Here's how I tackle the "space is big" thing. People will say "in an infinite universe, literally everything is possible!!!11" And I say, no. Infinite instances does not mean infinite possibility. There are an infinite number of numbers between zero and one but none of them are two. (Also callback to like two minutes ago when you were talking about continuous vs discrete variables)
I love listening to Angela. I know though, she wouldn't be able to stand looking at me when she speaks about things like this, as I would have a pasted on stunned face while still trying to come to terms with something she's said five sentences earlier while still trying to keep up. And she's describing things that are, to mind-blowing, but to her, sounds like she's describing how to boil water. However, despite the clear genius, I note over her shoulder the 123 Home Improvement book: a human after all - move along now, no aliens here.
Hey, russian names are generally transliterated using a scheme that has nothing to do with English spelling rules. In particular, “ee” in a russian name is *never* pronounced as in English “feet”. For Mendeleev, Wikipedia suggests the pronunciation: /ˌmɛndəlˈeɪəf/ (MEN-dəl-AY-əf)
"I have not seen the Barbie movie yet so i don't know how much the average person knows of this very famous german physicist." Now that is a joke that will be indecipherable in a few years. 😅
Barbie can have any career she wants. Well, except maybe the _math is hard_ talking Barbie, which could have been fixed if talking Ken said, _Yeah, math _*_is_*_ hard._
The "Barbieheimer" weekend set up the possibility for the strangest double feature in the history of moviegoing-and the possibility of Mattel developing "Nuclear Physicist Barbie", equipped with a mini-Tokamak for her fusion research.
I've heard that if you try to chop up a proton it takes so much energy that you end up with two protons. It would be kinda cool if donuts worked this way.
Any hadron, really, but most are so unstable that they stop being hadrons before any attempt could be made to tear them apart. After nucleons, the most stable hadrons are two-quark mesons, which have half-lives measured in fractions of a second (iirc, the half life of neutral pions is something like 5ns). They're still a good example of the concept, though, since it's easier to explain how the binding energy being greater than the rest-mass-energy of the composite particle will result in copying the particle if an attempt is made to tear it apart when 1. There's only two elementary particles in the composite (simpler system) and 2. There's already an equal number of particles and anti-particles in the system.
3:39 I feel like this would be the start to a George-centred Seinfeld episode. "They didin't bring enough donuts so they _cut_ them? What is this, the stone age?! Just buy another! It's inhuman. It cracks the frosting, it makes the dough all mushy. Disgusting I tell you"
I feel like George is the type to defend cutting donuts. Like he'd bring too few donuts for a work function and would say "oh no problem, let's just cut them in half!" since he's too cheap to just go buy more donuts
"I suck at youtube like it's my job to suck at youtube." Gurl pls, you are the only youtuber I can think of who can hold peoples' attention with just you, the topic, and your explanations alone. No clever editing to splice in tons of different footage, no music, just you. You are fantastic. Keep it up 👏👏👏
I made my PhD at the GSI lab in Germany. Along the hall of the linear accelerator they had all those chemistry labs. Which where used as store rooms in the 90s. When the lab was founded back in the 70s there were predictions about this island of stability that let them believe they could create gramms of this stuff and it would live long enough to do chemistry. Turned out both the predicted cross sections and half lifes were off by a few orders of magnitue. However GSI found many of the z>100 elements over the years, but no chemists ever got their hands on them.
Every time I watch one of your videos, I become a bigger fan. I have no mathematical literacy, so I will never truly understand any of these things, but unlike most people, I am AWARE of my ignorance. I think that is why I enjoy your videos so much. You make its patently obvious that this is the dumbed down version for non scientists, but you manage to make it friendly, sympathetic for our inability, and generous with your time and effort to help us understand why this stuff is important, why it's interesting, and perhaps most importantly you make it clear that what is holding us back is not stupidity, but a lack of the tools and previous education. This makes you both entertaining for an old tradesman like me, but also potentially inspiring for those who might be considering educational choices in their futures. You have a gift that few have, the ability to advocate for reason and rationality, the knack for making it fun, and the opportunity to make an impact. More importantly, you recognized all this and you actually did it. This is literally making a difference, literally changing the world one video at a time. Thank you, and please never stop, because even though a lot of us don't deserve it, we need you and those like you to pull us out of these times and into the future.
