PocketMatrix

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
NOVA | The Elegant Universe | Watch the Program | PBS

I love this. Maybe some of you already know all these things but I found this pretty interesting.

I think they were showing this program in the UK a few months ago. I only caught a few minutes before I headed off to uni but was very impressed with the quality.

I couldn't understand why they were showing it in the middle of the schools' programs though, as I'm a 2nd year physics student and a lot of the stuff was way over my head*.

* Excuse: If this program explained things in a simple and clear way, it means I was obviously watching something else that was far more complex. Ahem.

I thought it was a very simple way of describing a concept, and would have been better without the "quantum cafe" and other ridiculous visualizations. By bringing the quantum world to the macro it destroys what's interesting about it in an attempt to make it popular or spectacular. In my opinion it's really quite fantastic that an electron has the ability to spontaneously overcome energy barriers without the input of energy (quantum tunnelling), and other such nifty stuff. Just spend 10 to 15 minutes describing real electron orbitals and how they work and ... the show would be more true and sadly fewer people would watch it.