MP4 Video on Higgs Boson (remember that?) from back in mid July 2012. Reposting it with current date to allow us to test mp4 links to our media library. One of the very few video files we have uploaded to our “own site” so far.
Original description text follows below from July 2012
If we want to look for challenges for learning, one might take a look at this one.
Physics today is, well, quite a challenge to communicate. This is two talking heads, side by side, trying to give us a better understanding of Higgs Boson experiments and discoveries, and how that fits into the larger picture of present day understandings of Physics.
Yes, I’m kind of tongue in cheek by linking to this video here, because there’s probably few people on the planet that can attain the fullness of understanding that Mr. Krauss is trying to explicate for us. If we ponder how to “teach this”, it’s sort of like presenting someone with a teaspoon, and asking them to “shovel” White Sands deposits into an infinite series of dump trucks…
So besides sharing a curiosity that many of us have as to what Higgs Boson is all about, and really, what is known about the universe we inhabit, I think it’s useful to confront a big “teaching problem” and undertake to assemble methods to address it.
In this case, clearly we need some additional features. Krauss references a whole slew of important discoveries in physics in the last 50 years. Okay, how about a cutaway to a time line every once in a while, or super it over the talking heads running across as a text news line, or…well, you get the idea. As in any presentation, graphics can help. Additional videos can help. etc.
If this was a class, we’d notice that the two heads are very poorly miked, and the sound is peaking and distorting. Krauss is backlit against a window, a serious no-hno, and Wright looks cadaverous in what appears to be blue daylight.
They talk too fast, interrupt each other, and on and on, while simultaneously coming up with some of the better explanations for this stuff that we are likely to find anywhere.
In other words, even at the most profound levels of learning, there’s a lot of room for improvement in teaching it.
FYI: This is just a link to a video stored in our video library opening in a new page. There’s been no attempt to “embed” it or otherwise create a particular “playing” environment for viewing… so the video player that opens is somehow standard to WP I guess.
We will be looking into our optimal video playing and hosting tools, platforms etc… many to choose from. Slideshare even allows some video hosting. Our HostGator server limits say they don’t watch bandwidth, but watch the number of processes “open” at one time. We have a limit of 25 for that. Which I don’t really understand exactly what they count as a process, so we’ll want to research that more in the days ahead.