If were up to me your comment should be pinned on top, but she's probably too modest to do it herself so everybody give it as many thumbs up as possible!!!
Love your content, It's refreshing to have someone explain thing with all the "Real world" messiness and not hand wave away things to make it more simple. But I'll be honest. I'm equally here for the off topic rants and strong feelings towards minor things. Next office gathering with donuts I'm cutting mine into small pieces before I eat it, Just to watch the uncomfortable stares from everyone.
I cannot imagine how much easier physics would have been when I was in school if I’d had access to stuff like this channel or 3brown1blue, just crystal clear conversational discussions that help you see the map of things . They don’t replace working out problems, because that’s where the muscles are built, but they at least frame things in a way where you know where you’re going
@@eitkomlim on the same level with you, so i cant directly fact check her (the creator of the video). But she has phd in astrophysics and seems to be pretty transparent in her videos whenever she simplifies something, so I would trust her to have correct information on these things. Also in some of her other videos, when she talks about topics outside of her expertise, she mentions it clearly, which is a good sign of accurite science communication.
I personally love "magic numbers" and "doubly magic" as names. It's giving Number Theory naming conventions, hehe. Btw thanks for having folders full of rants about sexism (and transphobia) in physics. If ppl started to take that more seriously because of science communicators like yourself I might feel comfortable going back grad school for pure math
As the credits rolled I was thinking "But what about the island of stability?" Now I feel so coooool 😊, even though I don't truly understand any of this I have a handle to hang on to. Thank you.
Yes! As the final credits roll, there's that theatrical long pause, her eyes dart around furtively, and in a conspiratorial whisper, says "Only the Cool People are left..." Absolutely *brilliant*!!
I bet if we collided donuts at high speed inside a donut-shaped accelerator we'd be able to divide them into all sorts of smaller confections. It would certainly be an advance on the cheese chamber, where particles passing through curds in an advanced stage of encurdlement form cheeses of many types [ref: Weller 1985]
You can’t cut a donut? You… can’t cut a donut? YOU… EXCUSE me? I will come up with a theory about cutting donuts that will put The Physics Establishment to shame.
Mendeley, of course, was a silicon alien that misled our understanding of elements just enough to make us think that the existence of silicon aliens is unlikely. 😌
I think the upper limit to theoretical proton number is supposed to be where the nucleus is too large for a virtual meson to cross the nucleus before decaying, meaning that it's literally impossible (well, really so statistically unlikely that we'll never see it happen, because that's how quantum physics works) for the one side of the nucleus to be bound to the other by the strong force, making the coulomb force shoving protons apart effectively the only force acting on the outer shell. I seem to recall reading that there's a little disagreement about whether that size would be reached before or after the island of stability, because the math to predict the actual shape of a large nucleus gives multiple answers, and there's no consensus on whether the island of stability for proton number will allow the number of neutrons to be reduced enough to shrink the physical size of the nucleus without becoming unstable just from the z/n ratio being off. So I guess we'll just have to do actual experiments to find out.
Me, in the kitchen with co-workers - "This donut/muffin/cruller/bearclaw is too big, I'll cut it in half". Also me, 10 minutes later when everyone's dispersed ~ goes to get the other half, plus another whole in case I get hungry later.
Letting you know that the Wikipedia article has been updated, and someone tried to link your video as a source, but it was refused (the sourcing, not the edit).
My dude. You have a free range mind. It is a sublime experience watching your brain work as you explain physics. You are the Science Educator of the future. Exquisite.
I once had a conversation with a professor who worked on the LIGO project. Legitimately the coolest physicis conversation I have ever had, maybe the coolest ever. They might even deserve half of the funding they have stolen.
