Lecture 1 – Let there be light!
In his first Lecture, Saiful investigates one of the most important challenges facing humankind – how to generate energy without destroying the planet in the process.
As part of the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the first showing of the CHRISTMAS LECTURES on BBC TV, Saiful invites former Christmas Lecturers to join him on stage, and repeats some of the most exciting (and dangerous) experiments and demonstrations from the past.
Saiful begins his lecture by being plunged into darkness. Armed initially with nothing but a single candle, his challenge is to go back to first principles and bring back the power in the energy-hungry Theatre.
Along the way Saiful explains what energy is, how we can transform it from one form to another, and how we harness it to power the modern world.
This Lecture is a fascinating and stimulating celebration of the stuff that quite literally makes the universe tick –- the weird and wonderful world of energy.
About the 2016 CHRISTMAS LECTURES
These CHRISTMAS LECTURES describe something invisible that drives everything around us, from our bodies to mobile phones, from aeroplanes to all the stars in the universe: energy.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it just transforms from one form to another – the challenge is whether we can harness and use it for our own purposes when it changes from one form to another.
The three Lectures will take us on an incredible journey through these powerful transformations to inspire the next-generation of scientists.
In each lecture, Saiful Islam faces a big question – what is energy and where does it come from? How can we best make use of it? and How can we store energy to use later on? Along the way we learn about the energy that powers our homes, the energy that powers our cars and see how the most important machine of them all, the human body, compares to all the gadgets we carry around with us.
Whilst Saiful has access to amazing cutting-edge technology, it we are a long way from meeting the energy demands of the future. The real solutions and great breakthroughs will come from tomorrow’s researchers, quite possibly the young people watching these CHRISTMAS LECTURES.
2016 CHRISTMAS LECTURES supporters
