Physics bites !: Recent Episodes
PC@NDS
The English-language Physics podcast of the DNL students of Lycee Notre-Dame de Sion, in Paris, France. Cover art by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash
As long as things have been falling to the ground, humans have asked "why?"
We take a voyage this week through history, from the time of the Greeks, to the post-renaissance era of Kepler, and Galileo and Newton, only to land in the 20th century where Einstein et al. turned the physics world on its head.
And we finish up with some wild and woolly theories describing the universe as being made up of strings or better yet space and time itself made up of tiny loops!
Don't miss this episode, leave a comment and mostly importantly, Enjoy!
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What's with physicists and putting "Dark" in front of everything?
After the last episode on science fiction, we're going to plunge right back into hardcore physics - even though it might seem like science fiction - thanks to our two guests.
Domitille and Jeanne, who will go into great depths explaining to us the origins of these two weird and fascinating theories, and how far we have come so far in testing and verifying them.
This is another one of those must-not-miss episodes ! Enjoy!!
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Science Fiction, as a literary genre, is rather young and has long not been taken as seriously as other genres. It is primarily a post-industrial revolution and technology-driven creation.
This has changed a great amount over past few decades. As it has matured, it has become the perfect arena for humanity to look at itself as a society and as a species and wonder about what the consequences of ours choices, our actions, and our science and technology will be on our own humanity.
In this episode, Flore and Maud will talk about what science fiction is, what are some of the seminal works and touchstones of the genre, and what it can help reveal about ourselves and our societies.
Enjoy!
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Is there life elsewhere in the Universe .. ? If yes .... then where ? ... can we detect it one day? .... is it intelligent? .... is it dangerous? ... Will we make contact in our lifetime ... ? These are just a few of the questions that our two senior students, Suzanne and Victoire, are going to answer, amongst many more, as we kick off our series of talks by our senior students. SETI is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, and you're about to learn a ton about it ! Enjoy your episode!--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/physics-bytes/message
And to finish our wonderful series on Carbon Emissions Mathis, Myriam, Alexandre and Maelys are going to talk about another big sector of human activity, industry.
They break it down to 4 main industries, how they are each contributing to our increasing human emissions, and what we can do to help.
Along the way we learn about the disastrous effects of "fast fashion", about how A.I. might be able to help, and all the while while we see how Mathis is fighting his own own growing pessimism regarding how we might be able to fight against all this!
Enjoy the episode and leave us a comment, tell us what you thought about the episode!
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As we near the end of our series on Carbon Emissions, one of the sectors of human activity which we dont usually associate with carbon emissions is going to come into light : waste management.
Our modern societies generation an incredible amount of waste. Colombe, Sebastian and Raphael are going to go into depth about the various aspects of human generated waste, about our complex relationship to plastic, to the problem we landfills and garbage incineration to the tremendous consequences of our e-waste.
And most importantly, you'll understand what the true and indirect value of recycling is to our endeavour to reduce our carbon emissions.
Enjoy !
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Did you know that if concrete production was a country, it would be the 3rd biggest emitter of carbon IN THE WORLD!
Buildings are part of makes us human, our need for shelter, but they're also one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions in our society today.
Luca, Rayan, Rose and Noe will tell why this is the case, where all this carbon is coming from and most importantly, how can we reduce the carbon footprints of our most important living spaces.
Enjoy the episode.
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Is flying around in an airplane that bad? Are electric cars goign to save the climate? Which is the guiltiest part of all between Air, maritime and land transport?
These questions and a LOT more are what our students this week goign to try and answer. Pauline, Vadim, Clémence and Lola are going answer those questions, as well as a lot more in their interview on the Carbon footprint of our transports sector.
Enjoy the show !
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How much of humanity's carbon emissions come from agriculture? What is it in the agriculture sector that produces so much green house gas? Is there any way we can keep feeding humanity and yet produce less carbon emissions?
What sacrifices are you ready to make when it comes to your diet?