I have watched like 5 or 6 of your videos now and every time I look at the video length and I'm like "no way I end up watching this whole thing" and then I do. So thank you, I love your videos and I'm probably gonna go watch all of them now
Perfect video to watch while drinking my structurally reconstructed some alpha plasma alkaline water with just a little bit of (of course organic) lemon juice
Fantastic primer. A someone whose PhD research was relevant to this, was a little sad not to see Ni also called out as having two doubly-magic isotopes, but I get that 78Ni is potentially a bit "current events" for a primer.
'Plum Pudding' has a couple of meanings here in England... nowadays it is just a baked/steamed cakelike dessert made with plums, but in the olden-days it referred to the steamed sticky treacle (molasses) abomination we call Christmas Pudding (not the lovely booze-infused dried-fruit filled Christmas Cake, btw) and contained all manor of fruits including plums, raisins, citrus peels, dried apple and figs... which lent themselves to it also being called 'Figgy Pudding' thanks to Dickens. This Plum Pudding replaced the less popular 'Plumb Pudding', which aside from being far too heavy for even a team of scullery-maids to remove from the oven, was, of course, deadly....😉.... although it felt the same in one's stomach as the real Plum Pud🤣🤣🤣 (we Brits refer to having dessert as having 'pudding' as we used to eat lot's of sweet, fruit-filled stodge (such as Spotted Dick, Sticky Toffee, Bread and Butter Pudding...) after meals and the name became synonymous with dessert)
I believe this is the first time I've heard of the nuclear shell model. It is aesthetically pleasing to have the nucleus conceptually similar to the electrons around the nucleus (apart from there not being a nucleus in the middle of the nucleus). I know aesthetics are not a rigorous guide for good physics but when it works out that way my brain likes it more. Are we (humans) satisfied, for now, that the nuclear shell model is complete, or are there unsatisfactory aspects that suggest a better model still is needed?
27:50 I was 4 minutes too late to edit the Wikipedia article; it was already done. Congrats to Qwuk for beating me to the punch. You aren't cited, though. There's no citation for noticing a mistake and removing it lol.
Ah that was me. It's not appropriate to cite a RU-vid video on the page or in the edit summary unfortunately, at least when the actual explanation is on the Nobel website itself 😅 I was very tempted though
There's a fantastic pop-sci book called "Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table" that covers a lot of similar ground as the ending of this (very entertaining) video! Worth a read, especially for the drama around naming rights to new elements + shocking fraud around one element's discovery.
George Gamow - pronounced Gam ov (or off) - was one of my earliest inspirations in science, through his book “1,2,3 … infinity”. Published in 1947, it was available in paperback a few years later and was probably the first book I ever bought. Many people my age (old) cite it as their first serious science book.
First name pronounced "Joe". "To Igor, who wants (or wanted to be) a cowboy" (but actually ended up in biology). Also came here to shout into the void that "primer" in this usage is pronounced with a short I, like "primmer".
A couple of cool/interesting points you didn't mention in regards to 'big' elements. First, is that one requirement (by the official definition) for a new element is the nucleus must exist long enough to assemble its own electron cloud, which is calculated as some tiny amount of time I've forgotten. So nuclei which are too large and decay faster than this would technically not be a new element, but just a really massive subatomic particle. Also, there is the fine structure constant which leads to potential elements starting to do some truly bizarre stuff around element 137 due to the fact that their innermost electrons would have a highly relativistic kinetic energy.
