Accessible Ways to Communicate Substantial Ideas: The Higgs Boson explained six different ways

What is the Higgs Boson?  What is the Higgs Field?

To ask another question, what is the best way to explain them?  Browsing through You Tube in my quest to discover informative videos that would help me understand more about the Higgs Boson, I found and watched the following six clips.  Some are informative and fun to watch, some are fun to watch but not really that informative, and some are informative but boring to watch as a you-tube video.

Let's go through them all and see how these videos portrayed their knowledge, and see if that medium was the best choice for helping us to understand what the Higgs Boson and Higgs Field really are.

(1) White Board

In my opinion, this video was the most clear in explaining what the Higgs Field was.  This video used its graphics, as simple as they were, to their maximum strengths.  For example, although the cartoons were stick-figures, the creator of this video made them move and fly across the screen, which was helpful in showing his or her point.  Humor also helped the person watching to become more engaged in the video, "swiss cheese," as opposed to the narrator just talking on and on, which enhanced this video's watchability.  For the explanation of how the Higgs Field gives things mass, you can just watch from 1:18 to 2:11, but the whole thing is well done.  Even the background music added mood to this piece, giving it a light, springy mood.

(2) Computer Art

This example combines the best of white board presentations with the best of written words on the screen.  This video doesn't put up as many words on the screen as a usual lyric video, which is a strength.  The only words that appear are main points of the arguments the narrators are giving, and sometimes the words on the screen paraphrase or put a different perspective on what was actually spoke, giving the watcher a chance to interpret the information in many more ways than just listening to the talking would, or watching a non-lyric video would. For example, "pure energy" at 2:57 is further explained to be "a force-carrying boson." How the Higgs Field effects objects is explained from 3:29 to 4:47, while the other parts of the video delve more into the background of what the Higgs Boson is, as well as ways we could discover its existence.

(3) Cartoon Illustration

This video pulls out all the stops when it comes to animation.  The main explanation begins at 0:47.  No more white board drawings here, the characters, while still cartoons, have emotions and can move and interact with other cartoon people.  This wouldn't be that exciting, except for the fact that that is what makes this video work.  The whole premise of this video relies on the interactions of the characters and sometimes even their emotions (poor tax-collector).  Thus, this video passes with flying colors at incorporating just the right amount of detail to get its point across.  Any more detail, say using live actors, and the watcher might have become distracted from the overall message.  The beginning (the animation before 0:47) is also very well done, and while a little bit confusing (as the video points out itself), the animation draws the watcher in.  And the recap at 2:32 ties the whole video together.

(4) Physical Live Example

In less than two minutes, this video is able to explain most of what the previous videos needed about three or more to do.  There's no animation here, just a scientist talking with a news anchor.  But the point comes across just as clearly (maybe even more so) in this video as the others.  While there's less explanation about what mass is, like in the first, or different ways of discovering the Higgs Boson, like in the second, this video keeps it short and sweet and to the point, just like any story on the news would have to be.  Thus, this video keeps to its form: it's on the news, and news stories are generally short and try to get to the point as fast as possible.  So it's very easy to watch, and it's also quite entertaining.  Watching the scientist throw the photon across the room at 1:27 had to be the best part. :)

(5) News Report

Okay, so here's the point where the videos started to get pretty boring.  While both this one and the last video are both news reports, this one is a lot more dry.  I believe that it's because the emphasis was more on the person speaking than on a practical example of the Higgs Boson principle, like videos two, three, and four had.  Plus, I'm not sure if this Michio Kaku actually explains what the Higgs Boson is.  He talks more about its implications, although I'm not sure if we really can look before the Big Bang.  Although parallel universes would be cool, this clip doesn't answer the question that it's supposed to: "What is a Higgs Boson?"  The closest answer I got was at 0:22, where he calls the Higgs Boson the cause of the Big Bang.

(6) Talking with Pictures Popping up

This guy talks pretty slow, compared to everyone else in the previous videos.  He finally gets to the actual question at 2:33.  But does this video work, especially the graphics?  I think that they aren't enough to really catch and keep the attention of the audience.  Maybe if the narrator was really interesting it might make up for it, but the problem with the way this video was complied is that you have both boring pictures and a boring narrator, which proves a lethal combination.  And there's a major problem that the narrator makes at the end of the video; he claims that people say that the Higgs Boson is what created life.  Um, nobody ever said that; all we said was that the Higgs Boson created matter.  And not even that, it's the Higgs Field that creates matter.  No one, to my knowledge, has ever said that the Higgs Boson is the particle that creates life.  Anyway, the overall effect of this video is less than satisfactory.  Over five minutes of talking slowly with no animation tends to put people to sleep.  But maybe some of you disagree, and think that this clip was well made.  If so, please share and tell me the positive aspects of this video.  But in my opinion, it is the weakest of these six.

Oh, and if anyone wants a random advertisement at the end of their quantum physics video, you should start watching this video at 5:54. :)

So there you have it, six videos, all explaining the same principle, but all in very different ways.  I'd have to say that numbers 1, 3, and 4 were the most helpful to me, number 2 was above average, and numbers 5 and 6 weren't all that helpful or interesting in helping me to understand more about the Higgs Boson and Higgs Field.  But perhaps you have other opinions.  Which video styles were the most effective to help you learn and why?