Tag: video

The Big Snit (Short)

This wonderfully wacky animation film is a look at two simultaneous conflicts, the macrocosm of global nuclear war and the microcosm of a domestic quarrel, and how each conflict is resolved. Presented with warmth and unexpectedly off-the-wall humor, the film is open to a multitude of interpretations.

DIY Squeeze Box – Observe Mountain Building – Eric Muller

Build. Observe. Play in the sand and dirt. Making your own easy-to-build squeeze box is fun for lots of different reasons, including educational ones. This Science Snacks video with Eric Muller from The Exploratorium provides instructions for building the box and experimenting with faults and folds:Your Squeeze Box replicates geologic structures found in areas that have undergone or are undergoing compressional forces, such as regions near…… Continue reading DIY Squeeze Box – Observe Mountain Building – Eric Muller

The Coanda Effect – Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations

Fluids flowing near a surface tend to follow the shape of the surface. Using Schlieren optics, we can see this behavior. It is known as the Coanda Effect and its explanation depends on viscosity, the frictional forces between the molecules of a fluid (be it liquid or gas). The Coanda effect is the culprit behind many everyday incidents…… Continue reading The Coanda Effect – Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations

The Danish Poet (Short) – Torill Kove – 2006

Winner of the 2007 Oscar® for Best Short Animation Can we trace the chain of events that leads to our own birth? Is our existence just coincidence? Do little things matter? The narrator (Liv Ullmann) of The Danish Poet considers these questions as we follow Kasper, a poet whose creative well has run dry, on…… Continue reading The Danish Poet (Short) – Torill Kove – 2006

One Town, Four Elements – Tom Scott

There’s a small town in Sweden that has not one, not two, not three, but four elements named after it. Those elements–yttrium(Y), terbium (Tb), erbium (Er), and ytterbium (Yb)–were discovered by part-time chemist Carl Axel Arrhenius in the gadolinite, a black stone that’s also referred to as ytterbite, in Ytterby Mine on the Stockholm archipelago. From wikipedia:In addition, three other lanthanides, holmium (Ho, named after Stockholm), thulium (Tm, named after Thule, a mythic analog of Scandinavia), and gadolinium (Gd, after the…… Continue reading One Town, Four Elements – Tom Scott

What Counts as a Mountain? – Tom Scott

Mountains: super tall, rocky landforms that rise high above the surrounding environment, much higher than hills. We might draw one as a single peak like Mount Fuji, or as a zig zag line of peaks representing a mountain range. Mount Everest (also known as Sagarmāthā and Chomolungma) is Earth’s highest peak above sea level, but it’s also surrounded by tall mountains in…… Continue reading What Counts as a Mountain? – Tom Scott

Elemental Burning – Beauty of Science

Envisioning Chemistry: Elemental Burning from Beauty of Science on Vimeo.WARNING: A bit loud, so headphone users be warned.What happens to carbon when it combusts? What does sodium look like while it burns? In Elemental Burning, creator Yan Liang’s team films the combustion of five elements: carbon, sodium, phosphorus, magnesium, and sulfur… and then see what compounds they change into afterward.The video is another…… Continue reading Elemental Burning – Beauty of Science

Tinker Friday – Dina A. Amin

What’s inside an old optical mouse? How many pieces are they made from? How might they be reimagined? Cairo-based product designer dina A. Amin made a hobby from these questions, turning it into a delightful side project that she calls Tinker Friday. She writes:Every Friday I pick a random “about to be thrown away” product (from my growing collection of…… Continue reading Tinker Friday – Dina A. Amin