Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Season 2016, Episode 1

2016 - 1: Supercharged - Fuelling the Future: Let There Be Light!

Celebrating 80 years since the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures were first televised, chemist Professor Saiful Islam explores one of humankind's biggest challenges - how to generate and store energy, with guest appearances from Christmas Lecturers past. In his first lecture, Saiful investigates how to generate energy without destroying the planet in the process. Saiful begins his lecture by being plunged into darkness. Armed initially with nothing but a single candle, his challenge is to go back to first principles and bring back the power in the energy-hungry lecture theatre. Along the way he explains what energy is, how we can transform it from one form to another, and how we harness it to power the modern world. A fascinating and stimulating celebration of the stuff that quite literally makes the universe tick - the weird and wonderful world of energy.