Physics YouTube exists on a wider spectrum than mathematics YouTube. At one end: PBS Space Time, which regularly assumes you have taken undergraduate quantum mechanics and want to understand the technical structure of quantum field theory. At the other: MinutePhysics, which explains the photoelectric effect in three minutes using stick-figure animation. Both are legitimately excellent for their intended audiences. Understanding which channels belong at which level is most of the work.
The best YouTube channels for physics cover everything from the conceptual-but-not-mathematical explanations that make physics accessible to curious non-specialists, through the rigorous lecture recordings that replicate a university course, up to the research-adjacent content that bridges undergraduate coursework and actual physics literature. This guide covers all three tiers, organized by sub-topic.
For the mathematical tools that underpin physics — calculus, linear algebra, differential equations — see how to learn calculus from YouTube and best YouTube channels for math. For the broader context of building a self-directed learning curriculum, see best YouTube channels for self-learners.
Veritasium — The Best Physics Channel for Conceptual Depth
Veritasium (Derek Muller) is the most intellectually rigorous physics channel for general audiences on YouTube. Muller holds a PhD in physics education, and his research background directly shapes how he makes videos: Veritasium is designed to expose and correct misconceptions, not just to present correct information.
The channel's signature approach is the misconception-first structure. Many videos begin by posing a question, collecting answers from people on the street or campus, and showing that common intuitions are wrong before explaining why. This is not just entertainment — it is the most effective way to replace wrong mental models with correct ones. You cannot learn physics by adding correct facts to wrong frameworks; you have to first surface the wrong framework and then displace it.
Key sub-topics covered:
- Classical mechanics (momentum, energy, friction, rotational dynamics)
- Electricity and magnetism (the Veritasium video on what actually drives current in a wire went viral among physicists for its accuracy)
- Thermodynamics and entropy
- Special and general relativity
- Quantum mechanics (conceptual)
- Science philosophy and methodology
Who it is for:
- Anyone with a general science education who wants to deepen conceptual understanding
- University physics students who understand the formalism but feel uncertain about the physical meaning
- The "I took physics but never really got it" audience
What it is not: a technique-building resource. Veritasium will not help you solve force diagrams or compute electric fields. It builds the mental models that make those computations physically meaningful.
Standout videos:
- "The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics" (entropy)
- The Veritasium/Electroboom debate on wire current propagation
- "Bell's Theorem: The Quantum Venn Diagram Paradox"
- The original version on "Misconceptions About the Universe"
PBS Space Time — Graduate-Level Explanations Made Accessible
PBS Space Time (Matt O'Dowd) is the most technically ambitious mainstream physics channel. The channel does not condescend — it assumes you have undergraduate physics and pushes toward graduate-level material: quantum field theory, general relativity, thermodynamic foundations, cosmological models, and the research frontier.
What distinguishes PBS Space Time from other advanced physics channels is the quality of the explanations and the willingness to engage technical depth without retreating to hand-waving. When the channel covers the Higgs mechanism, it explains spontaneous symmetry breaking. When it covers black holes, it works through event horizons, Penrose diagrams, and Hawking radiation with quantitative reasoning.
Key sub-topics covered:
- General relativity (comprehensive coverage — spacetime geometry, Schwarzschild metric, gravitational waves)
- Quantum mechanics and quantum field theory (path integrals, gauge theories, renormalization explained conceptually)
- Cosmology (dark matter, dark energy, inflation, the structure of the universe)
- Statistical mechanics and thermodynamics (entropy from a statistical perspective)
- Particle physics (the Standard Model, beyond-Standard-Model possibilities)
Who it is for:
- Physics undergraduates and graduates who want accessible explanations of topics at or beyond their coursework
- Physicists who want to build intuition outside their specialization
- Serious non-physicists with strong quantitative backgrounds who want to understand research-level physics
What to expect: videos often reference advanced mathematics (tensor calculus, Hilbert spaces, Lie groups) without full derivation. The goal is intuition and structural understanding, not calculation. For the derivations, you need a textbook.
The PBS Space Time archive is deep — years of high-quality content on almost every major topic in modern physics. The channel has organized many series into playlists: general relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology. Start with a playlist in your area rather than browsing randomly.
