Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

2011
Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity
Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

8.5 | en | Documentary

Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force - electricity. Until fairly recently, electricity was seen as a magical power, but it is now the lifeblood of the modern world and underpins every aspect of our technological advancements. Without electricity, we would be lost. This series tells of dazzling leaps of imagination and extraordinary experiments - a story of maverick geniuses who used electricity to light our cities, to communicate across the seas and through the air, to create modern industry and to give us the digital revolution.

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Seasons & Episodes

1
EP3  Revelations and Revolutions
Oct. 20,2011
Revelations and Revolutions

Electricity is not just something that creates heat and light, it connects the world through networks and broadcasting. After centuries of man's experiments with electricity, the final episode tells the story of how a new age of real understanding dawned - how we discovered electric fields and electromagnetic waves. Today we can hardly imagine life without electricity - it defines our era. As our understanding of it has increased so has our reliance upon it, and today we're on the brink of a new breakthrough, because if we can understand the secret of electrical superconductivity we could once again transform the world.

EP2  The Age of Invention
Oct. 13,2011
The Age of Invention

Just under 200 years ago scientists discovered something profound, that electricity is connected to another of nature's most fundamental forces - magnetism. In the second episode, Jim discovers how harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity would completely transform the world, allowing us to generate a seemingly limitless amount of electric power which we could utilise to drive machines, communicate across continents and light our homes. This is the story of how scientists and engineers unlocked the nature of electricity in an extraordinary century of innovation and invention.

EP1  Spark
Oct. 06,2011
Spark

Episode one tells the story of the very first "natural philosophers" who started to unlock the mysteries of electricity. They studied its curious link to life, built strange and powerful instruments to create it and even tamed lightning itself. It was these men who truly laid the foundations of the modern world. Electricity was without doubt a fantastical wonder. This is the story about what happened when the first real concerted effort was made to understand electricity; how we learned to create and store it, before finally creating something that enabled us to make it at will: the battery.

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8.5 | en | Documentary | More Info
Released: 2011-10-06 | Released Producted By: , Country: United Kingdom Budget: 0 Revenue: 0 Official Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kjq6d
Synopsis

Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force - electricity. Until fairly recently, electricity was seen as a magical power, but it is now the lifeblood of the modern world and underpins every aspect of our technological advancements. Without electricity, we would be lost. This series tells of dazzling leaps of imagination and extraordinary experiments - a story of maverick geniuses who used electricity to light our cities, to communicate across the seas and through the air, to create modern industry and to give us the digital revolution.

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Cast

Jim Al-Khalili

Director

Jim Al-Khalili

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Reviews

leo_c After nearly 10 years on this site this is the first time that I feel compelled to write a review. When the end credits started rolling one sentence came to my mind: "This is how science should be taught". In schools, in books and on television. So many people feel repelled by mathematics, physics or chemistry because they have been introduced to it the wrong way. Students are asked to memorize definitions and equations, but they are rarely if ever told how the theories they are taught in school were devised in the first place. Observations and experiments are the heart of every theory that aims to explain how the natural world works, and they are the ones which give the most insight into how things work."Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity" is about those landmark observations and experiments which have increased our understanding and mastery of electricity (and magnetism) over the centuries, and which have allowed for technological innovations that have become ubiquitous in our lives today: light bulbs, radio, phones, computers, and everything else that depends on electricity. We take these things for granted, and we tend to forget that barely 200 years ago our civilization had none of it. Imagine if we were born in a time when none of these technologies existed, how amazing it would be to learn that we can light our homes at night without burning oil or candles, or that we can send messages to people on the other side of the ocean in a matter of seconds as opposed to weeks or months.Presenter Jim Al-Khalili's love of science shines through, as he recreates historical experiments and tells the story of the protagonists who made it happen. Most of the big names are there: Volta, Galvani, Cavendish, Faraday, Franklin, Maxwell, Hertz, Edison, Tesla, as well as many other important but not so well known figures. The exposition is clear and logical. You do not need a background in physics to understand what is said here, in fact I feel like I have understood more about electricity and magnetism during the 3 hours I have watched this documentary than during the many years I studied the subject in school.A couple of times the shell model of the atom is invoked to explain some observed phenomena, where the electrons are shown to "gravitate" around the nucleus. This model has been known to be wrong for nearly a century now. Al-Khalili does state that this was the model used at the time, but I don't remember him explicitly saying that it is now outdated. Usually I would remove one star, but the rest is so perfect that I cannot get myself to give it less than 10. This documentary makes you understand how many things we use every day work, and it makes you want to keep learning and participate in the advancement of science. School never did that to me. When I have kids I want to show them things that will make them dream, that will stimulate and open their minds, things that will leave them with memories they will be glad to have, be it books, travels, movies, music or documentaries. Carl Sagan's Cosmos is one documentary I have in mind to tell them about the universe. I'm now adding "The Story of Electricity" to the list. Watch it for yourself, and show it to your kids (provided they are not too young as the dissection scenes might be a bit disturbing), if they are any curious about how things work they will love it! (and so will you)