Awesome Learning

Scratching records on a turntable takes a bit of practice to even get the basics right. In this video from Wired, DJ Shortkut shows us just how far you can take the art of turntablism by gradually ramping up the difficulty level. He does a great job explaining each technique, so it serves as an excellent tutorial too.

Bowling has been around in one form or another for roughly 7000 years. Veritasium explores some of the significant technological advancements that the seemingly simple sport has experienced in the last few decades, along with the physics at play in the design of bowling balls, pins, and alleys.

City dwellers take elevators for granted. But without these engineered marvels, we’d be stuck climbing staircases and probably not have skyscrapers. Illustrator and educator Jared Owen shares another informative 3D animation explaining the inner workings of these metal boxes we trust with our lives on an everyday basis.

While there have been flags associated with Antarctica, they have never been official. That’s because Antarctica isn’t a country. CGP Grey explains how this enormous land mass is dotted with scientific outposts representing numerous countries and how it ended up with its various flags over the years.

Gold, silver, and platinum are just a few of the 118 elements which appear on the Periodic Table. Word nerd RobWords explains the etymology of some common chemical names, why their symbols don’t always line up with their full names, and how to pronounce the word “aluminum” once and for all… maybe.

From his horns to his red suit to his pitchfork, we all have a pretty specific image in our minds of what The Devil looks like. In this TED-Ed video by educator and Episcopal priest Brian A. Pavlac, he delves into the origins of the ultimate evil dude and his various depictions over the years.

Most humans won’t venture deeper than a basement or tunnel, but you could dig 7917.5 miles before you came out on the other side of Earth. On your way, you’ll visit the crust, lithosphere, asthenosphere, mantle, and outer and inner cores. This pixel art video from Posit Pixel explores what you might see on your journey.

Learn about circuits, soldering, and writing code with this duo of CircuitMess electronic music makers. The Synthia is a digital beat maker and sampler, while the Jay-D is a miniature DJ mixer with audio effects, built-in speakers, and a sweet LED light show. Grab the bundle for a special price in The Awesomer Shop.

Did you know that the sunlight you’re looking at now is 8-minutes old? Or that the most common maps completely distort the relative size of countries? Mental Floss Editor-in-Chief Erin McCarthy digs into these and plethora of other facts about our planet in this extensive trivia video.

When automakers want to test cars for longevity, they put them on rollers and shakers to simulate long-term driving. But how do you test how long roads last? Tom Scott takes us to a pavement testing facility in France that uses a rapidly spinning machine called a fatigue carousel to rapidly imitate decades of road use.

With its mix of stir-fried noodles, protein, peanuts, veggies, and zesty condiments, pad thai is one delicious dish. Mental Floss series Food History delves into the relatively short history of the popular dish. While it was touted as Thailand’s national dish, its ingredients and origins came from other countries.

Is Mercury the hottest planet? Is the Earth a perfect sphere? Does Uranus smell bad? Mental Floss host Justin Dodd takes us on a mission to space for a look at things you thought you knew about our solar system’s planets, and probably had wrong. The bottom line, most other planets sound like pretty miserable places to live.

The ByteBoi is a great way to learn about electronics and have fun doing it. The kit includes all the parts needed to build your own handheld gaming console and works with Make Code Arcade to create and load games. It’s also available with a complete tool kit for assembly.

These days, the leading causes of death in the U.S. are heart disease, cancer, and COVID-19. MinuteEarth explains the most common ways people perished around the globe in the past. While we’ve improved our life expectancy in many ways, there are still some long-standing killers we have yet to defeat.

Penrose tiles are a kind of arrangement in which polygons create patterns that never repeat. Minutephysics teamed up with Aatish Bhatia to explain the grid that underlies Penrose tiles and the math and geometry that prevents repetition. You can play with Penrose and similar patterns on Bhatia’s Pattern Collider.

Ants are fascinating creatures. While some may battle other colonies for supremacy, there are kinds of ants that enslave others. Kurzgesagt explains how Polyergus ants raid colonies and force their offspring to do their bidding until they die. They’ve become so reliant on their slaves that they can no longer care for themselves.

The airport code LAX stands for Los Angeles International, which makes sense. But why is Nashville International BNA? Or Newark International EWR? CGP Gray does his best to untangle the IATA three-letter naming conventions for airports around the globe and the further mess that the FAA made of US names.

Jared Owen has made some pretty amazing 3D illustrations to teach us how things work, but his digital model of the Titanic is the most awe-inspiring yet. This incredible video shows us virtually every detail of the ill-fated ship from the outside and in – deck-by-deck, and part-by-part.

When it comes to watching our diet, counting calories is one of the most common methods of tracking food intake. AsapSCIENCE explains how the nutritional composition of foods, our individual metabolisms, genetics, and microbiomes affect how we process food, impacting our health far more than calories alone.

People taking photos of themselves blew up with the advent of smartphones. But the first occurrence of what we now refer to as selfies happened way before the 21st century. Michael from Vsauce digs deep to unwind the origins and evolution of self-portraits in this informative history video.

Are you an arachnophobe? Then run as far away from this video as you can. But if you can handle your spiders, then click play on What If’s creepy crawly clip that envisions a terrifying world in which our eight-legged friends are as big as us. Get ready for a big bowl of nope.

Digital images typically have three color channels – red, green, and blue, and sometimes a fourth, Alpha channel, which defines transparency. Captain Disillusion the ways they can be created, and how the improper use of the Alpha channel can mean the difference between a seamless composite image and disaster.

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