Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity

Season

2011

UK

8.5

Until recently, electricity was seen as a magical power. It could slay the living, revive the dead, and bend the laws of nature. It is now the lifeblood of the modern world, fueling our lives and underpinning every aspect of technological advancement. Without it, we would be lost. Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature's most mysterious force.

Episode List

S1 • E1

Spark

How pioneers unlocked electricity's mysteries and built strange instruments to create it.

S1 • E2

The Age of Invention

Just under 200 years ago scientists discovered something profound, that electricity is connected to another of nature's most fundamental forces - magnetism. In the second episode, Jim discovers how harnessing the link between magnetism and electricity would completely transform the world, allowing us to generate a seemingly limitless amount of electric power which we could utilise to drive machines, communicate across continents and light our homes. This is the story of how scientists and engineers unlocked the nature of electricity in an extraordinary century of innovation and invention.

S1 • E3

Revelations and Revolutions

From radio waves bigger than a house to gamma rays smaller than the nucleus of an atom, the electromagnetic spectrum is buzzing around us, and is harnessed into our everyday lives in ways often never seen, heard or imagined.