#xmaslectures

James Dewar was born #OnThisDay in 1842.

The Scottish chemist and physicist co-directed the Davy-Faraday Research Lab at the Ri from the end of the 19th Century. He is best known for inventing the Dewar flask aka vacuum flask aka Thermos.

Though he sadly didn’t profit from its widespread popularity, as he didn’t patent his invention before Thermos started using the design (🙃)

Dewar's flask aided his work into the liquefaction of then-so-called permanent gases like hydrogen and helium, as he could work at temperatures close to absolute zero 🌡❄️

Whilst at the Ri he built machinery to yield high quantities of liquid oxygen, and showed that liquid oxygen and liquid ozone are attracted to the poles of a magnet

Watch our liquid oxygen magnetism demo here ➡  https://youtu.be/rz57PJToGEs

Dewar created liquid hydrogen for the first time in 1898, solid hydrogen  in 1899, and he attempted to create liquid helium in the early 20th century 🙌

Click through an interactive version of this photo for a deeper look at his lecture on liquid hydrogen...

He also gave 9 series of Christmas Lectures for children! On topics ranging wide from 'A Soap Bubble' to 'The Story of a Meteorite' to 'The Chemistry of Light and Photography'.

Nikola Tesla was born on this day in 1856.

Aged 35 (and a half) Tesla delivered a talk here at the Ri on AC power that was so spectacular, audiences flocked back the next night for an encore.

We love a science demonstration, and judging by his sprawling lecture desk, so did Tesla...

120 years after Tesla stood in the Faraday theatre (in 1892) we recreated a demonstration of his Tesla coil in the 2012 Christmas Lectures: https://youtu.be/5piP_qfDvBA?t=4s

Big news!

The 2018 CHRISTMAS LECTURES will be presented by Alice Roberts, biological anthropologist, broadcaster and Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham.

We’re 99.4% the same as the next person yet 100% unique. In ‘Who am I?’, Alice will take us on a fascinating journey to answer this fundamental question of life.

We’ve just uploaded a new archive Christmas Lectures series to the website! Click here to watch all 6 lectures of Prof RV Jones’ series ‘From Magna Carta to microchip’.

Delivered in 1981, ‘From Magna Carta to microchip’ is devoted to the importance of measurement. Charting through number systems, binary, time and space...

Measuring at the grandest and microscopic scales, RV Jones explores how our human obsession with measuring things has changed the way we think about the Universe.

RV Jones also explores his wartime work as a scientific military intelligence expert, looking at how precise navigation is needed in the air, on land, sea, and nowadays, in space.

A lion cub and a room full of children - what could possibly go wrong? This photo is from Julian Huxley’s 1937 Christmas Lectures ‘Rare Animals and the Disappearance of Wild Life’

Withstanding a blast of electricity from a huge Tesla coil using a Faraday cage

A Faraday cage shields the interior from external electromagnetic radiation and electrical fields by channelling electricity through the cage, providing constant voltage on all sides of the enclosure. Since the difference in voltage is the measure of electrical potential, no current flows through the interior space of the cage. In our daily lives we are surrounded by this invention. Faraday cages can be found in microwave ovens, elevators and around our computer cables (the shield around cables such as USB’s protects the internal conductor from external electrical noise). Even in your everyday car or plane journey you are surrounded by a Faraday cage protecting you from the adverse effects of electrical fields such as lightning.

Richard Dawkins shows his complete faith in scientific principles with the classic swinging ball demo in his 1991 CHRISTMAS LECTURES, above, and again in the 2016 Lectures, below. Some things never change. 

Saiful Islam plays with a levitating superconductor in the 2016 CHRISTMAS LECTURES to illustrate magnetic energy storage.