I think it’d be good if lectures were televisied too, people would watch them when channel surfing perhaps.

Youtube makes the information available, which is a step in the right direction. You’d still have to go out of your way to access it though, which means it’s only going to be watched by those with an already-existing curiosity, the others are not forced to acknowledge it as they are with tv programs (have to choose), so on tinternet it doesn’t always get the opertunity to sell itself

Watched just the first couple of minutes.  Looks very similar to the Royal Society Christmas lectures.  Every year a famous scientist gives a series of 5 1 hour lectures to school kids, which they televise between Christmas and the New year. They have all sorts of practical demos getting the kids involved- either doing the experiment, or being atoms etc. Imagine some one discussing the big bang and all the complicated Planck stuff that holds the attention of 14 year olds.

Well...uh...perhaps the one I posted here isn’t too spiffy, it is the first lecture of the class, but as I said, it’s basically physics for dummies (Physics for Future Presidents). Of course, I linked to other lectures, like Chem and Bio, and the whole thing looks like it just got started. I assume they will be posting more as time progresses. 

It ultimately doesn’t cost the university anything to post these since you can’t get a degree by watching YouTube; you’d still need to attend the classes and pass the tests and all that good stuff to get the piece of paper and the fancy cap and gown…

Anyway, Bahamat, why do you think people would pay anymore attention to something like this if it was on TV?  I personally look for any opportunity to improve/expand my knowledge, but I’m pretty certain the majority of people are not interested.  While the History channel and Discovery channel are interesting (especially when they are actually acurrate and not pitching pseudo-science), they are not even close to the top rated channels.

MIT has a ton of courses available for download.
they use to stream them but I cant find it now
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm

bengi beat me to it.  MIT’s open courseware is pretty good - they also post quizzes, homework, and tests.  My engineering linear algebra class used the book written by one of the MIT profs who has video lectures online.

Sweet, I’ll have to check it out.

BB: why do you think people would pay anymore attention to something like this if it was on TV?

When somebody’s decided they’re going to spend the next few hours in front of the box, or listen to it while on computer, they’ll sometimes channel-surf.

That means there’s a chance they’ll see something that (even mildly) may be interesting (perhaps the visuals/demonstrations + a deliberate attempt at making it fun, as it does). If it’s unintimidating yet fun they may leave it on and passively absorb without any pre-planning, certainly the subject would seem more fun.

On youtube however you have to specify what you want to watch, that means you have to pre-plan watching a physics lecture, that means you already had some existing curiosity in science, so it wasn’t the video you’re about to watch that will give you that first spark of fascination.

In other words the target audience won’t be actively searching for the video if the intention is to spark the intitial curiosity in the subject, because before you have that you wouldn’t have a reason to look. They have to be mildly forced by the situation (i.e. boredom forces you to watch something; tv’s limited range forces them to then watch what they wouldn’t otherwise, and try something new).