Why Is It So? - Season 2

15 episodes
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Episodes

1. The Ideas of Heat and Temperature

From the outset, Miller distinguishes heat from temperature. Objects of the same temperature can have different amounts of heat.

2. Thermometric Properties and Processes

What evidence do we have that poiny yo a change in tremperature of objects? Miller suggests these properties: expansion, electrical resistance, magnetism, thermoelectric power, and color.

3. How to Produce Heat Energy

Professor Miller rattles off several types of energy, and adds that heat energy is a degenerate form. Whenever work is done, heat is a by-product. Thus Miller takes a nail out with a hammer, pumps a bicycle pump, slides a string around the neck of a perfume bottle and bends a paper clip to generate small amounts of heat.

4. Thermal Expansion of Stuff – Solids

The classic ball-and-ring experiment leads to dilemmas involving metal plates with tiny holes in them. This and other demonstrations go unresolved, entirely according to Miller's instructional philosophy.

5. Thermal Expansion of Stuff – Gases and Liquids

Gases and liquids have strange expansion properties, depending on the change in temperature. But Miller is a strange and enchanting physicist. He does experiments with freely-expanding gases.

6. The Strange Thermal Behavior of Ice and Water

To carry one gram of ice water to one gram of water vapor, says Miller, requires a good deal of energy. Miller has abundant demonstrations on ice and water. In some of these demonstrations, a bit of ice melts and refreezes.

7. Heat Energy Transfer by Conduction

In this first of three shows on transferring heat energy, Miller proposes some unusual things. Much of it involves the imagination of viewers.

8. Heat Energy Transfer by Convection

Miller shows the strange fact that damp air is lighter than dry air. He also reflects on a hub of different metals and how one can show the rates at which metals conduct heat away. His most fascinating fact: there are three times ten to the nineteenth power molecules of gas in one cubic centimeter of air.

9. Heat Energy Transfer by Radiation

Radiation of heat can travel at the speed of light, but how quickly an object can radiate heat, is another matter.

10. Evaporation, Boiling, Freezing

Miller has a grand demonstration in which he freezes water by boiling it at a rather low pressure.

11. Miscellaneous Adventures in Heat

Miller again crushes a steel can by first lowering its pressure and then pouring ice water over it. Using a block of dry ice and a silver coin, he hints to the Trevelyan rocker. A good deal of time is devoted to the viscosity of liquids and gases.

12. The Drama in Real Cold Stuff – Liquid Nitrogen

All manner of objects are frozen in liquid nitrogen, and their properties change in startling ways. A balloon shrinks in volume (Boyle's Law); a metal coil supports a weight. And of course, lots of other things get broken, from a flower to rubber balls.

13. Physics of Toys: Mechanical

Perhaps no other physicist played with toys more than Prof. Miller. And Miller played with toys to find out ""Why is it so?"" In this first of three programs on the physics of toys, Miller recounts principles learned in Episodes 1, 6, and 8. His toys include a walking Pluto dog, a circus smokestack, and a unicyclist (which Miller calls a ""monocyclist"").

14. Physics of Toys: Acoustic, Thermal

Miller goes to his collection of acoustic toys: a button on a string, a bird whistle, a xylophone, and an accordion among them. Some of the principles in these toys will go into Miller's programs the next season.

15. Physics of Toys: Electrostatic, Magnetic, Miscellaneous

Miller concludes his physics of toys lecture with toys of all categories. The physics involved in each would take a good half-hour to disclose. He includes a a gyroscopic toy, a musical top, and the dunking duck.