Full Richard Feynman Messenger Lecture Series
My hobby is Physics, specifically information theory. Not a popular pastime to have, perhaps, but my Dad is a physicist and the interest rubs off.
One thing I’ve learned is that to get simple explanations for things, counter to popular belief it’s better to get the view of the best physicists than the best communicators. Richard Feynman was both.
There are many Feynman clips around, but Bill Gates has spent significant time and some of his fortune tracking down rights for a famous series of 7 lectures by Feynman at Cornell University in 1964, called the Messenger lectures. They have been put up for free at the Microsoft Research Web site, as part of project Tuva, with full transcripts and interactive features.
The extras are thorough and useful for this type of subject matter, but the format is very like an old school interactive CD-ROM, where the interface re-invents the wheel and omits standard functionality such as the ability to embed.
[ BTW – these Microsoft Silverlight powered videos were almost impossible to watch for me, due to stopping and starting. Like the bad old days before Youtube used flash embeds and web based video suddenly seemed good enough. Silverlight is, in theory solid, so what’s up here? Is it just me? ]