His “Crash Course in Astronomy” is pretty good — the first part of this talk is universally (see what I did there?) applicable, since it’s a solid general description of science and how it works.
Of course, the last part is all this astronomy stuff — I suspect that he’ll avoid talking about cells and molecules for the next 11 episodes. Which is OK, I guess, if you’re interested in rocks and gas and plasma. And massive amounts of nothingness.
“Crash Course Biology ft. PZ Myers”, coming soon?
I’m not as pretty as Phil.
Hank Green already did Crash Course Biology — 40 episodes of squishy organic goodness.
PZ, use your angle avatar as the host, but perhaps that would be too distracting, eh?
what is the spaceship model on the right hand side of the screen?
Love the first episode. If Phil can keep up the standard set by the excellent Crash Course: History this should be amazing.
kantalope @5,
It looks to me like a YT-1300 light freighter from the Corellian Engineering Corporation. I once heard that a modified one made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.
Lovely! Time to throw more money at PBS…yep yep.
Wonderful first episode! I’m looking forward to watching the others in the series.
Should have been stretched to 15 minutes. I almost missed the captions:
“Newton gravitated toward the sciences.”
Galileo: “Science… I am your father.”
However, you have a beard; he barely tries.
Hank Green also did CC ecology, Chemistry, Psychology, and was part of Big History (which did Life, the Universe, and Everything) and currently doing Anatomy and Physiology. His brother did World History, US History, Literature, American Literature, and a second history series that looks at aspects of history and/or historic events that weren’t covered enough in the other videos. Overall, I enjoy the all CC series and I’m glad they’re doing more. I think the history videos are more interesting because they tie what happened centuries ago to how things are today so show why studying history is important.
You can enjoy eating the cake and still be interested in how it gets made.
I think my nieces and nephews would enjoy that. 6th graders with exceptional intelligence — too much? Better suited to Middle School kids/
As far as YouTube’s lite education shows go, I think Crash Course is very very good. Shows like Veritasium, Sixty Symbols, and CGP Grey provide a lot more explanation and details than they do, but the Greens are excellent communicators of ideas. Phil Plait is great at it as well.
I’ve actually said “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that.” and that’s enough to make me recommend going through their archives to anyone.
In addition to the aforementioned Biology and Ecology that Hank hosted, he’s currently hosting Anatomy & Physiology. And Craig Benzine/Wheezy Waiter will be hosting US Government soon.