Whether µ, h, and l make perfect sense or are (literally) Greek to you, don’t miss “Sixty Symbols”, the latest in science video yumminess from the hilarious, kooky, and frequently brilliant media team at the University of Nottingham. Now that they’ve completed their quest to capture the essence of every element in the periodic table in a five minute video, they’ve decided to take on the mysterious and meaningful language of scientific symbols.
Each video is an intimate desk-side chat with a scientist, taking on concepts ranging from the fundamental, such as vectors, to the erudite, such as chaos theory’s Feigenbaum constant. The style is a cocktail of home video and scientific portrait. I love that director Brady Haran keeps them short and sweet and gets interesting angles on even drier-sounding symbols like “magnetic susceptibility” (the above video features levitating beer!) Think of the series as a meandering, nonlinear journey through the world of physics. Each arcane-looking symbol is like a different door, so choose your adventure and enter!