BBC - The Story Of Science S01E02: What Is The World Made Of (2010)

Michael Mosley embarks on an informative and ambitious journey exploring how the evolution of scientific understanding is intimately interwoven with society's historical path. The Story Of Science: power, proof and passion; tells the story of the forces that came together to create scientific knowledge; the practical business of making instruments and machines; the great forces of history – revolutions, voyages of discovery and artistic movements – and the dogged determination of scientists and experimenters.

This is the story of how scientific ideas shaped the modern world and how science made history. For 3,000 years people have wrestled with the great questions of existence. What is out there, what is the world made of, where did we come from? For three thousand years, we have struggled to answer the great questions: the what, the where, the how and the why of mankind and our planet. In this fascinating series, award-winning journalist Michael Mosley explains how our knowledge of science has grown over time.
We learn about some of the great figures in the history of science - Galileo, Newton and Darwin - but also of the astronomer who lost his nose in a duel but helped create a new vision of the cosmos and the alchemist who tried to make gold from human urine, and set us on the course to modern chemistry.
An insightful and entertaining series, The Story of Science reveals how the political upheavals of history combine with iconic inventions and discoveries, along with the ideas of great thinkers, to create the advances that have transformed our lives.

Part 2: What is the World Made of ?
In this episode, Michael demonstrates how our society is built on our search to find the answer to what makes up everything in the material world. This is a story that moves from the secret labs of the alchemists and their search for gold to the creation of the world's first synthetic dye - mauve - and onto the invention of the transistor. This quest may seem abstract and highly theoretical. Yet it has delivered the greatest impact on humanity. By trying to answer this question, scientists have created theories from elements to atoms, and the strange concepts of quantum physics that underpin our modern, technological world.