Talk:The Mechanical Universe

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the The Mechanical Universe article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

‹See TfM›

Physics: Publications / History Mid‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Publications Taskforce.
	This article is supported by History Taskforce.

Education Mid‑importance

	Education portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of education and education-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EducationWikipedia:WikiProject EducationTemplate:WikiProject Educationeducation articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Animation Mid‑importance

	Animation portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Animation, a collaborative effort to build an encyclopedic guide to animation on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, help out with the open tasks, or contribute to the discussion.AnimationWikipedia:WikiProject AnimationTemplate:WikiProject AnimationAnimation articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Soundtrack

Is there any information available about the soundtrack of the series? The music is awe inspiring and the credits don't seem to give any indication about the songs or who made them. It would be nice to have someone reach out Caltech for these pieces. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8388:6282:9380:BEFF:FDD0:47F6:7ACB (talk) 11:29, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First Section

If anyone wants, this is an excellent stub to expand, a great series which deserves a great article, unfortunately I have to go to work now, so I may/may not get to it. Any takers? Davepetr 14:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

COOL! I loved this show. I've checked wikipedia for an article on it before, its funny that I check it again and you made it just 6 days ago. Anyways, my dad used to record this show and we would watch it at night because it aired at something like 5:30am for a while back in the late 80s on TLC I think. But I was about 11 at the time. What a great show. Its a shame what "learning television" has become. Next time I'm at my parents I'll see if I can dig up the video tapes and my dad and I might be able to transcribe some information from them. I found a website on this show once too. -- Suso 04:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Removed INTELECOM link

The INTELECOM link is broken. I searched the INTELECOM website for The Mechanical Universe but only found passing references to it. I checked User talk:Intelecom and found comments from bots but no replies from the user. I also checked Intelecom's contributions and found what appears to be only self promotional contributions. I am therefore removing the INTELECOM link. - Hydroxonium (talk) 06:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just checked the INTELECOM link at the Internet Archive and found that it was a page for purchasing the series on DVD, which I believe, is against Wikipedia rules. http://web.archive.org/web/20070928155533/http://www.intelecom.org/course_info.asp?id=22 - Hydroxonium (talk) 08:22, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Funding

Changed "fundings" to "funding".

Funding for the show came specifically from Annenberg/CPB. I believe the previous editor has listed the funding of the broadcast of the show. Therefore I am clarifying that in the article. Please refer to the sources in the references section of the article for this change. - Hydroxonium (talk) 05:16, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of The Mechanical Universe episodes

The "contents" section appears to be a list of episodes. I will be working on converting that to standard Wikipedia format and changing the section title. It also appears to be a direct copy of an external website. I will be correcting that also. - Hydroxonium (talk) 05:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Changed section title from "contents" to "list of episodes". Added a list of episodes for the first 26 shows and references for the material added. - Hydroxonium (talk) 22:49, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the table, the episode numbers are duplicated. In the markup the columns are EpisodeNumber and EpisodeNumber2. Is that intentional? Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:40, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Created by (infobox)

Changed the infobox to reflect that the series was created by David Goodstein and not James Blinn. James Blinn and others in the Jep Propulsion Lab's Computer Graphics Lab, Including Sylvie Rueff and TOm Brown, did the computer graphics for the series. Please see the official website for a history of the show which states that David Goodstein had the initial concept of the show. - Hydroxonium (talk) 00:02, 29 May 2010 (UT

Link to Annenberg Learner

The series is no longer available from Annenberg Learner and is now available from Youtube and Dailymotion. If there is no objection, will remove the link to Annenberg Learner. Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:01, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds fine, as long as there are other working links to see the series. Reify-tech (talk) 15:06, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox needs improvement

The infobox should be expanded, something like the parallel article on Project Mathematics!. Also, I'd like to call out User:XOR'easter for updating and improving this article, with ample references. Reify-tech (talk) 19:43, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I still had the Goodstein and Olenick "Making The Mechanical Universe" article open, so I filled in a few easy parts of the infobox. XOR'easter (talk) 21:00, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

DailyMotion

Are the DailyMotion copies legit? The ones on YouTube were uploaded by Caltech themselves, but those on DailyMotion (and at the Internet Archive as well) seem to have been uploaded by a random fan. Perhaps a victimless crime, in the final analysis, but maybe not the behavior we as an encyclopedia should be encouraging either. Anyone know more about the situation? XOR'easter (talk) 21:43, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should remove the DailyMotion links, to be on the safe side of WP:COPYVIOEL (sheesh, this site loves its acronyms!). Does anyone have objections? XOR'easter (talk) 04:02, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bridge collapse error section--overkill?

Dedicating an entire section to the apparently commonplace and erroneous explanation about the bridge collapse strikes me as overkill at best. I don't think it even warrants mentioning, so I'm going to delete it. If you restore it, please justify. Jeff Axelrod (talk) 16:08, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's the furthest thing from overkill. Keeping track of the shortcomings of standard or widespread educational references is important. The references point out TMU explicitly in this regard; the series' companion textbook is reference 12 in Billah and Scanlan (1991).

When I did cleanup and expansion work on this article a few years ago, I looked for sources that discussed inaccuracies in TMU (all educational materials have errata). As I recall, the criticism of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse was the only such critique that I could find, i.e., the only criticism of substance rather than style, pacing, etc. There might be more out there from disgruntled specialists in science history, but the bridge thing was what I found, so I wasn't able to write a "Criticism" or "Critiques of oversimplification" section. XOR'easter (talk) 08:20, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Caltech suing CarolCo over Total Recall

I originally dug that entertaining factoid out of a NexisUni search, but I could never find a follow-up. If anyone knows how the matter was resolved, that would make a nice addition to the article. XOR'easter (talk) 08:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

History of Caltech physics curriculums

So the 1980s Mechanical Universe replaced the 1960s Feynman Lectures. Is there a history somewhere of the various iterations of Caltech's introductions to physics? Like, what, if anything, followed the Goodstein course? KHarbaugh (talk) 11:19, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]