A prodigious leap - Philip Morrison's 1968 Christmas Lectures 3/6

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Philip Morrison studies the walking, running, floating and swimming, by animals large and small, and in man-made vehicles of all kinds, inspired by Gulliver's Travels in one of the earliest recorded Christmas Lectures. Watch all the lectures in this series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbnrZHfNEDZyVSqUGRrZh05w7JYj77-m6 Watch our newest Christmas lectures here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbnrZHfNEDZyQJZLPMjwEoOLdkFBLU2m1 This was recorded on 3 December 1968. -- A flea, a hare, a man, and a horse all can jump about the same height if we measure fairly. When we change length scale we tend to forget the quantity of time; in all motions the scale of the moving object plays a part that is often surprising. The motions of micro-organisms and of the mist droplets in cloud reflect, above all, their small size. We extend this idea to study walking, running, floating, swimming, by large animals and small, and in man-made vehicles of all kinds. -- About the 1968 series of CHRISTMAS LECTURES In the 1968 CHRISTMAS LECTURES, physicist Philip Morrison explores the science of scale through the eyes of Jonathan (also knows as Dean) Swift's classic book, Gulliver's Travels. From the 1968 Lecture programme: It was the marvellous imaginary voyages of Lemuel Gulliver which made us see a world of petty six-inch patriots, or of sixty-foot people, large-minded and generous. Dean Swift was not writing science, but he lighted for our minds the meaning of size in ou

Published 2025-04-04 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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