myself feeling that its my failure to understand.

But Stannard presented the material in a way that made it clear that most people don't understand it -- you actually believed that he didn't understand it... which is probably true.  There are many, many branches of science where even the experts don't fully understand the concepts that they're dealing with, yet when they teach or write books, there's absolutely no indication of doubt -- it's presented as pure, simple fact.  Every learner gets the same problem -- they don't understand the material, but they believe it's their fault.

So I'd really recommend Prof Stannard's videos to anyone -- they are some of the best science materials I've ever seen.  Here's a link to the entire series as a YouTube playlist.

It's time to learn... everything.

I've always liked learning, but recently I've started noticing just how much stuff I have previously learnt, but subsequently forgotten.  Someone will start talking about eigenvectors and eigenvalues, and even though I can still spell the words, I have no idea what they mean.  My retired Dad starts talking about the basic equations of Higher Physics and while they look familiar, it's all lost in the mists of time.

Thankfully, access to information is easier today than it has ever been.  My wee brother pointed my Dad at the MIT OpenCourseWare Physics lectures, and he's become so engrossed in them that he's just ordered an old edition of the set text online.

So in 2012 I'll be scouring the net for information in order to better understand the world around me, to relearn things I once knew and to find out things that I never knew about before.

I'm starting off by revisiting a series of short videos produced by the Open University on some physics fundamentals and the philosophy of science by one of the best guys I've ever seen talk on the topic, Professor Russell Stannard.  Stannard's an unusual guy -- an award-winning teacher and science writer, a children's author and a keen sculptor.

Here's the first video in the series of 10 -- you can follow on from that video to the rest of the series on YouTube.  Enjoy!