MinutePhysics — Fast, Clear Introductions to Physics Concepts
MinutePhysics (Henry Reich) does what the name suggests: short (usually 3-6 minutes), animated explanations of physics concepts. The animation style is hand-drawn whiteboard, the pacing is fast, and the content is calibrated for people who want to understand a concept quickly rather than deeply.
The channel's strengths are accessibility and production quality. Reich explains quantum superposition, special relativity, and thermodynamics clearly enough that a high-school student can follow. The whiteboard animation makes abstract concepts more visually graspable than they would be in a talking-head format.
Best use: introductions and quick refreshers. Watch a MinutePhysics video to get your bearings on a concept before going deeper with PBS Space Time or a university lecture. Do not rely on MinutePhysics as your primary source for any topic you are seriously studying — the brevity that makes it accessible also means depth is limited.
Notable videos:
- "How to understand the image of a black hole" (timely explanation of Event Horizon Telescope imaging)
- The special relativity series
- "What is quantum mechanics actually about?"
Sixty Symbols — Physicists Talking About Physics
Sixty Symbols (Brady Haran, the same producer behind Numberphile) takes a different approach from all the channels above: rather than a polished scripted explanation, it puts working physicists on camera and lets them talk about topics in their own words.
The result is unpolished but authentic. You hear how physicists actually think and talk about their subject — the uncertainty, the debate, the "well, it depends how you look at it." This is valuable precisely because it is different from the cleaned-up explanations of more produced channels. Physics as actually practiced by physicists contains more ambiguity, disagreement, and unresolved debate than most educational content conveys.
Key sub-topics covered: varies widely by guest and episode. The channel has covered astrophysics, particle physics, condensed matter, quantum mechanics, and laboratory physics from a practitioner's perspective.
Who it is for:
- Physics students who want to understand how physicists think, not just what physics says
- Anyone interested in the culture and practice of physics research
- General audiences who find the talking-heads-with-experts format more engaging than scripted explainers
Not a structured learning resource: you cannot build a curriculum from Sixty Symbols. It is a window into physics culture, not a course.
MIT OpenCourseWare — The Full University Physics Curriculum, Free
MIT OpenCourseWare provides recordings of actual MIT physics courses. For self-learners building a rigorous physics education, this is the backbone of any serious curriculum.
Walter Lewin: 8.01 Classical Mechanics. Walter Lewin's mechanics lectures are among the most celebrated physics lectures ever recorded. Lewin is known for his demonstrations — he would swing a wrecking ball toward his own head to demonstrate conservation of momentum, set up a pendulum that swings for an entire lecture to demonstrate simple harmonic motion. The content is classical mechanics at MIT freshman level, and the instruction quality is exceptional. Note: Lewin's teaching excellence is independent of unrelated controversies about his personal conduct.
8.02 Electricity and Magnetism. Lewin's E&M lectures follow the same pattern as 8.01 with equally impressive demonstrations. The course covers electric fields, magnetic fields, Faraday's law, and electromagnetic waves — the foundation for everything in electronics, optics, and modern physics.
8.03 Physics III: Vibrations and Waves. Waves underpin quantum mechanics, optics, acoustics, and electromagnetism. This course — less famous than Lewin's, but high-quality — covers the mathematics and physics of wave phenomena.
8.04 Quantum Physics I (Peter Hagelstein). Introductory quantum mechanics at MIT undergraduate level. This is the entry point to quantum mechanics done properly — with the Schrödinger equation, potential wells, harmonic oscillators, and the hydrogen atom.
Advanced courses on OCW: 8.05 (Quantum Physics II), 8.033 (Relativity), 8.044 (Statistical Physics). These are graduate-entry courses with full problem sets and exams available.
For the official curriculum from the American Institute of Physics, which provides useful context on physics education standards, see the AIP Physics Education resources.
Who MIT OCW physics is for: self-learners who want to build a complete, rigorous physics education at university level. The combination of Lewin's 8.01/8.02 and Hagelstein's 8.04 plus the associated problem sets gives you the equivalent of a full freshman-sophomore physics sequence.
How Does Veritasium Relate to PBS Space Time? Is There a Progression?
Yes, there is a rough level progression among physics YouTube channels, and understanding it prevents the common mistake of mixing channels that operate at different levels within the same study session.
