periodicvideos-ABC-News

This is nine-year-old Carter, a periodicvideos fan from the US.


Larger version

Carter's Mum told us:

"He has even asked for ferrofluid for his birthday and cesium for Christmas!

"Thank you for such wonderful videos!

"We love to watch your educational videos at bedtime to help 'wind down' after long days.

"Thank you for all of your had work!! You guys are fun and informative and we can't get enough!!!

"We watch and re-watch your wonderful videos almost daily!"

MORE FAN PHOTOS

On Monday we hosted a Meet The Professors "hang out" on YouTube.

Two young lads recently joined this club and received treatment befitting any VIV (very important viewer).

AIDAN THE ADDICT

First, here is Aidan, a 10-year-old from here in the UK diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome and described by his dad Stuart as a "Numberphile Addict".

In an introductory email, Stuart explained: "We stumbled across the Numberphile videos and website, and he has started consuming them at a rate of knots. He has even started doing his homework whilst filming himself as a mini-video and 'presenting' what he is doing in the format of your films."

Aidan and his family visited the University of Nottingham and met various people from the videos - Ed Copeland, Phil Moriarty, Ria Symonds, Meghan Gray and Gerardo Adesso.

Here are some pictures:

Tim told me in an email:  "James was incredible. I have never seen Quarrie smile so much. You know, James even took him up to see Stephen Hawking, and still, I think he was more impressed with James. That says a lot from a kid like Quarrie."

I will be giving an hour-long talk at 12pm on Friday, 30 November, 2012.

The talk will be to communications students at Nottingham Trent University - but others are welcome to come along and listen.

It's free!

The talk will be at NTU's Clifton Campus.

It will be in Lecture Theatre Two (aka GYM 030) which is, I'm told, "sort of connected to the George Eliot building and next to the bus stop".

I'll be talking about my work, showing some videos, telling some stories and giving some advice to people who are interested in online videos and/or science and/or just having a fun job.

And I'll hang around afterwards if anyone wants to say hello.

By Professor Phil Moriarty
(to accompany Numberphile's Tau of Phi video)



The song can be downloaded from Soundcloud.

For some unfathomable reason, not everyone is a fan of heavy metal so I thought it might be helpful to compose a piece of "mathemusic" which didn’t involve growling, screaming, and/or distorted, detuned guitars.

If nothing else, it just might win Brady back a few of those subscribers who unsubscribed from Numberphile in protest when our Golden Ratio Song was uploaded.

There are, of course, a number of great pieces of music out there whose composers have used fundamental mathematical constants as their basis (long before we decided to ‘metallize’ phi in the way we did).

ViHart’s “A Song About A Circle Constant” and Michael Blake’s “What tau sounds like” are great examples and highly recommended.

And both Tool (with ‘Lateralus’) and After The Burial (with “Pi”) have written songs directly inspired by constants in Nature (more on Tool below).

But what do we get if we mix melodies and riffs based around a number of different constants?

This was one of the motivations for the “Tau of Phi” piece.

I was intrigued as to how a piece inspired by the digits of both tau and phi would sound.

Here’s how the piece of music works. I used Audacity for all of the recording, effects, and mixing.

0:00 – 0:17 Opens with a gently looping piano melody derived from the first eight digits of tau mapped onto a Bb harmonic minor scale. (The same scale as we used for the math metal song). The sound in the background is a combination of strings and a crescendo involving Bb octaves which I then time-reversed. The strings throughout the piece are based on the digits of tau.

0:18 – 0:43 The tau riff continues to play. The chords underlying this are an interpretation on piano of the opening of the math metal Golden Ratio song. I take some ‘liberties’ here, however, and first play the sequence: “1…6…1” three times in a row, (starting at 0:18, 0:27, and at 0:36). That is, I repeat the first three digits of phi three times. This adds to the overall ‘atmosphere’ of the piece. What’s important, I feel, is to use the constants to inspire the composition, rather than to slavishly reproduce the sequence of digits. Music and maths (and physics!) are all about creativity.

0:45 – 0:51 Chords represent the “8” and “0” of phi.

0:52 – 1:00 …and then the “3..3..9..8” of phi.

