大象传媒

Was there a better time to learn more about the mysterious workings of our planet, the magical world that exists within our bodies or the structures and patterns that shape our everyday lives?

Scientific ideas concerning heat, from fire to thermodynamics, have energised physicists for centuries - it’s a concept and a state that makes the world go round. And speaking of things going round, if you want to find out more about the relationship between pressure and volume, explore the episode concerning Kinetic Theory.

If you are ready to have your grey matter stretched beyond all comprehension, then try the episodes dedicated to The Physics of Time which questions whether time even exists, The Physics of Reality which explores quantum physics and Pauli's Exclusion Principle that uncovers the life and work of the brilliant physicist and expert in quantum mechanics.

If you think space is the place, then try these editions concerning The Speed of Light, The Vacuum of Space, Dark Matter and Plasma, the most abundant matter in the universe.

Where to start with chemistry? Perhaps a quick brush up on your Chemical Elements and learn all about the beauty of the periodic table. And once you have that memorised, move onto episodes specifically looking at Carbon and Oxygen. When you have that mastered, you can try to get to grips with The Proton and The Neutron.

Learn about the lives of inspiring scientists, such as Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin, John Dalton a pioneer in the field of atomic theory, Ernest Rutherford the charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world and the work of The Curies Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

And once you’ve mastered all forms of chemistry, why not have a crack at Alchemy: you never know, all that newly acquired wisdom may just help you turn matter into gold.

Where better place to start with biology than the life of Charles Darwin. Explore episodes on his origins, his voyages on the Beagle and on his seminal work The Origin of Species.

Then you can move onto The Origins of Life which asks if there’s a single common ancestor from which all living matter on our planet derives. The future of gene therapy is explored in Evolution while Genetic Mutation looks at this vital process in evolution and Evolutionary Psychology looks more closely into human behaviour.

But if you want to get even closer than that, then put this episode all about Cells under your microscope, then move onto Enzymes and finish off with some Free Radicals.

Have a hankering to learn more about the natural world? A great place to start is the episode dedicated to the concept of Nature and humanity's attempts to define it. Follow it up with a deep dive into The Sun, the wonders of Photosynthesis and the science of Solar Winds.

The planet has existed for an incredible four and a half billion years, but how can we begin to make sense of such a huge swathe of time and can we be sure that we have got the Earth's age right? Ageing the Earth investigates. Not to get too complex but Complexity looks at the discipline devoted to notions behind how birds flock, traffic flow in cities and the study of the spread of diseases.

More pressing environmental matters are tackled with episodes concerning Climate Change and The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which examined the causes and effects of the highest global temperatures in the last 65 million years.

If number crunching is more in your wheelhouse, then In Our Time is here to help. Take a quick tour through the whole concept of Mathematics, then launch yourself into the history of the subject with Renaissance Maths, Maths in the Early Islamic World, Pythagoras and Archimedes.

Focus on specific elements of maths and enter the world of Zeno's Paradoxes, Pi, Calculus or Game Theory.

Or if that’s far too broad and all-encompassing, then hone in on the specifics and discover more about Prime Numbers, Negative Numbers, Euler's Number (or e), Imaginary Numbers, The Fibonacci Sequence, Infinity, Zero and, as a result of all that, finish with Mathematics' Unintended Consequences.