Based on a Colloquium talk in grad school by a guy at NIST who specializes in Uranium chemistry you already start to get small yet statistically significant deviations from expected properties in the Actinide elements because their outermost valence shells start to become relativistic messing with the chemistry a bit. Of course you kind of need to have the elements supercooled to get the really exotic properties. I also remember learning about just how chemically toxic and reactive Uranium is and how that chemistry makes it way more dangerous than its radioactivity. Uranium as a strong chemical affinity for oxygen in particular which means its quite reactive as a metal with the main reaction product between Uranium and molecular oxygen being water soluble and thus highly motile in the environment. It also apparently has the tendency to behave like it has 4 valence electrons which plays a role in why it has such an affinity for oxygen. Another fun quirk about Uranium and the other sort of stable actinides is that due to their affinity with oxygen even though they are very heavy elements their tendency to bind up with oxygen the 3rd most abundant element in the universe and primary constituent of lighter weight silicate rocks when planets differentiate Uranium and Thorium generally rise to the surface and concentrate in the crust specifically lighter continental rocks. This in combination with the otherwise chemically immobile Uranium being able to react with molecular oxygen to make a water soluble salt was why natural Uranium fission reactors were able to form not long after the Great Oxygenation Event as the ratio of U235 was high enough for Uranium to be fissile and water was able to act as both the concentrator and the moderator in the reaction
Ahhh, but how I dearly wish that OTHER RU-vidrs could give heads-up warnings like "In case I randomly start talking about Aliens in this video about nuclear physics--that's WHY." :D Sooooo happy now, I am :P
you honestly have one of my favorite presentation styles. you just seem so intelligent and knowledgable while coming across as someone who's very grounded and good at speaking in an extremely approachable way
When I clicked on a video titled "a nuclear physics primer" I didn't expect a mini rant about doughnuts. But my day is made better for it. Truly all things are just applied physics when you get down to it, especially ethical pastry division theory.
Alexander Jablokov's science-fiction novel "Carve the Sky" imagined all sorts of cool stuff going on with Island of Stability elements, but through considerable fictional license he was imagining them being truly stable.
When I was in school it was called "the valley of beta stability". I loved that description, because it reminded me of the very sad, but very beautiful book "How Green was my Valley" written by Richard Llewellyn in 1939, and made into a popular movie in 1941. So every time I heard the term "valley of beta stability" it made me think of Llewellyn's beautiful valley and how it was destroyed by the coal industry.
Love your video as usual. My only “gripe” (not actually a real gripe just wanted to comment on the matter, happy accidental pun) with this video is that some of the elements we have not been able to play that much with, I feel… like if we had enough of it we could but they have to be created with a lot of effort and it’s very difficult to accumulate enough of them to truly “play” with them. Like maybe with enough of one of the heaviest elements mixed with something else we could get some really funky emergent properties. Sure we know what the individual atom’s behaviors might be based on measurements, but we don’t have a comprehensive understanding of all the emergent properties of everything. We are still working on that.
Re Periodic Table. The atomic weight is really the average atomic mass of the isotopic distribution of that element. I've lived with this for years without really thinking about it and then got annoyed that an average mass should be called a weight. However it seems that it is called a weight because it is a 'weighted average' so the word weight in atomic weight doesn't mean what you and I would call weight i.e. it is not a force. This is either that chemists don't really know the difference between mass and weight (plum pudding is British) or that they are idiots and don't understand language. I say this because I am a chemist. I also say this because billions of Covid home tests were sent out with two letters on the stick - a T and a C. I did my first test and saw a line at the C and thought I had Covid.....then I read the instructions and realized the test had been put together by chromatographists. Chemists. What moron would put a C on a Covid test? It means Control for a chromatographist but they can't speak human very well. I have never seen a pregnancy test but I would hope it is easier to read for your average great ape than a Covid test. I may have wandered from my first thought. Please make them change Atomic Weight to just what it is, the Mean Atomic Mass, MAM or mother in English.
I love these! Comments: also, a “plumb bob” is a weight on a string used by carpenters to have a vertical line…originally of lead, yes also used by plumbers for joining pipes….and so we say a wall is “plumb” if it’s straight vertical.
"Magic numbers" are also used by programmers when talking about number literals scattered in your code. They're frowned upon, and generally should be computed or retrieved from somewhere more appropriate, rather than hard-coded in the logic of the program. So I understand the aversion to "magic numbers," because it would make more sense if they could be derived from something else. But it's also not always a bad thing because sometimes numbers just need to stand on their own.
Thank you for standing up for the most important issue of our time. People who cut up donuts are monsters. Also as a programmer and aspiring mathematician (getting my masters in applied maths now) who doesn't know any of the physics that much of mathematics was developed to explain, I absolutely love your videos.
