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Directed by the pioneering UK documentarian Richard Leacock, Frames of Reference is a slick and surreal dive into physics fundamentals and, in particular, why everything is indeed relative. Produced for high-school physics classes, the 1960 film features the physics professors Patterson Hume and Donald Ivey of the University of Toronto explaining, through an intertwined series of lectures and clever demonstrations, how frames of reference shape perspective. Using rotating sets, camera tricks and a visual style that suggests the film noir of Alfred Hitchcock, this is perhaps the most peculiarly entertaining half-hour physics lecture you’ll ever have.
Director: Richard Leacock
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Ageing and death
Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences
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The environment
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning
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Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
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Ecology and environmental sciences
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away
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Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
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Ecology and environmental sciences
To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice
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Music
Before the Beatles dropped acid, a BBC workshop was creating far-out sounds
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Philosophy of language
For Ludwig Wittgenstein, language is a game, but not a frivolous one
43 minutes
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Biology
In the jungle of Suriname, Maria Sibylla Merian discovered insect metamorphosis
4 minutes