Catalog Search Results
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Fossils are one of the most exciting components of field geology. The term covers not only preserved ancient life-forms, but also evidence of their activity, such as footprints. Look at different ways nature has of preserving fossils—by encasing in amber, freezing, pickling, chemical alteration, and other natural processes. Ask what life-forms are likely to be fossilized and in what environments.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
No matter what source is used to generate electricity, that power must be distributed and managed to provide continuous and reliable energy for the end user. Explore the US power grid—much of which has been in place for more than 50 years—and discover the significant benefits a "smart grid" would bring.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
With the technological development of sensors, feedback control, Bluetooth, and machine learning, we can now network not just computers, but "things" as well. Discover the enormous advantages this "Internet of Things" can provide—from health care to transportation to manufacturing—if we can adequately address the significant concerns regarding privacy and security.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Check out limestone, one of nature's most amazing rocks, with medical, economic, and sightseeing benefits. Not to mention, limestone provides insight into environments eons ago. Examine its chemistry and the ways it forms. Survey different kinds of limestone, including types that preserve detailed fossils. Finally, look at sinkholes and caves, which occur in limestone karst topography.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Explore the electronics in a typical home through this episode's virtual scavenger hunt. Watch while Dr. Bottomley takes apart a hair dryer, a CD player, a computer CPU, and other machines. You'll learn about the many electronic components you'll find inside—resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, integrated circuits, electro-mechanical switches, and more.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Visit the beach with a geologist's eyes and see how the interaction of waves, ocean currents, and winds lead to the ebb and flow of sediments and blending of landforms. Consider the four types of waves and what they reveal about the ocean floor just offshore. Also, zero in on individual grains of sand, identifying their minerals and tracing their origin. Reflect on why beaches are sandy at all.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Mining is one of the oldest applications of practical geology. Find out how metals are classified and how most are associated with igneous and metamorphic deposits. Some metals, like gold, can be mined in a pure—"native"—state that requires little processing. Discover how and where to go prospecting for gold, using the panning process perfected by the Forty-Niners in California.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
With the advent of logic gates that could be assembled to perform mathematical or logical calculations, engineers could build up from very simple transistors and diodes to a powerful graphic calculator or complex system of facial recognition. Learn about why the numerical basis for logic gates is binary, and how they can be combined to form logic gate circuits.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Geomorphology is the study of landscapes and their individual landforms. Learn the five major influences on landscape formation. Use this background to tour the United States, which is a remarkable laboratory of geomorphology with features such as the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon and Channeled Scablands, and more.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Discover the four revolutions in electrical engineering that have brought major opportunities and benefits to masses of people in just the past 150 years. Learn, specifically, what each of the four periods brought and the basic properties of the electron and electric circuits on which our entire electrified world is based.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Metamorphic rocks form under conditions halfway between those of sedimentary and igneous rocks. A good analogy is the process of glacier formation that turns snow into dense, interlocking crystals of ice. Focus on foliated metamorphic rocks, such as slate and gneiss, which have lineation patterns. Geologists can read these patterns to reconstruct ancient mountain ranges and plate boundaries.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Investigate glaciers, which now cover about 10% of Earth's land area; 25,000 years ago, they covered 30%. Learn how to spot evidence of past glaciation—from sculpted valleys in Yosemite National Park, to the cliffs at Vicksburg, Mississippi (which formed far from glaciers), to Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. Dig into the physics of glaciers: how they develop and the forces they exert.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Dr. Bottomley takes you on a virtual vacation to Rwanda to highlight myriad examples of electrical engineering all around the world. From your garage door opener to airport security, the technologies developed by electrical engineers are all around you before you even board the plane. But it's the electronics you'll find in an isolated game park that might really surprise you.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Go outside and find an outcrop—a roadcut, cliff face, or other site where rocks are exposed. These are ideal places for practicing field geology. Professor Cotter gives tips on safety, maps, tools, and techniques. A notebook and careful record-keeping are essential. Amateur geologists can make important discoveries, so field geology is your chance to advance knowledge while enjoying the outdoors.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Explore the earliest electronic computers, including Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Although Babbage was not able to completely build it out before his death, his "engine" was based on the same four components that define computers today—input device, some type of memory to store data and temporary calculations, a calculating processor, and an output device.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Since 2006, the number of landlines has decreased, while the quantity of mobile phones and other communication devices now outnumber the entire human population. Explore how engineers have created the cellular systems required to manage large numbers of calls at once, even as the user moves from place to place.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Rivers are the key to understanding why many landscapes look the way they do. Study how rivers form, how they sculpt the land, how water and sediment move in a river, and how rivers change course over time. Rivers also create habitats for plants and animals, both of which influence the landscape. Finally, signs of vanished rivers tell the story of geologic events in the deep past.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
In the old-style analog telephone system, voltage increased and decreased across the wires, corresponding to the human voice signal. But in a digital system, that all changes. Learn how the human voice is changed into binary values, sent over the system, and then converted back into volts with the voltage applied to the speaker in the phone handset. The human ear takes it from there.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Explore cybernetics, systems that use information and feedback to control an output that has some type of goal, with feedback present. Discover the various parts of several cybernetic systems: your car's cruise control, an implantable insulin delivery pump, and a vending machine—three completely different control systems that all function with the same principles of cybernetics.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Trace the history of oil exploration and recovery, focusing on the geology of petroleum and natural gas formations. To strike oil, you need to find a source rock, a reservoir rock, a caprock, and a structural feature called a trap where oil can pool. Survey some of the world's most productive oil fields, and investigate the plusses and minuses of hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking."
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? Try our Materials Request Service. Submit Request