Épisodes

  • How Helium Was Discovered

    How Helium Was Discovered
    Jun 4 2026
    Helium is a very common element in our universe. However, due to its characteristics, it's very rarely found on Earth. This video shows how scientists in the 19th century overcame this obstacle, over the course of decades, and isolated and discovered the rare gas. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    8 min
  • How Relativity Was Validated

    How Relativity Was Validated
    May 28 2026
    For over two centuries, Newton’s law of gravity accurately predicted the motions of all the planets in the solar system. But that all changed in 1859, when French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier discovered a strange anomaly regarding mercury’s orbit. This led to a problem in Newton's reality that didn't have an answer until Albert Einstein proposed General Relativity in 1915. Einstein accurately modeled Mercury's orbit with GR, but it wasn't enough for his theory to be accepted as fact. He needed to predict a testable anomaly that had been previously unobserved, and one of his predictions was light bending around the Sun. In 1919, that prediction was put to the test, and what was found would make Einstein a worldwide celebrity practically overnight. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    22 min
  • How Oxygen Was Discovered

    How Oxygen Was Discovered
    May 14 2026
    In the 1770s, a revolution in chemistry had just begun, starting in Uppsala, Sweden. A young apothecary named Carl Wilhelm Scheele began a series of experiments that led to the eventual downfall of an entire theory of fire that had dominated chemistry for a century. This theory was known as the theory of phlogiston; phlogiston was an invisible substance that released from materials when they burned and was absorbed by air or other substances. Scheele supported phlogiston from his results, but his went unpublished for five years, leading to another chemist, Joseph Priestley, getting credit for the discovery of what Scheele called "fire air." This is the story of how Scheele, Priestley, and a French chemist named Antoine Lavoisier discovered a substance that would eventually tackle the theory of phlogiston and replace it with a new theory of oxygen. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    18 min
  • How the Atom Was Split for the First Time

    How the Atom Was Split for the First Time
    May 14 2026
    Ever since the discovery of the proton in 1919 by Ernest Rutherford, scientists had been on a mission to break atoms apart, splitting them into their smaller components in hopes of changing elements into others. This was first successfully done by two of Rutherford's pupils, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932 after their invention of the world's first particle accelerator. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    8 min
  • How Electron Spin Was Discovered

    How Electron Spin Was Discovered
    May 14 2026
    In 1887, physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley discovered a new phenomenon that would come to be known as the fine structure of spectral lines. These spectral lines split into two or more components, and other effects like the Zeeman and Stark effects also showed cases where spectral lines split. The quest to answer why this happened took almost 40 years and would end with the discovery of a new characteristic of an electron known as "spin". Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    20 min
  • How the First Artificial Element Was Created

    How the First Artificial Element Was Created
    May 14 2026
    Technetium is quite an interesting element and has just as interesting of a history. Many had tried to discover it and failed, and this is because of how unstable all of its isotopes are. The only way to discover the element was to make it ourselves, and that was finally done in 1937. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    19 min
  • How Radio Waves Were Discovered

    How Radio Waves Were Discovered
    May 14 2026
    In the 1780s, an Italian physicist named Luigi Galvani made a shocking discovering when experimenting with the remains of frogs. He found that when he touched a the nerves of a frog with a lancet, and at the same time, discharged electricity from an electrostatic machine nearby, the frog legs would kick. This would spark a century-long slew of discoveries and theory that would eventually lead to the discover of the invisible radiation known today as radio waves. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    18 min
  • How Atoms Were Weighed for the First Time

    How Atoms Were Weighed for the First Time
    May 14 2026
    The weights of atoms and molecules are quite precise today, but has quite a long and complicated history. This video dives into the very beginning of that history, right when modern atomic theory was beginning to surface. John Dalton is the inventor of relative atomic weight, and his ideas were instrumental in getting atomic theory off the ground and running. Not only does this video cover Dalton's contribution, but also two scientists after him that destroyed his initial theory less than a decade after he published it. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    9 min