TV Worth Watching: Shock and Awe – The Story of Electricity

TV Worth Watching is a new series highlighting my favorite television viewing. I am a big fan of UK television, so you are sure to see many UK shows and movies featured here. — Douglas

TV Worth Watching: Shock and Awe – The Story of Electricity

Another amazing BBC science documentary. I consider shows like this My Own Personal Master’s Degree. I am very self-directed in my education and shows like this can help expand my knowledge greatly. I also love science, so I tend to “geek out” on shows like this when I find them. I most love the combination of history and science that these documentary’s provide. I think it is a great way to explore a subject deeply, but in ways that the average person can understand.

This 3-part series covers the history of our discovery and taming of electricity and how it has deeply and dramatically effected human life.

Shock awe

Watch “Shock and Awe – The story of Electricity – Episode 1” on YouTube

From the BBC 4 Web Site…

“Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature’s most mysterious force – electricity. Until fairly recently, electricity was seen as a magical power, but it is now the lifeblood of the modern world and underpins every aspect of our technological advancements.

Without electricity, we would be lost. This series tells of dazzling leaps of imagination and extraordinary experiments – a story of maverick geniuses who used electricity to light our cities, to communicate across the seas and through the air, to create modern industry and to give us the digital revolution.

Episode one tells the story of the very first ‘natural philosophers’ who started to unlock the mysteries of electricity. They studied its curious link to life, built strange and powerful instruments to create it and even tamed lightning itself. It was these men who truly laid the foundations of the modern world. Electricity was without doubt a fantastical wonder. This is the story about what happened when the first real concerted effort was made to understand electricity; how we learned to create and store it, before finally creating something that enabled us to make it at will – the battery.” — BBC

More information on Shock and Awe – The Story of Electricity :

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