In this video lecture, Prof. Walter Lewin talks about some of the highlights from his early days at MIT. It began with balloon flights at very high altitude to make observations of the stars in X-rays. This led to discoveries of X-ray flaring events and a periodic X-ray source (GX 1+4). In the seventies and eighties he made important contributions to our understanding of X-ray bursts (thermo-nuclear fusion episodes on neutron stars).

1. Measurements of Space and Time
2. Speed, Velocity and Acceleration
3. Vectors
4. 3D Kinematics: The Motion of Projectiles
5. Circular Motion
6. Newton's Three Laws
7. Weight and Weightlessness
8. Frictional Forces
9. Exam Review
10. Hooke's Law and Simple Harmonic Motion
11. Work and Mechanical Energy
12. Resistive Forces
13. Conservative Forces and SHO
14. Energy, Power and Satellite Orbits
15. Collisions and the Center of Mass
16. Elastic and Inelastic Collisions
17. Change of Momentum, Impulse and Rockets
18. Exam Review
19. Rotational Kinetic Energy
20. Angular Momentum
21. Torques and Oscillating Bodies
22. Kepler's Laws and Elliptical Orbits
23. Doppler Shift and Stellar Dynamics
24. Rolling Motion & Gyroscopes
25. Static Equilibrium
26. Elasticity of Materials
27. Pressure in a Static Fluid
28. Buoyant Force and Bernoulli's Equation
29. Exam Review
30. Other Oscillating Systems
31. Forced Oscillations and Resonance
32. Heat, Conductivity and Thermal Expansion
33. Kinetic Gas Theory & Phases
34. The Wonderful Quantum World
35. X-ray Astronomy and Astrophysics

8.01 is a first-semester freshman physics class in Newtonian Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, and Kinetic Gas Theory. In addition to the basic concepts of Newtonian Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, and Kinetic Gas Theory, a variety of interesting topics are covered in this course: Binary Stars, Neutron Stars, Black Holes, Resonance Phenomena, Musical Instruments, Stellar Collapse, Supernovae, Astronomical observations from very high flying balloons (lecture 35), and you will be allowed a peek into the intriguing Quantum World.