Youtube presented me with this video explaining that physicists have only 5 jokes. Angela Collier’s Youtube page says that she is a physicist and I could see that she is cute, so right up my alley.
She speaks well and the production values are good, but something bugs me about the video. I can’t quite figure it out, but there is something wrong with her brain. In her list of physics jokes, only the first one is actually a joke. The middle three are observations and the last one is a thought experiment.
In this video about magnetic forces she illustrates something about herself that is part of the problem.
Youtube: Magnetic forces do no work.
Around the 1 minute mark,
She says that in a general physics course, she learned that “Magnetic forces do no work”, and just put that in her mind as a true fact. She took several more electricity and magnetism courses through grad school, and never understood that “true fact”, it was just true and never came up again.
There is a context for “magnetic forces do no work”, but that’s not relevant. What is relevant is that she never took the time to figure out how or why that statement is true. Physics isn’t so much about “true facts”, and is about understanding how everything works.
A minute later in the video, she says that prior to making the video about magnetism, she looked for other Youtube videos that explained the topic. She found one from “Science Asylum” that fully explained in five minutes what she would take 40 minutes to explain.
Being a cute physicist, Angela is comfortable with people listening to her talk, not interrupting or telling her to get on with it. She isn’t as interesting as she has been led to believe, and should tighten up her videos.
In our current culture, it’s not cool to notice that some people are attractive and that makes them seem more interesting, but you can decide. On the left is Angela, on the right is the guy from Science Asylum. Which one needs to get to the point before you walk away?
Angela does address some interesting topics, so I watched a few more, and found one more issue.
Youtube: Dark matter is not a theory.
In a previous post, I mentioned that dark matter is a catch-all term that pertains to concerns about the Big Bang Theory. Angela is a physicist at the University of Kentucky, so she might have more current information on dark matter.
I watched that video, and came away thinking that Angela was taking dark matter as a fact, not a catch-all term for stuff we don’t understand. I disagree with her and wasn’t persuaded by her explanation. It seemed like she wasn’t thinking it through or was accepting dark matter on faith. That’s not good for physicists.
A year later, she made another dark matter video.
Youtube: That dark matter aged like milk.
In this video, she says, “Dark matter isn’t a theory, it’s a problem. It’s a bunch of things we observe, a list of observations, that we don’t understand.”
We completely agree. She does get credit for revisiting the dark matter topic.
I would not recommend Angela’s videos, but not certain if I will watch more of them. She is cute, speaks well and has interesting topics. She doesn’t seem to think through what she intends to say and how she will say it. She goes on too long, and I’m not likely to learn anything. I may get some things to think about.