In the course
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10 videos · 5 h 34 min
Explainer · YouTube
CrashCourse
A brisk Crash Course episode on the ultraviolet catastrophe, Planck's law and the photoelectric effect: two of the three cracks in classical physics that section 1 lists. Treat it as a trailer for Chapters 3 and 4, where each crack gets a full lesson.
Documentary · YouTube
Eames Office
Charles and Ray Eames's classic short film, an adventure in magnitudes that starts at a lakeside picnic in Chicago and changes scale by a factor of ten at each step. Watch it as section 2's journey in moving pictures, then remember that the lesson keeps going far past where any camera can follow, down to the Planck length.
Explainer · YouTube
Veritasium
Veritasium on replacing the metal kilogram with a definition based on Planck's constant, walking through the Kibble balance that links a mass to h. It was made before the change, so it speaks of the future: the new definition took effect on 20 May 2019, as section 3 says.
Explainer · YouTube
PBS Space Time
A two-hour PBS Space Time compilation. The jump lands on its chapter 'Planck's Constant and the Origin of Quantum Mechanics' (10:40), the 1900 story behind E = hf. Its other chapters, on tunnelling, the double slit, the quantum eraser, entanglement and the Bohr–Einstein debate, many worlds, pilot waves and the uncertainty principle preview much of this course.
Documentary · YouTube
NOVA PBS Official
NOVA's full documentary on the quantum world. The jump lands on its chapter 'Atomic Clocks: The Science of Time' (15:55), the atomic clocks that section 6 ties to GPS; rewind to 8:07 for 'What is Quantum Mechanics?', and stay on for chapters on detecting ripples in space-time and on entanglement.
Explainer · YouTube
Looking Glass Universe
Looking Glass Universe's tips for learning quantum mechanics by yourself, cheaply, even without a lot of maths, including which textbooks to use and how to study. Use it beside section 7's lab manual, and bookmark the textbook advice for when you want to go beyond this course.
Lecture · Royal Institution
The Royal Institution · Jim Al-Khalili · 2025
A Friday Evening Discourse recorded at the Ri in November 2025, a century after Heisenberg's breakthrough: a hundred years of quantum theory, from the 1920s pioneers to the technologies being built now. Keep asking which claims are experiment and which are interpretation.
Explainer · Fermilab
Fermilab
Fermilab's Don Lincoln on the electron's magnetic moment, the record-breaking agreement between quantum electrodynamics and experiment that Part 5 of this lesson describes. Six minutes on how a theory earns trust: with numbers that match.
Demo · Perimeter
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
A three-minute Perimeter Institute demonstration that measures Planck's constant with a cheap, simple setup built around LEDs. It makes section 3's exchange rate tangible, and it previews section 6, where an LED's colour is set by its band gap through E = hf.
Lecture · Royal Institution
The Royal Institution · Philip Ball
Science writer Philip Ball, author of the book 'Beyond Weird', starts from quantum physics' reputation as obscure and impenetrable and explores how its counterintuitive principles create the world we experience. Watch it beside section 4's five big ideas, and keep track of which claims are about experiments and which are about interpretations.