Awesome Etc

Joerg Sprave is known for his inventive slingshot designs. He’s also into unique weapons. In this video, he shows off a neat custom knife he built with a rack-and-pinion mechanism. It pops open and closes quickly with the flick of a lever. He’s sending the prototype to a professional knifemaker to see if it can be refined and put into production.

Sometimes, the best place to hide valuables isn’t under lock and key, but someplace thieves would never think to look. Crafty Panda shows off a neat idea for a pull-out safe that hides beneath a floor tile. It requires cutting a big hole in your floor, but once it’s installed, you’d never know it was there.

After losing his left eye to cancer as a child, Brian Stanley started wearing prosthetic eyeballs. More recently, he turned lemons into lemonade by fabricating a series of light-up eyeballs, including one that’s bright enough to be used as a flashlight. He’s also made a titanium cyborg eye that makes him look like a Terminator.

When you think about something being microscopic, it all seems the same size from our perspective. But this video from RED SIDE cleverly demonstrates the vast differences in the size of things we can’t see with the naked eye, from the tiniest atom to the relatively gargantuan amoeba. Also, there are way too many viruses.

Boker’s pocket knife combines two of the most useful everyday tools in one. It packs a 2.76″ drop-point blade and a 3-tine fork, both made from Sandvik 12C27 steel. Its handle scales are matte black G-10, which provides excellent grip. It also includes a reversible pocket clip.

Anyone can grow their own crystals with just a few household chemicals. Photographer Jens Heidler connected a Sony mirrorless camera to a Motic Panthera microscope and recorded a number of fascinating time-lapse sequences showing how crystals grow. He grew the colorful crystals using a combination of beta-alanine, vitamin C, water, and isopropyl alcohol.

For dental health, it’s important to brush your teeth a couple of times each day. If you’ve ever been curious how the toothbrush you use came to be, check out this video. Process X takes us inside the Lapis factory in Japan to see how they injection mold plastic pellets into toothbrush handles, then attach and prepare nylon bristles in the most satisfying way.

We love us some gummy bears. There’s something so perfect about their chewy texture, fruity flavors, and adorable form that makes them special. Mental Floss series Food History looks back at the origins and evolution of the tasty candy treat, which first took their bear-shaped form in the 1920s in Germany.

Have you ever wondered where our moon came from? Melodysheep’s captivating short film explores some of most noteworthy theories of its origin, each hypothesized because of similarities between lunar rocks and elements found here on Earth. Narrated by planetary scientist Dr. Sarah T. Stewart.

An assassin’s teapot is a trick vessel that was designed to let its user serve a safe drink to themselves and a deadly one to their victim. And while you should never do such a thing, it’s fascinating to see how one works. Science educator Steve Mould shows us the physics at work, and inspired us to use one of these to serve drinks at cocktail parties.

The Life Art channel shows how to put the moon on your wall by sculpting a cement relief of the lunar surface. The artist starts by filling a circular area with a sand-cement mixture, building up an outer ring for depth, and then using a trowel to create a rough texture and add craters with its handle. The addition of LED lights makes the shadows pop.

One of the biggest pains with measuring is reading those tiny, unlabeled hash marks. Victor’s rulers solve the problem by placing text markings every 1/16-inch along one edge and every 5 mm on the other, with staggered 1 mm lines for easy counting. They come in 12″ or 18″ lengths in plastic or stainless steel with a cork backing.

Think car engines are impressive? Watch and have your mind blown by the enormous B&W 2000 8-cylinder diesel engine as it starts up and its massive pistons move. HD1080ide posted footage of this engineering marvel that was the world’s largest engine from 1933 until the 1960s. It’s now permanently installed at Denmark’s Diesel House.

The Mininch Tool Pen and Tool Pen Mini are back with an improved design. Both pocket drivers offer interchangeable bits that can be swapped like those Pop-A-Point pencils. The new models have an upgraded spring and barrel design for smooth bit switching and come in anodized black, hard anodized black, and stonewashed finishes.

Large groups of people can be intimidating and occasionally dangerous. But why are some crowds well-behaved and others chaotic? Wendover Production digs into the science and psychology at work when it comes to crowd behavior. Competitiveness, stress, and crowd density have a lot to do with the worst-case scenarios.

Boston’s Bridge and Harbor handcrafts accessories from leather and wool. Among their wares are these motel-style key fobs sewn from leather reclaimed from vintage footballs, baseball gloves, boxing speed bags, and hockey goalie gloves. They also make unique wallets from the same kinds of materials.

Musician and maker Nicolas Bras makes all sorts of wild and inventive musical instruments. In this video, he shows how he used a bunch of PVC pipes to make the most complicated wind instrument ever. The 2-octave chromatic bass pan flute has 30 pipes and is held together with plastic zip ties.

If you’re the head of a big corporation, you can’t be bothered to share an elevator with other people. At the Baťa Skyscraper in Zlín, Czechia, the company’s owner had a special elevator built that carries his office to any floor. Tom Scott got a tour of this architecturally significant building and took a ride in the office that Jan Antonín Baťa never got to use.

Timex time traveled back to the 1970s for inspiration when designing its Celestial watch. The 36mm stainless steel watch features a retro-fabulous style with a gold-on-blue night sky face with sparkly crystal stars and a stretchy expanding metal band. It comes in a flashy goldtone or a subdued blue model.

Since they’re made from plastic, LEGO bricks probably don’t stand a chance against a 150-ton hydraulic press, right? They’re stronger than you might think. Lauri from the Hydraulic Press Channel shows exactly how much force the ABS plastic building blocks can endure when assembled. Distributing the pressure across a larger surface area certainly helps.

The opposing forces of magnets can produce a tremendous amount of energy, and can even be used to levitate and move trains along a track. In this clip from Magnetic Games, he demonstrates these physics at work, though on a smaller scale using a bunch off-the-shelf neodymium magnets he got from Supermagnete.

Art of Engineering explains how the tall construction cranes used to build skyscrapers are able to increase their own height. The process known as “climbing” a tower crane requires precision and patience and can be incredibly dangerous if not done properly.

This titanium EDC accessory is excellent for outdoor activities. The eye-shaped gadget helps keep you going in the right direction with a liquid-filled magnetic compass, while its fold-out loupe helps you read small text on maps or can even help you start a fire with the power of the sun.