Bell Labs has created a fantastic series of four short videos that I highly recommend. Coming from a team that is now part of Nokia, these videos focus on leading-edge information communication technologies but they do this in an extremely accessible way that shows the parts played by physicists in bringing industrial visions to life. The subjects covered are;

  • The Shannon Limit (the idea that there is always a maximum rate of information transmission)
  • The Many Lives of Copper (how new life was breathed into copper-based wired networks)
  • The Story of Light (the development of information transmission over glass-fibre optic networks)
  • The Network of You (wireless networks as “the fabric of the future”)

The videos are each around five minutes long and all present their ideas in a non-mathematical way that informs rather than confuses: it really doesn’t matter too much if you don’t know the meaning of “vectoring” or MIMO as the underlying principles come through loud and clear – and you can always use your favourite search engine to fill in the blanks if you wish.

To visit the portal page and watch the videos, click here.

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Published by physbang

Writer and photographer with experience in teaching physics, computer programming and research metallurgy. Previously the lead for both e-safety and e-learning for all schools in Jersey. Former editor of British Journal of Photography and Professional Photographer magazines. Author of multiple books on photography and articles on other subjects ranging from unreliable online information to customising multiple-choice question papers.

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