Catalog Search Results
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Soil may be the most important geologic resource on the planet. Discover how geologists classify soils, focusing on the concept of soil horizons, which are distinct layers that often vary in composition, color, and texture. Analyze how this cross section, which signals soil fertility, differs depending on the type of biome. Learn how soils form and how easily they are destroyed by erosion.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Sedimentary rocks make up a substantial majority of rocks at Earth's surface. In this episode, focus on clastic rocks, which are composed of broken fragments of pre-existing rocks. The fragments can vary in size from clay particles to silt, sand, gravel, and larger pieces. Learn how these rocks form and the rich stories they tell about the past.
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
Taught by Professor James F. P. Cotter of the University of Minnesota, Morris, this course teaches you the fundamentals of field geology. You learn the basics of rocks, minerals, and landforms, and how to apply this knowledge to read an outcrop, find and prepare fossils, assess soil and groundwater, prospect for gems and ore, and much more.
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
When people first realized that electricity could be controlled, it was the beginning of an explosion of opportunity, eventually leading to electronic circuits—circuits that can control other circuits. Learn why just two laws, Ohm's law and the conservation of energy, provide all the information and relationships needed to design circuits.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Consider how to put your knowledge of geology to use. Issues faced by your community may benefit from geologic insights about groundwater, watersheds, roadways, pollution, and historic questions such as abandoned mines and quarries. Practical geology will only grow in importance as the world deals with climate change, resource shortages, and the pressing need to live in harmony with the planet.
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
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I in 1957, the space race was on. A US satellite was launched 14 months later and it demonstrated the feasibility of two-way satellite communications. Since then, electronic communications have become part of our daily lives. Follow the fascinating story that has led to the need for us to track almost 10,000 active satellites.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
While sound is not part of the electromagnetic spectrum, it can be manipulated, generated, and shaped by electric circuits. Explore what the signalscope output can tell you about the makeup of various sounds, from a single tone to the human voice to piano chords, and how these can be manipulated by circuits to synthesize entirely new sounds.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Steppes and deserts make up almost a third of Earth's land surface and are an ideal place to practice geology due to the distinctive landforms, often unobstructed by vegetation. Explore alluvial fans, washes, playa lakes, dunes, and other features typical of arid regions. Also ask why steppes and deserts are so dry. What combination of surface, ocean, and atmospheric conditions produce them?
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.
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