Introductory/Conceptual tier:
- MinutePhysics (very accessible, very short, limited depth)
- SciShow Space (general science audience, accessible framing)
- Kurzgesagt (beautiful production, very broad audience, limited technical content)
Intermediate/Rigorous Popular Science tier:
- Veritasium (strong conceptual depth, PhD-researcher perspective, broad topics)
- Sixty Symbols (practitioner perspective, wide topic range)
- SmarterEveryDay (applied physics, experimental focus)
Advanced/University-Adjacent tier:
- PBS Space Time (graduate-adjacent, assumes undergraduate background)
- MIT OCW (actual university course recordings with problem sets)
Research-Adjacent tier:
- Physics talks uploaded by universities directly (CERN lectures, Perimeter Institute public lectures, Kavli Foundation seminars)
The progression is not a strict prerequisite chain — you can watch PBS Space Time before taking any formal physics and understand much of it. But your comprehension depth and the questions you are able to ask will be qualitatively different if you have the prior coursework.
Can You Learn Physics Seriously Without University Enrollment?
This is the question self-learners ask most often about physics, and it deserves a direct answer: yes, with significant qualification.
The formal mathematics and mechanics of physics — classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics — can be learned independently using MIT OCW lectures, the associated problem sets, and good textbooks. Griffiths for electromagnetism and quantum mechanics, Kleppner and Kolenkow for mechanics, Kittel for statistical mechanics — these are the same books used in university courses and they are available. Pairing them with the corresponding MIT OCW lectures gives you genuine university-level instruction at no cost.
What you cannot replicate without enrollment: laboratory work, research opportunities, and the mentored problem-solving that comes from having a professor review your work on difficult problems. For conceptual and theoretical physics, self-directed learning is entirely viable. For experimental physics or research, institutional access is important.
The practical recommendation for self-learners: build the mathematical prerequisites first (learn calculus from YouTube, then linear algebra, then differential equations), then work through MIT OCW 8.01 and 8.02 with complete problem sets, then proceed to 8.04 for quantum mechanics. This is a multi-year project done seriously, but it gives you a genuine understanding of physics rather than a collection of conceptual impressions from documentary-style videos.
What About Astrophysics and Cosmology?
Astrophysics and cosmology receive disproportionate attention in popular physics YouTube because the subject matter is visually spectacular and emotionally resonant. The practical issue for self-learners: most astrophysics popularization is very far from the actual mathematics and physics.
PBS Space Time is the exception. The channel's cosmology content is technically serious — it discusses the Friedmann equations, the CMB, inflationary models, and structure formation with enough mathematical detail to be useful for someone with undergraduate physics. Start there for serious astrophysics.
Crash Course Astronomy (Phil Plait) covers the full survey of astrophysics topics at a level accessible to high school students and non-physicists. It is a good survey but does not prepare you for technical study.
Cool Worlds (David Kipping, Columbia University) covers exoplanet detection and characterization at a genuinely technical level — Kipping is a working researcher and discusses statistical methods, transit photometry, and radial velocity in detail. Niche but excellent for anyone interested in exoplanet science specifically.
How to Take Notes on Physics Videos That Actually Help You Later
Physics videos — especially at the conceptual level of Veritasium and PBS Space Time — create a common false confidence problem. The explanation is clear while you are watching. The physical reasoning makes sense. Then you try to explain the same concept to someone else and realize you have far less than you thought.
This happens because conceptual understanding and retrievable knowledge are not the same thing. Understanding Veritasium's explanation of entropy in the moment is passive comprehension. Being able to explain the second law of thermodynamics accurately from memory, including why it is statistical rather than absolute, is a different cognitive achievement.
For physics video notes: immediately after watching, close the browser and write down everything you just understood in your own words. Do not use the channel's language — use your own. Where you get stuck or find your explanation vague, you have found the gap. Go back to that specific segment and watch it again.
For the complete system, see the take notes from YouTube lecture guide and YouTube to notes complete guide. For a structured approach to using active recall for physics specifically — including how to turn conceptual physics explanations into testable questions — see active recall techniques.
Physics YouTube at its best — PBS Space Time explaining Hawking radiation, Veritasium walking through a beautifully designed misconception experiment, Walter Lewin swinging a wrecking ball — is genuinely excellent instruction. The constraint is that watching it is not the same as knowing it. Build the note-taking and review practices alongside the channel subscriptions, and these resources become a real physics education.
Import your physics lecture notes into a structured review system automatically. Try Notiq free at notiq.study — works with any YouTube lecture or video transcript.