1:02 seconds (and ~ 0.8 of a second!) – “Reprise” of opening tau riff on guitar and piano.

1:09 Tool’s “Lateralus” riff (downtuned to Bb and played on electric piano, rather than guitar). There were very many comments about “Lateralus”, and its relationship to the Fibonacci series, under the video for our golden ratio song. I felt it only right to ‘allude’ to Lateralus here. Timing of riff not coincidental (for Tool aficionado).

1:20 ViHart, in her wonderfully crystal-clear vocal tones, sings 6..2..8..3..1..8..5..3. Lots of delay and reverb courtesy of Audacity’s standard effects base. I sampled the numbers from Vi’s “Oh No, Pi Politics Again” video. …except for the “6”. Unfortunately, she didn’t sing the digit “6” in that video so I add to resort to sampling her rendition of “6” from her tau song. But in her tau song, she’s singing along with a guitar. This meant quite a bit of manipulation of the frequencies of the sample to attempt to isolate the vocal.

(Warning – ‘tech-y’ musical bit)

ViHart sings the notes in her songs/melodies in the key of C major. But the music in the “Tau of Phi” is based around Bb minor. My first thought was to transpose ViHart’s vocals down to Bb.

But she ended up sounding not too unlike Barry White at times. Not good. So I instead transposed her vocals up a semitone to C#. C# major is the tonic major key of Bb minor so shifting Vi’s vocals up a semitone (a) doesn’t modify her overall vocal tone too much, and (b) works harmonically (in principle).

1:28 – 1:37 Piece fads out with tau riff gently looping on guitar.

The song can be downloaded from Soundcloud.

Last night I went on a "northern lights" flight.

The plane departed East Midlands Airport and essentially headed north for an hour.

It then circled for about an hour, offering views of the stars and aurora.

The pilot then turned around and came home.

Huge thanks to Pete Lawrence - an onboard astronomer and Deep Sky Videos regular - for making the trip possible.

And auroraflights.co.uk which put on the flights.

Below are a few of my hand-held shots through the window - very amateurish.

A video about the trip will be coming soon. And I've included a few more thoughts below the pictures.

I realise my pictures are poor - I'll post some better ones from Pete very soon.

The flight was an unusual experience.

All cabin lights are switched off (even the no-smoking signs and wing lights) so everyone's eyes could adapt to the dark.

It was a funny atmosphere on the plane as everyone rotated to share window seats. The aisle was always bustling with bodies, like a giant game of Twister in the dark!

And the onboard astronomers excitedly commentated on the intercom throughout, describing the stars and aurora.

To be honest, our light show was below par. The space weather was not spectacular.

And I must say the northern lights didn't look to the human eye as they did in the photos.

It is more like a white-ish light haze caused by some distant city - but with more definition and shape to it.

The green and red colours were not obvious until seeing the long-exposure pictures.

But the excited and enthusiastic atmosphere on the flight added something special and the trip was worthwhile.

And I've heard tales from flights where the aurora was more playful and vibrant.

My video on the trip will be coming soon.

So Numberphile reached 200,000 subscribers today!

I tried to capture the moment for posterity, but my screen refreshing was not quick enough.

It has also been challenging to establish the identity of our 200,000th subscriber.

Anyway, it appears number 200,000 may have been this person!


She said: "I happened to come across your channel a few days ago. I'm horrible at math, but for some reason your channel just puts me in a better mood."

When not watching Numberphile, she is into musical theatre.


NOTE
Of course Numberphile has had many more than 200,000 people subscribe in total - nearly 218,000 in fact - but sadly we have lost some of them as time goes by. But Kathryn and Travis helped take us past 200,000 current subscribers.

Some pictures I've been meaning to share - these relate to weddings and chemistry.

The first comes from Thilina - a periodicvideos fan from Sri Lanka.

Dedicated viewers may remember Thilina - he was the young lad who received a tie from Professor Poliakoff at the 2010 Asian Science Camp in India.



Thilina has remained in regular contact and sent us this picture from his wedding!

This second tale comes from a viewer named David Adams.

