Hacker Cinema
Atom
2007 · TV series · documentary · 60 min episodes · 1 season
The story of the discovery that everything is made from atoms, one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history, and the brilliant minds behind it.
2 positivefrom 2 commenters
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2 comments on Hacker News
Great documentary. I can heartily recommend all of Al-Khalili's documentaries: "Atom", "The End of the Universe", "Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity" and "Chemistry: A Volatile History" are all excellent. The last two are my favorites; while his documentaries on physics and quantum mechanics are good, they describe scientific phenomena that are pretty difficult to understand, let alone visualize, and it ends up having to be a little over-simplified, or explained with unsatisfying visual analogies. The ones on chemistry and electricity are a lot more (no pun intended) grounded, and include some fun demonstrations.
If you're looking for science documentaries with a little more depth, look at the series done by Jim Al-Khalili (eg., "Atom", "Absolute Zero" or "Chemistry: A Volatile History") and Michael Moseley ("The Story of Science").
In "The Story of Science", Moseley covers much the same ground as James Burke's famous "Connections" (and also his highly-esteemed "The Day thee Universe Changed") -- albeit in a more literal and less literary angle -- or indeed Sagan's eminent "Cosmos".
Al-Khalili is a physicist, though, and I think his documentaries are more to the point than Cox's, even if they're also full of excellent photography. Definitely less bubbly.