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Hello,
I stumbled across clips of your tv show “Chemistry – A Volatile History” and I loved it. Is there any way I can purchase episodes of this series?
مرحبا أنا شاب من الجرائر عمري18 لدي إهتملم كبير بالفزياء أطمح أن أكون تلميدا عند البروفيسيو جيم الخليلي
its on bbc iplayer for next week or so?, other than that i think you might be able to purchase it from seesaw.com legitimatly although cant be sure if they will have it, its a crying shame if they dont brilliant series!
السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته
أود القول بأن البرامج التي أنتجتها لم تكن فق رائعة بل مذهله في يوم بكيت لانني لم أشاهد البرنامج
و حقا إنه سلسله راااائعة من البرامج….
I just learned that on May 10, 2010, “Chemistry: A Volatile History” was nominated for a BAFTA award. Congratulations Jim!
السلام علیکم و رحمه الله
Dear Jim
i am an epidemiologist from the Kurdistan in Iran . for the first time i find your documentary on Islam and sciences.it is wonder full .
as a Muslim i appreciate you for such a great work. also you speak English very beautiful
Thank you very much.
Alan Pope
32 Rothesay Road,
Dorchester,
Dorset,
DT1 2DU
23/10/2010
Dear Professor,
I greatly appreciated your BBC broadcast on “The Atom”, Which prompted me to write this note.
I started work at AERE Harwell 10 years before you were born, which makes me a bit of a dinosaur but I feel I still have something to contribute, perhaps to your later talks. I worked as a government scientist for 37 years, 25 in the field of Reactor Physics. I worked with two brilliant men, relatively unheralded. The first, James Codd, with whom I studied the theory of the Fast Reactor and with whom in 1954, published a Top Secret report on how to control a fast reactor.
The second was John Story, an ex-RAF man, eleven years my senior, who was renowned in the world of Nuclear Data. It was with John that I established and maintained the UK Nuclear Data Library on which all the UK Reactor Calculations were made.
Early on John accused me of being an empiricist, which made me realise that essentially I was even though it had been meant uncomplementary at the time, however, in time, he came to see my way of thinking and to realise that it was complementary to his and we worked together to great effect.
Your approach has induced me to crystallize my approach and I realize that I have always looked for memorable patterns, which could enable me to remember some salient fact. It occurred to me that if two numbers could be used to lead to a useful piece of information this could be very helpful. As examples of this I offer the following three pairs of numbers-
1) – School boys learn 22/7 as approximation for pi. I guess this was associated with Hatters, who would measure a head’s circumference, say 22 inches and know that the man needed a size 7.
2) – A better approximation for pi is 355/113, so if you take a wheel of 1.13 yards diameter and rotate it 496 (the third perfect number of) times, you will measure 1 mile to fairly good accuracy.
3) – Lastly, the most stable nucleus is Helium 4. The alpha particle having the relatively highest binding energy. The ratio of the proton mass/electron mass is known as ~1836. Given the use of a calculation machine, the physicist can derive the atomic mass unit as the inverse of Avogadro’s number. The scientist can expect more complication but still using only two numbers.
Let N = 4!! (i.e. 24!) and let p = 1836/(1836+1)
Then 1/Np = 1 amu
This is a very accurate estimate. I cannot explain it. Maybe you can?
(I recognise that the definition of amu was associated with C12 not H but “p” seems to reflect the relative masses of the nucleus and the atomic mass of the isotope of Hydrogen. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that amu has units of mass but the numbers are pure scalar quantities.)
I hope you find these observations interesting and/or amusing. Keep up the good work.
Regards
Alan Pope
Hi,
Where could I buy a DVD of ATOM? or is that not available?
Loving your work – truely inspiring and keeps me going through my pp degree
Kind regards
Adrian
Try amazon.com
i bought it there.
tjnb
Hi
I just wondered if there are any plans to bring Chemistry: A Volatile History and Atom to DVD? I studied chemistry at the University of Liverpool and I am now training to be a teacher. These programmes genuinley inspired me to try to communicate science to others.
Best wishes
Chris
جزاك الله كل خير على ماتقدمه من الافادات لطلاب العلم
وارجو توضيح وسيلة اتصال بسيادتكم لمناقشتكم فى نظرية اعداد الكم
i want to argue with you in quantum theory
كنت اظن اننا لن نري غير ميشو كاكو يجوب الدنيا ببرامجة العلمية الرائعة وفجات رايت عالما عربيا شابا حلق بنا بعيدا جدا ورحل بنا الي اعماق الزرة كان هو العالم البروفيسور جيم الخليلي …ويمكننا ان نقول اذا كان ميشو كاكو اليابان في امريكا هو ميسشو كاكو فان ميشو كاكو العرب في امركا هو العالم العراقي البريطاني جيم الخليلي …كنت رائعا جدا ومذهلا وموفقا الي ابعد الحدود…شكرا لك
My question to Dr. Jim Do you think that the theory of Feynman, which denies the existence of the vacuum will be one of the theories that will help in the detection of dark matter and dark energy and destroy the idea of or space which we call the cosmic space
كيف تكون ملحد اذن من أوجد الذرة بكل تعيقدها الى الكون أو من الذي أوجد المادة التي حدث لها الانفجار الكبير ونحن نعلم ان المادة لا تخلق من العدم
أحب أن أعرف شروط الالتحاق بجامعة surrey
Hi Professor,
I just wanted to leave a comment on your latest TV series for BBC
‘Everything and Nothing’ – Absolutely Fantastic!
If only every school Physics department could have a teacher as good as you are.
Thanks again,
John.
Just finished watching “Everything & Nothing” last night. Nic Stacey’s directorial style very much reflects what he did on “Chaos” – and I have to agree with you that E&N is his best yet. The cinematography was beautiful and I really loved the editing (I got to know how some of that was done). Anyway, I hope he gets more accolades with these films as he did with “Chaos” last year when it won Best Film at the International Science Film Festival 2010.
hello Mr. Al-Khalili, I am your biggest fan. I am 13 years old turning 14. I am from Kurdistan Iraq and I’m Muslim, I live in Canada. I love science so much i wish to become as smart as you one day. I love the programs you made about science and Islam. i wish to become one of your students one day. if you can email me at ari.hawla@hotmail.com. Thank you so so much !
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this matter to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!
Dear Prof. Al-Khalili …
Am a new student (fresher) in university of surrey doing foundation year to continue Electronics Eng. so i hope u teach me !!! by the way I love Quantum Physics !!
Dear Prof. Khalili,
First, I am a huge fan of you. You are a fantastic scientist and brilliant speaker.
I was wondering how to purchase a DVD of your TV program “Everything and Nothing” as well as your other documentaries? I have been looking on the net but I could not find them.
Many thanks in advance and I look forward to hear from you.
Best wishes,
Omar Ahmed
Just to say that I love the shows on BBC four, Jim. They are brilliantly done and extremely interesting. I have enjoyed each and everyone of them. I have even got my mum and her friends watching the show! However, I think they watch your shows for entirely different reasons as they ask, ‘who is that handsome man?’
All the best and continue producing such wonderful TV.
I’m a big fan of your work too. I like the eloquent and unpretentious presentation style you have.
For those who have not seen the documentaries Atom, Everything and Nothing, and Chemistry: a volatile history they can all be found online via topdocumentaryfilms.com – a really great resource.
Hello!
By fortune I found your tv-serie Islam & Science at internett. I think it is marvellous and interesting. I am studying the middleeast and the “arabic spring” at The University of Oslo this autumn, and wonder, is this serie is in sale somewhere? I would like to have the program as dvd and appreciate an answer from you about this matter.
Kind regards
Vega