60 Second adventures in thought

The Open University has created six very interesting little videos that explain some of the most famous thought experiments.

Narrated by David Mitchell and animated in a friendly style, these 60 second videos are both fascinating and insightful.

From the 5th Century BC all the way up to the late 20th Century AD, these thought experiments have been devised by some of the greatest minds in history including German mathematician David Hilbert, French physicist Paul Langevin and of course the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger.

1.The Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles, generally considered to have been first devised by the 5th century BC Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea.

2. The Grandfather Paradox, that mainstay of science fiction, first described by the french scifi writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent.

3. The Chinese room, a thought experiment that was created by John Searle and appeared in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs" back in 1980.

4. Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel was proposed by the German mathematician David Hilbert and deals with a quite mind boggling theory of Infinity.

5. The Twin paradox is an experiment in special relativity, first described by the French physicist Paul Langevin in 1911.

6. Arguably the most famous thought experiment ever devised, Schrödinger's cat illustrates the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and was first described by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935.