Marion, Emma, Marguerite and Lily try to answer these questions and much much more.
A fascinating episode this week as they talk about the Carbon emissions of the agricultural sector. Listen and tell us how you feel about what they're proposing.
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In this, the second episode on our "Carbon Emissions" series, we turn our attention to one of the most ubiquitous things in our daily lives : the internet.
Anastasia, Victor, Etienne and Luisa go through all the various ways the internet and everything linked to the internet - manufacturing of devices, storage in data centers and our own behaviour - contribute to the internet's carbon footprint being on the rise.
The discussion even turns slight to politics and philosophy when the question of individual freedoms bumps up against the 'right thing' to do for the environment!
Listen and participate in the comments!
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The first episode of the "Carbon Emissions" series from our junior students.
In this episode Garance, Carla, Laura and Jeanne tell us why the energy sector is far anda way the most important and polluting sector of human activity when it comes to Carbon Emissions and carbon footprint.
But that is only the start ! Listen to the whole episode in order to find out not only where all that carbon pollution is comign from but most important how we can try to mitigate and reduce those emissions.
And finally we want to hear from you ! What did you think of what was said? What is your opinion on how we can try and reduce the carbon footprint of our energy sector?
Listen and enjoy !
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It's that time of year, when a new season of Physics Bytes ! is about to start. Yay, joy, youpi ...
Ok, ok, hold on to your own horses, this is just a brief trailer for the upcoming season, but listen to find out all the goodies that we have in store for you in the coming months!
Enjoy !
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So having overcome many of the obstacles so far, reachign the moon, building a habitat, finding ways to produce water oxygen and food, we are in good shape, right?
But we have to find a way of producing energy to feed all these needs! Flore, Domitille and Clara are going to tell us what our options are.
Don't be surprised if you hear the word "regolith" yet again in this episode!
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Reaching the Moon? Check
Building a habitat on the Moon? Check
Now what ? Well for one thing, it'd be nice to be able to actually stay alive up there! We will need water, we will need food, we will need oxygen...!!
Thankfully Suzanne, Victoria, Roxane and Theodora are here to tell us how we will manage that!
In one of our most information-rich presentation these four grade eleven student will blow your mind away explaining how we will manage to do all that, and on the way there find a few hundred billion litres of water in Lunar Dust!
You can't miss this episode!
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So, let's assume that we've managed to solve the problem of getting to the moon and back, as we talked about in the last episode. Now we need to find a way of building a human habitat and a base on the moon.
That is the task that three new students Edgar, Gaspard and Louis accepted, and here are some of the solutions they found, as they disucss the pros and cons of everything from a big Biodome to building 'tents' in empty Lunar Lava Caves!
Listen, learn and enjoy!
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We are finally here, our grade 11 project : Destination Moon !
In this, the first episode of the 5-part series, we talk about the first and maybe the biggest issue of all : how to get to the moon as well as how to come back.
They talk about a lot of different technologies, everythign from a Slingshot to the moon, to a Space Elevator!
I personally learned a lot and I hope you do too.
And stay tuned for the next episodes in this series, coming very soon !
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In this, our final episode of the season for our senior (grade 12) students, Louane and Pierre follow up on their wonderful presentation on "Artificial Intellgience" with a long interview, goign through the history of AI, how deep learning neural networks function, to answering philosophical questions about intelligence and the future of humanity and AI.
Enjoy !
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In the penultimate episode with our Senior students, we have three, Celeste and brothers Oscar & Anatole, talk to us about the interdisciplinary field of Biophysics!
It's not easy but they do a great job of giving us a few examples of physics has managed to help the world of biology, with examples like Protein Folding, study of cardiovascular flow, to name a few.
Enjoy !
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It's been 20 years that we've started to discover and observe planets outside of our own Solar System. Well, Jospehine and Gabriel are here to talk to us about how we've managed to discover the thousands of exoplanets that we've managed to catalogue over that time period, and along the way other questions come up such as, is there life on these planets ... ?
