Sticky Sunday! Freeleech Picks of the Week

The Day The World Took Off (2000)

This six part world history series commissioned by Channel 4 for the Millennium looks at how technology evolves and why it transforms some parts of the world and not others. Why for example did China, with its great history of inventions, not develop before the West? Why did Japan abandon the wheel? And why did our own rain-swept island off the coast of mainland Europe become the hub of a technological revolution that would change the world?

This landmark series on the origins of the Industrial Revolution challenges traditional views of one of the most dramatic periods in human history. Five historians try and solve the fundamental mystery of the Industrial Revolution: Why Britain and why then? They travel further back in time with each episode - from a single day in September 1830 to the very roots of the Industrial Revolution 10,000 years ago



The Beauty of Diagrams (2010)

Why do complex scientific theories and equations often only make sense when portrayed in pictures? How have scientific diagrams, drawings, sketches and graphs revolutionised our understanding of science?

One of the most pervasive myths about science is that it doesn't require art. Science, we're told, is about the logic of numbers, hard cold facts and the recording of experiences purposefully stripped of emotion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In this new six part series Professor Marcus du Sautoy, eminent Oxford Professor of Maths and public understanding of science, will illustrate and explore that far from being a reluctant visual medium, science is actually at the forefront of the design and creation of a number of iconic visual diagrams. From Newton's Prism to Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man to Watson and Crick's extraordinary diagram of the Double Helix diagrams have successfully shaped and defined our understanding of complex scientific theories and over time have become accepted in society as astonishing illustrations in their own right. Professor du Sautoy will creatively navigate his way through the numerous diagrams, graphs, sketches and designs that have revolutionized our understanding of the world around us.