Back in 2011, David submitted a viewer question which said the following:

"I am getting married to my fiancé next year (although I not sure who else anyone would get married to other than their fiancé, but anyway). There are obviously the standard metals of gold, silver and platinum. There are also some slightly more interesting options like tungsten and titanium. But is there anything more interesting that this? What metals would be non-toxic and suitable for a jeweler to work with? Neodymium perhaps? Maybe one for Pete?"

David's question resulted in the following video:



Well, much like Thilina's, this story has a conclusion.

I've just received the following email and photo from David:


Hi Brady

You may may recall me asking you guys what interesting metals would make a good wedding ring which you then made a video about.

I was quite pleased as to the extent for which I managed to stump the team and I was entertained by their responses.

Anyway, I thought I should let you know what we went for...

My wife Sarah chose diamonds set in platinum to match her engagement ring. Diamonds as the prettiest element and platinum as one of the most expensive. 

I went for tungsten. Although a cheap metal (and certainly cheaper than Sarah's - you could probably do a Numberphile video on the order of magnitude difference in the price) it was the perfect choice.

Firstly for its colour: a dark, masculine metal. Secondly for its strength, representing our love (and will preserve the brushed effect longer). 

And thirdly due to one of its most common uses: light bulb filaments. We both work in television as studio managers and I have a particular specialism in television camera colorimetry.

Tungsten plays a hugely important role in what we do everyday so seemed a fitting choice. 

The number 3200 is etched into everything we do. 

Thank you to you and the team for a brilliant video and please find a picture of our rings attached.

Kind regards

David

PS: Perhaps a Sixty Symbols videos in lightbulbs and tungsten?

The recent confirmation of element 113 by Japanese researchers was a "must cover" for us at The Periodic Table of Videos.

Here's the video with Professor Martyn Poliakoff.

 

But I also too the opportunity to collaborate with fellow YouTuber KemushiChan, who makes films teaching people Japanese.

She was kind enough to dub the professor.

I hope some people find it useful!

 

PS: I love Japan so thought I'd share a few snaps from previous trips.

Nothing to do with chemistry - just because it was an excuse to go back over some fun memories!

This youngster is dressed as Professor Martyn Poliakoff for Halloween, complete with a periodic table tie.

I've posted two videos for this year's Halloween.

At the time of posting a YouTube glitch meant they'd not been delivered to YouTube subscribers... not ideal.

But anyway, here they are:


Neil's fiery cauldron - liquid oxygen and red-hot charcoal


Vampire numbers and a counting obsession

HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST OF SCIENCEY VIDEOS

I also uploaded this video today about the Ash Dieback problem gripping the UK.

The video has also went missing in action on the YouTube subscriber feeds.


 
UPDATE: The YouTube technical boffins have 'fessed up that their subscription system messed up for several hours... I was unlucky to be affected three times... It's now fixed but the videos will feed in lower on the subscription feeds! :(

A new viewer-submitted picture of Professor Martyn Polikaoff and "silent rogue" Neil Barnes.

Click here for bigger version.

It was accompanied by this message:

Hi periodic table videos,

I started watching your videos at GCSE and this year I've started my A-levels (one of which is Chemistry), and I still really enjoy them!

Thanks for fueling my interest in Chemistry!

My younger brother, who is 13, drew a picture of the professor and Neil, so I thought I'd send it to you.  

All the best,

David

Click here for more caricatures created by viewers.

This year I'll be uploading two videos for Halloween - one each for Numberphile and Periodic Videos.

I'm just finishing them now.

Halloween is not a "holiday" of much import to me, but for some reason I always end up doing quite elaborate videos.

I guess it's just a fun one in terms of "themed films".

Here are videos from previous years:

Last week I travelled to San Francisco for a YouTube EDU summit.

It was basically a get-together arranged by YouTube to discuss online education - especially videos.

Loads of cool people were there, including quite a few who I'd met earlier this year at BrainSTEM and Vidcon... I won't bother listing them all again. You'll see some of them in the pictures below.

Excitingly, a bunch of them also gave me quick interviews for an upcoming Numberphile film. Stay tuned for that one!

While I was nearby, I also took the opportunity to visit Berkeley for periodicvideos because so many elements were created there. Videos from that are coming soon too.

In the meantime, here are some photos... And some links to secret "unlisted videos".

Brady on the main stage (during a lunch break when everyone was gone!)