Listen to find out!
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The science fiction themes of the last few episodes continue with a new episode diving deep into Time Travel and its paradoxes. Thankfully we have Rose and Zainab around to help guide us through it!
My co-host Antoine and myself question them about cosmic strings, wormholes, and the legality of time travel!
Enjoy !
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This week me and my co-host (Sixtine that you listened to in the last episode) will be talking to Lisa and Zaïnab (filling in for an absent classmate Lola) who will take us through a history of the different theories of gravitation, starting with the ancient greeks and Aristotle all the way up to Einstein !
It's going to be a fun trip through the history of science, so we hope that you will enjoy it.
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In this week's episode, we're going to get a bit science fiction-y ! Let's talk about interstellar travel! Will humans ever be able to realistically travel to another star? Do we have the technology for it yet? or maybe we have a few ideas that we need to test out soon ... ?
Siddharth and Basile try to answer these questions, and along the way we'll learn about Ion drives and the Bussard Ramjet before answering the final question.
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Hello and welcome back to a new episode ! This time Maëlys & Sixtine are going to delve into the challenges and motivations of not only a trip to the Red Planet, but also maybe sticking around and building a human colony there!
They'll also give their personal opinions on the subject, and you can see if you agree with them or not!
Enjoy.
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Antone and Marc-Alexandre talk to us about the field of "Cosmology", what it is, what it tells us about the universe, how it began, how it might end, and what's the big deal with blackholes and wormholes !
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Welcome to season 2 of Physics Bytes ! Here is the trailer for our new season ... !
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One of the great figures of the early post-Renaissance and one of the forefathers of modern physics, it's time to talk about Johannes Kepler!
Celeste and Louane talk to us about the life of this great physicist and mathematician, about his early troubles to his great work with the astronomer Tycho Brahe leading him to find his famous three laws of orbital mechanics.
Apologies for the bad audio quality.
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It's time to talk about James Maxwell, the father of mondern theory of electromagnetism. Antoine and Jean-Paul did a lot of research into the life of this great 19th century physicist, who in some ways set us on the path of unification when he brought together theories of electricity and magnetism and showed them to be part of one more vast theory.
As an added bonus, I had Marine as my co-host today, which you probably heared earlier, on her topic in grade 12 about Einstein's theory of relatvity.
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Is there a more widely known and recognized physicist in popular culture than Albert Einstein? Well probably not, but nevertheless, Camille and Pierre are here to talk to us about the life of this most famous scientists, everything from touching on the scientific research he's most well known for ... to more personal stuff about the young Einstein and Einstein as a father!
Enjoy !
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On today's show, one of the more important and least known women in the history of modern Physics : Emilie du Chatelet. Oscar and Daphné tell us about the exploits of Madame du Chatelet, her role in bringing Newtonian physics to continental Europe, her lifelong friendship with Voltaire, and my other things:
Enjoy the listen.
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Two new students talk to us about one of the mythical figures of the 20th century : the inimitable Richard Feynman. They give us a very brief overview of his life, why he is famous, and Basile resists the urge to try and explain to us without any visual aids what Feynman Diagrams are!
Listen and Enjoy!
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our tour of famous figures in the history of science continues with - arguably - the grandfather of modern physics, and - arguably - the greatest scientist or at least physics in the history of modern science, the great Sir Isaac Newton.
Jospehine and Siddharth do a great job of giving us some details of his life and his works.
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Welcome to the second half of our season, with a lot of Physics BITS! That's right, that is NOT a typo!
In this, the second half of the season, we're onto smaller and shorter episodes, becuase they're with my grade 11 students, who did their presentations on famous figures in the history of science; beginning with Erwin Schroedinger.
Enjoy
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In our final episode of this season, Kelly and Aurore talk to us about their topic : superconductivity.
From the original discovery of the phenomenon (100 years ago!) to the theory that earned it's physicist a Nobel prize in physics, to a few questions about applications of superconductivity, Aurore and Kelly do a great job talking about their researched topic.
