A Nobel laureate and a flea circus join forces for an unforgettable demonstration of inertia
The Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) was formed in 1956 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the mission to create science-education materials for US high-school classrooms. Extracted from a PSSC film from 1959, the first half of this short video finds the Nobel Prize-winning physicist E M Purcell from Harvard University detailing the basics of inertia with some help from a frictionless dry-ice puck – which, by his exceptionally impassive account, is a thing that’s ‘fun to play with’. The video gets a good deal stranger in the second half, which takes viewers on a field trip to Hubert’s Museum in New York City: a long-since defunct cabinet of 10-cent curiosities that was once a Times Square mainstay. There, Hubert’s famed in-house flea circus puts its considerable talents on display as the ringmaster leads a one-of-a-kind inertia demonstration. It all makes for an impressive proof of concept, and some delightfully dated fun.
Restoration: Tamur Qutab

videoAstronomy
Visualisations explore what the deep future holds for our night sky
6 minutes

videoMathematics
After centuries of trying, we’ve yet to arrive at a perfect way to map colour
20 minutes

videoHistory of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes

videoMusic
A riveting audiovisual dive into what makes sounds harmonious, or not
28 minutes

videoHistory of science
How we came to know the size of the Universe – and what mysteries remain
26 minutes

videoArt
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes

videoFilm and visual culture
Space and time expand, contract and combust in this propulsive animation
5 minutes

videoHistory of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes

videoOceans and water
A stunning visualisation explores the intricate circulatory system of our oceans
5 minutes