OCW
How does an air conditioner actually work?
Typically, with any piece of technology, you pump one unit of energy in and you get about one out. That’s just the first law of thermodynamics: energy has to be conserved. But there’s a piece of technology called a heat pump, where for every bit of energy you put in, you get three to five times ..
TED
3 mysteries of the universe — and a new force that might explain them
We're still in the dark about what 95 percent of our universe is made of — and the standard model for understanding particle physics has hit a limit. What's the next step forward? Particle physicist Alex Keshavarzi digs into the first results of the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab in Chi..
TED
Why can't you put metal in a microwave?
In 1945, engineer Percy Spencer was standing near a RADAR device that produced high-intensity microwaves and noticed that his candy bar had melted. He then exposed popcorn kernels to the magnetron device, and sure enough, they popped. Soon after, the first microwave oven became available, using the ..
TED
How to harness abundant, clean energy for 10 billion people
We can produce abundant, sustainable and cheap energy — for everyone, says physicist Julio Friedmann. He explores the infrastructure, innovation and investment needed to supply energy to 10 billion people, offering case studies from Chile's refurbished supply chain, built in partnership with ..
TED
How to think computationally about AI, the universe and everything
Drawing on his decades-long mission to formulate the world in computational terms, Stephen Wolfram delivers a profound vision of computation and its role in the future of AI. Amid a debut of mesmerizing visuals depicting the underlying structure of the universe, he provides a sweeping survey of his ..
TED
The "adjacent possible" — and how it explains human innovation
From the astonishing evolutionary advances of the Cambrian explosion to our present-day computing revolution, the trend of dramatic growth after periods of stability can be explained through the theory of the
TED