I recommend dabbling in some physics for sure. The mathematics is usually the hardest part for people. The interesting part about physics is what the 'physical axioms' are and how different branches of physics relate to each other. The most interesting thing about physics for me is that it's an absolute gold mine when it comes to taking a short list of axioms (in reality, think of them as a physical hypothesis like 'local charge conservation') and creating a fully functioning mathematical model. Seeing how these constructions change from one topic to other is really interesting and enlightening even from an armchair perspective. Some random physics rabbit holes might include understanding what Maxwell's equations are trying to say in plain English, but then how does the mathematics allow you to calculate the speed of light. If the speed of light is the same in all reference frames, what are the consequences for space, time and simultaneity (just follow along basic thought experiments used to calculate time dilation and length contraction)? In the previous situation, they literally use basic triangle math to calculate how space and time are different for different observers, it's wild. Another rabbit hole that's a little more difficult, how can you use conserved quantities like mass and energy to explain a fluid? At the end of the day, the equations of motion for a fluid are basically just conservation laws applied to the idea of a fluid, but all these cool features of fluids pop out of the math as a result. This topic, in my mind, is a masterclass in variable management. There's a very complicated general theory and yet much simpler theories for particular cases. Last and my personal favorite, how can you use the ideas of probability and counting (basic combinatorics) to explain things that thermodynamics takes for granted? Why does time seem reversible in theory but not in practice, and how can you explain, using counting and probability, why entropy increases?
I was going to jokingly say something about how physicists need to let go of their religious adherence to the laws of physics and embrace the art of the possible but then I realised someone was probably already typing that unironically...
32:34 "Stick with gods. We've only done, like, a Greek and Roman god..." There's a few more than that. Counting only "gods" (which can be a bit difficult when it comes to greek: Is a muse a goddess?), I'd say about 10. Letting in other mythological figures, we're closer to 20... But I like most of the names (just not the ones named after persons: Idolizing people sucks): There's information to tie the element to the world in those names. Osmium, for example, is named after the Ottoman empire, and guess where the largest deposits are? In Turkey, bravo! Chlorine is called so for Chloros, Greek for "green", and what do you know, under the conditions that it was seperated, it's a green-to-yellow gas... All these little stories are like hooks that lets the element stick in your memory, burr-style.
Cake is continuous, huh? Now I'm wondering what the quantum of a cake would be, just to be a contrarian, and I kinda want to try to define the Planck Cake. Do they give Nobel Prizes for baking? No? How about for sending shitposts in for peer review? Still no? Damn.
I love your videos. You make the subjects really interesting. This could be a real career opportunity. If you finish your phd, try to find an editor. I am sure you could become as popular as veritasium or other popular science channels.
Hi Angela, I am wondering what your degree(s) you have and what university did you attend? Also what state do you live in, I live in Philadelphia. Pa. I love your websire and vidoes and really appreciate all your knowledge and information you give, thank you so much!
You could probably talk for an hour about all the ways people get discreet vs continuous wrong. Just look for any news article to use the term 'exponential growth' and there's a very good chance they're describing geometric growth.
There was so much wonderful humor in the first part of this video. The whole section about "discrete" and "living in a society" was just way too funny for a video about the periodic table :D I'm waiting for the full stand-up routine!
14:48 fun fact: Carl Friedrich was the older brother of Richard, who became the 6th president of the Federal Republik of Germany.. There is this little anecdote where someone asked C.F. is he wasn't the brother of this famous von Weizsäcker to which he replied "No, that's my brother"
This channel should be flagged as a Health Hazard. By the time I had reached 3:42, I was laughing so hard that I literally fainted for a second, and FOFL. Glad you point out the discovery of the proton as something separate from the gold foil experiment re nucleus. Such an important moment in history, too often excluded from text books, as if the story ends with the gold foil experiment. A footnote to the proton story: Actually, Rutherford was quite confused about his alpha bombardments of nitrogen all the way from 1917 to 1925 when he and Blackett finally got it right by observing cloud chamber tracks. Strictly speaking, I think it's best to say the proton was discovered either "in 1925" or "during the period 1917-1925, with great difficulty!"
Topologically speaking a doughnut and a coffee cup are equivalent. How many coffee cups you own that you can throw away your coffee cups because you didn’t finish your coffee. Shaking my head in utter disbelief. You physicists are clueless.