Enjoy !
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The second half of the big episode from last week by Max and Gaspard, on blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
This time we delved into a bunch of questions regarding how blockchain verification works, if they would invest in crypto themselves, what is the safety and security of such virtual moneys, as well as a good number of other questions.
The have done a phenomenal amount research (and all of this with the end of the year Baccalaureat exam only a couple of weeks away).
Definitely a very informative listen. Enjoy !
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A big episode!
Max and Gaspard did a LOT of work and research on the ideas behinds Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, so much so that we actually recorder TWO sessions and so you will get a double-dose of cryptocurrencies.
This, therefore, is the first episode, where we talk about the basic ideas behind bitcoin and blockchain, why they are new, why there are old, why they are revolutionary, why they are dangerous, and so forth.
Thanks to Nicolas for being a co-host, although you probably wont hear him much until the next episode.
Enjoy!
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As the end of the season approaches, the topics are getting more tough!
This week Antoine and Moënis took on the tough task of explaining their presentation on aritifical intelligence (A.I.) and the machine learning methods behind it.
The topic is fascinating, as you can imagine, and very tough to simplify for high school level students, but they do a good job of going over some of the basics.
Then we turn to the questions from their classmates, which are numerous. We even discuss whether we are ok or not with giving eventually to our robot overlords, but you'll have to wait until the end of the podcast for that. Enjoy !
0:00 - Introduction and presentation of the topic.
11:00 - Questions & Answers
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Blackholes!
The stuff science-fiction dreams are made of! Josephine and Adele got all into what blackholes are, where they come from, and even how they die. They went into a lot of interesting details, and gave us a LOT of information on a pretty advanced and tough topic.
0:00 - Introduction and presenting what blackholes are their life cycle
13:50 - Answering some of the questions from their classmates
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It's a new week and so there is a new episode of Physics Bites !
This week we have two new students, Noémie and Marine, talk to us about the Special Theory of Relativity, that's right Einstein's revolutionary theory.
They start off by talkign about some of the interesting facts about the theory of relativity, the strange behaviour of light, the idea of Galilean relativity, and then move onto some of the weird predictions of the theory, such as time dilation, length contraction, the disappearance of simultneity, and so on.
As usual we finish off with some interesting questions from the class, including "why can we never go faster than light?" ... or can we ..? hmmm...
0:25 - Introduction & Summary presentation of the theory
8:00 - Questions and answers.
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In this week's episode two new students, Milan and Nicolas, talk about Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, a very tough subject given that it is based on some advanced notions, especially ones that we dont really study in high school! They did a really formidable job however, and managed to simply a complex topic in simplified and correct terms. Good job guys!
00:26 - Short summary about what CMB radiation is
6:00 - Beginning of the Q & A
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In our new episode, Rama and Antoine, talk to us about The Manhattan project, the famous, or rather infamous project to build the first nuclear bombs during WW2.
The give us a short summary of the events and then we delve into the different aspects of the project, the historical significance of it, the science behind some parts of it, and much more.
00:26 - Short summary about the manhattan project
9:00 - Beginning of the Q & A
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Two new students, Alexandre and Elie talk to us about the origins of the universe by going over the Theory of the Big Bang, and Inflation, and then take some interesting questions from their friends, including, why would even want to know about the origins of the universe!
00:25 - Introduction to theory of the Big Bang
6:35 - Beginning of the Q & A
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In this, the second episode of the series, Meline, Alexis, Oonagh and Victor talk to us about Galaxies and Stars, where they come from, and how their lives might end.
We also learn what is Oonagh's favourite Nebula! If you're curious to find out which one then join us in this episode.
00:25 - Introduction and presentation of Galaxies and Stars
8:50 - Questions & Answers
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Mélie and Jade present the basics of quantum theory to us, and then answer a few questions from their classmates.
00:23 - Introduction : presenting quantum theory
4:20 - Question & Answer
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