3Blue1Brown: Differential Equations: study plan and how long it takes
The 3Blue1Brown playlist is 8 videos and 3.3 hours long. Here's how long it takes at different paces, a week-by-week schedule built from the real videos, and a planner that turns it into your own daily plan.
8 videos · 3.3 hours · 3Blue1Brown
3Blue1Brown's differential equations series is a visual tour: what differential equations are, partial differential equations and the heat equation, Fourier series (from heat flow to drawing with circles), Euler's formula in physics, Laplace transforms and why they're useful, and raising e to the power of a matrix.
Eight videos, about three hours, best watched alongside a formal course.
Who it's for: Students taking differential equations who want intuition for what the techniques mean.
How long does it take?
The full playlist is 3.3 hours across 8 videos. Here's roughly how many days that is at different daily watch times and speeds, counting video time only:
| Daily time | At 1x | At 1.5x | At 2x |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 min a day | 7 days | 5 days | 4 days |
| 1 h a day | 4 days | 3 days | 2 days |
| 2 h a day | 2 days | 2 days | 1 days |
Make your own schedule
The playlist link is already filled in. Press Plan, set how much time you have each day and your speed, and you'll get a day-by-day schedule with a finish date and a calendar file. It reads the live playlist, so new videos are included.
Week-by-week schedule
A sample plan at 30 minutes a day and normal speed, using whole videos so none is split across days. That's 2 weeks in total. For a different pace, start date or speed, use the planner above.
Week 1Videos 1–7 · 2h 50m
Day 1 · 27m
- 1Differential equations, a tourist's guide | DE127m
Day 2 · 18m
- 2But what is a partial differential equation? | DE218m
Day 3 · 14m
- 3Solving the heat equation | DE314m
Day 4 · 25m
- 4But what is a Fourier series? From heat flow to drawing with circles | DE425m
Day 5 · 28m
- 5The Physics of Euler's Formula | Laplace Transform Prelude28m
Day 6 · 35m
- 6But what is a Laplace Transform?35m
Day 7 · 23m
- 7Why Laplace transforms are so useful23m
Week 2Video 8 · 27m
Day 8 · 27m
- 8How (and why) to raise e to the power of a matrix | DE627m
Tips for finishing
- Watch Essence of Calculus and Essence of Linear Algebra first if you haven't; this series leans on both.
- The Fourier series video is a highlight. Give it a sitting of its own.