FeuchtBlog

Ancient Empires Before Alexander, by Robert Dise, from the Teaching Company ????

Many of my recent Teaching Company reviews have been less than favorable, but this series is an exception. Covering in this series is a discussion of the rise of the concept of empires, first noted historically by Sargon in Mesopotamia. Dise proceeds to then discuss the Ur kingdom, the Kassites, Hatti (the Hittites), Egypt, Minoan and Mycenaean empires, Israel, Assyria, neo-Babylon, Persia, and finally Carthage. Throughout, Dise remains informative as well as interesting. His discussions do not err as many in extrapolations of data, but instead gives a good review of our current knowledge of the various empires above. My most serious complaint is his treatment of Israel and use of the Biblical data. It is so often the case that while trying to maintain an air of objectivism and critical review of the sources of ancient literature, one fails to appreciate the differences in stylistic writing that would clue one into the credibility of the literature in question. Such is the case with the Biblical script, which should not come under doubt simply because it is also considered a religious genre. Other than that, it is nice to see that moderns did not invent the concept of empire, which existed from earliest written history. It is not a question of whether or not empires will exist, but rather, who will lead and control those empires. All empires have had the tendency to be expansionistic. Some empires desired expansion for economic reasons (Carthage), many for defense of borders, and some simply for the joy of lording over others. Power seems to remain throughout history a stronger driving force than wealth or any other characteristic in motivating empire. This series does a masterful job of helping one explore the concept of empire, and understanding those driving factors throughout mankind that drives for empire.

Meteorology: An Introduction to the Wonders of the Weather, by Robert Fovell ???

This Teaching Company series was a set of 24 half-hour lectures on the science of meteorology. Fovell covers most introductory aspects of meteorology, including the basics of how weather occurs, clouds form, atmospheric circulation, global weather events, hurricanes and tornados, etc. Fovell ends with two lectures explaining in quite simple terms how models are being developed to try to forecast the weather, focusing especially on predicting the path of hurricanes. Fovell’s teaching style is very dry. He does not have the enthusiastic bounce of Filippenko, another Teaching Company lecturer. Fovell’s explanations as to how various weather events occur, such as the development of tornados, just did not seem entirely plausible. This is probably the state of the science of meteorology rather than Fovell explaining poorly. Fovell made abundantly clear how poorly forecasters are at predicting weather events. He used the example of the path of the hurricane Rita, which various models gave a 100 mile spread as to where the hurricane would hit land one day before the event. Such wide spreads limit the usefulness of predicting, since most models showed Rita going straight to Houston, and it went instead to the Texas/Louisiana border, quite a significant way away. This is a series worth watching to learn the basics of what the weatherman needs to know. It is not a series to get you excited about Meteorology.

Quantum Mechanics: The Physics of the Microscopic World, by Benjamin Schumacher ????

This was a hard series to rate, in that, while holding my interest, I fell asleep at the end of about all 24 of the lectures. Schumacher was not boring, so I couldn’t fault him. He also generated enough interest on my part to pull out some light reading books by Richard Feynman on Physics, and enquire about more substantial quantum mechanics textbooks. He brought back memories of Physical Chemistry which I took for one year in college, in which we used the essentials of quantum mechanics quite heavily for our calculations, but of which the third term was spent doing simple solutions of the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom. It seemed a little strange trying to teach quantum mechanics without mathematics. So, it ended up being more a “Quantum Mechanics for Psychology Majors” class, something which nobody could really take seriously. Dr. Schumacher covered the history of quantum mechanics, some of the basic ideas, and discussion of how quantum mechanics differs from how we see and experience the macroscopic world. I found the discussion of his work in quantum informatics to be most interesting. Should he edit this course for a new edition, I would like to see him a) include more mathematics, even if it is not totally understood, b) speak more about the history of quantum mechanics, especially in the most recent several decades, and c) include more discussion of sub-atomic work, such as quarks, muons, etc. and discuss how they tie into the quantum mechanics discussion, and d) discuss more fully how relativity and quantum mechanics conflicts and interacts in understanding the universe.

Black Holes Explained, by Alex Filippenko ?????

This is a series of 12 one half hour lectures on black holes. Betsy and I had watched Filippenko’s Astronomy series previously and thoroughly enjoyed it. This short series was no exception. One cannot help but notice the enthusiasm that Filippenko has with the study of Astronomy. This series was a set of lectures as much on physics as on astronomy. The first few episodes detail the original idea of a black hole by a German physicist Schwartzschild made while he was on the eastern front during WWI, and follows it with the original descriptions of black holes and evidence for their existence. Since they are black holes, they cannot be directly seen, but only inferred. Filippenko keeps the amount of physics equations to a minimum, yet later discussions on competing descriptions of black holes by the theory of relativity vs. quantum mechanics, the evaporation of black holes as described by Stephen Hawking, the possibility of mini-black holes, gravitational waves, and worm hole theory, all left one wondering as to the veracity of these claims. Since the Hadron collider at CERN and new space probes are intended to answer some of the questions of the nature of black holes, we have much to anticipate in the news as physics and astronomy works hand in hand to discover some of the “darker” secrets of the universe. Filippenko must have given us every possible joke about black holes ever written, and even demonstrated how he dressed up as a black hole every Halloween. Between his humor and compelling teaching style, this was a wonderful series to watch.