Category: Business

Weekly Report (2019-07-20 to 2019-07-26)

I’ll try to make weekly update posts with all the activity of the week. This is partially to report to my Patreon supporters, but also to show people thinking of supporting my channel what I am doing.

The most important change to my process was to introduce thumbnails made in Inkscape. Using the tex text extension, I was able to format equations and formulas for the math videos.

As I am more or less “caught up” on Basic Mathematics with several videos  uploaded and ready to be launched, I have been turning my attention to the next series to cover. It seems Thermal Physics is the way to go, so I have been exploring textbooks on that subject.

The launch of the Discord server has been going very successfully. Already we have ~10 visitors. If you want to chat with me, the Discord server is the ideal place.

Videos that I did this week include:

For My Basic Mathematics series, I released 6 videos:

For my Theory of Python series, I released

The next will likely see the following videos:

Basic Mathematics:

  • 15.1 The Complex Plane
  • 15.2 Polar Form
  • 16.1 Inductions
  • 16.2 Summations (in 2 or 3 parts)

Python:

  • String and Byte Literals
  • String and Byte methods and operators
  • Unicode, ASCII and Encoding
  • Tuples
  • Tuple methods and operators
  • Star Expressions
  • Full Assign Statement (augmented, parallel assign, star assign)

We have had 10.4k Views from 168k impressions (2.9% CTR) in the last week corresponding to 23.7k minutes of watch time (2:22 average view time) by 4.4k unique viewers. 75 new subscribers joined us, putting us past the 18.5k subscriber mark. 39% of our traffic comes from our playlists, 25% from YouTube search, 10% from suggested videos, and the rest from external or unknown sources.

We made $11.60 in YouTube ad revenue.

My goal is to increase the CTR by tweaking the thumbnail, as well as increase audience retention by focusing on a better first few seconds of video time.

I am looking forward to the months of August and September as that is a time when many people start searching for and watching the sort of content I produce. I anticipate launching my Thermal Physics videos a week or two before students begin returning to University to take advantage of the college rush.

 

Two of my LED lights died

It’s time to get more lights! Lighting is super-important for cameras. Our eyes are much more sensitive to light and to color balance than cameras are, and our brains auto-correct for low-light and off-balance colors. In a dim room, we can see perfectly fine, but if you tried to put it on video, it would be impossible to make things out. If you rely on your houselights for lighting, then your videos will be red and orange rather than a more natural white or blue color.

I put up white paper all around my filming area. I have lights pointing at the walls, a light pointing at the ceiling, and a light shining in the corner. This provides plenty of diffuse light to make my videos with.

I’ve been using these for over a year and they have been good: https://amzn.to/30VXdf5

Here’s replacement lights I am buying: https://amzn.to/2SJ6Ivk

(All the links to Amazon are affiliate links, so I will get a kickback if you purchase anything after clicking on them. You can learn more about supporting my work here: http://blog.realphysics.info/2018/04/28/amazon-affiliates/)

Here’s a video I recently shot using these lights. I have my Samsung S9 as a camera. I plan to upgrade that one of these days to a more professional camera so I can control the focus and such.

Thermal Physics / Thermodynamics Textbook

Wrapping up the Basic Mathematics course, one of the directions I can go is Thermodynamics / Thermal Physics.

Schroeder’s book seems to be the top textbook right now: https://amzn.to/2LION7p

Other colleges and universities seem to be using Blundell & Blundell: https://amzn.to/2MhbY84

I’ve heard of a few others as well.

If you have recommendations or ideas on what I should use for a textbook, let me know. Bonus points if your college is using it!

Which physics series should I do next?

I’m wrapping up the Basic Mathematics by Serge Lang series, and so now my attention turns to where I should go next. I see that there is a dearth of good physics lecture content, so physics students don’t have as many resources as math students.

If you support me through Patreon, you can vote on the poll I place there:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-series-i-28644380

You can also answer through YouTube, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/user/jg394/community

The options I am considering right now are:

  • Calculus for Physics https://amzn.to/2JSfF2y
  • Multivariable calculus https://amzn.to/2MdhHfm
  • Mathematical Methods for the Physical Sciences https://amzn.to/2JQjZPO
  • Freshman Physics https://amzn.to/2Md5Iyd
  • Thermal Physics / Thermodynamics https://amzn.to/2SEDrSg
  • Quantum Mechanics https://amzn.to/2JRwvhV
  • Redoing Introduction to Electrodynamics https://amzn.to/2Yi7rVA

(All of the links above are Amazon affiliate links. I get a small kickback for anything you purchase through those links — a simple way to support my work.)

If you have opinions on what series you should like to see, feel free to comment on either post above or here in this post.