Best basic science lectures

Most of the wonderful things are free, but it takes effort to look into right places.

One of the best lectures that gives basic science knowledge (actually it is physics) is a semester of lectures given by professor Richard A. Muller. These lectures were for "Physics for Future Presidents", given in Berkeley, University of California in 2006.

When I first saw them (which was many years back, I think before YouTube was popular), I was at awe! Imagine an average kid from India, China or Africa, able to see one of the best lectures delivered in one of the greatest university and by the best of the professor!

I hope all the kids of the world understand that it is a great privilege to listen to such lectures provided by the professor. Thanks Prof. Muller, UC Berkeley for these lectures!

Now my kids are in early teens and I convinced them to see these lectures, they find it enjoyable and keep them fairly interested, though my youngest find it soothing and doze of before the lecture is finished. One of the amusing things happened was Prof. Muller was waving to one of the person who dozed in the class, at the same time my youngest was also dozing off. It was amusing as it appeared that he was waving at my daughter!

Here are the lectures link (I plan to write some of the highlights in future)

• Lecture 01: Atoms and Heat
• Lecture 02: Atoms and Heat II
• Lecture 03: Gravity and Satellites
• Lecture 04: Gravity and Satellites II
• Lecture 05: Radioactivity
• Lecture 06: Radioactivity II
• Lecture 07: Nukes
• Lecture 08: Review Session
• Lecture 09: Electricity and Magnetism
• Lecture 10: Electricity and Magnetism II
• Lecture 11: - Waves I
• Lecture 12: Waves II
• Lecture 13: Light I
• Lecture 14: Light II
• Lecture 15: Invisible Light I
• Lecture 16: Invisible Light II
• Lecture 17: Quantum I
• Lecture 18: Quantum II
• Lecture 19: Quantum III
• Lecture 20:- Quantum IV
• Lecture 21: Review Session
• Lecture 22: Relativity
• Lecture 23: Relativity II
• Lecture 24: Universe I
• Lecture 25: Universe II
• Lecture 26: Review Session

If you have 13+ year old kids, please show them create their interest in science or to make them better informed. I would recommend even adults to watch just for the joy of learning things.

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scribd - a wonderful website for IT books

After doing search for online books site, I find that www.scribd.com has really good resource that can made significant difference in your quest to learn technology/methodology/project management. The subscription has nominal charges $5/month for annual subscription and $9 for monthly basis. I think it has great IT books for the price.

Here are few points I like to mention to make best use of the site for IT books:

• Search www.scribd.com with the key words relating to your interest
• Take a look of articles that are written by common folks rather than professional writers. These articles are generally available for download as pdf file.
• I download as pdf file on my computer, upload in iCloud, and then again download into my iPad.
• The book is now stored in your local iPad and available for browsing when ever you need it.

Earlier I tried Safari Books Online, which is also great but way expensive (about $50+) for IT folks who have limited time.

There are other sites also but they want to install exe program which makes me very nervous.

Hope you find it useful. Let me know your ideas.

Kids - Joy of Surds

"Surds" is a beautiful topic for kids to enjoy and learn various aspects of the mathematics. By definition Surds represent irrational numbers (that cannot be expressed by a fraction such as pi or square root 2), but Surds as a topic really juggles the mind and kids love it once they get the hang of it.

Surds are rarely mentioned in today's school curriculum. But I did remember my father mentioning to me with a great joy. It was not in my school curriculum (back in 1970's), but was able to get old mathematics book and learn about Surds. Recently, I rediscovered the Surds when teaching mathematics to my early teen daughters. They got the hang of it and loved it.

Take the example for simplifying the following (so that there there are no irrational numbers in the denominator):

It involves:

• Taking common denominator
• Expansion of the form a*(b+c) = a*b+a*c
• Bringing rational and irrational numbers together
• Usingto remove the irrational number in the denominator. 

Here are some links that you can give your 13-15 year olds to practice on Surds:

• Do these exercises first
• Try this for more

Interestingly the links is from the Austrailia! They still teach Surds. You can get additional links by searching goggle with key words "Surds site:au" (site:au will filter your search for the URL that ends with .au which is Australia)

So have fun and make the kids of the world smarter!