Awesome Etc

Go deep inside of numerous microscopic worlds with this fascinating video from Sci-Inspi. It compiles through-the-lens footage of tiny living things from a paramecium to a fruit fly’s eye to a tardigrade, accompanied by a soothing guitar soundtrack. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out part two.

3D illustrator Jared Owen loves to take things apart to show how they work. In this video, he looks at the mechanisms inside of two old-school mechanical scales to see how they use springs, gears, and plates to measure how much something weighs. It’s all about something called Hooke’s Law.

At best, a dull knife is inefficient, and at worst, it doesn’t work at all. Work Sharp sells a line of great sharpening tools, from a classic bench stone to a precision, powered sharpener that can put a new edge on knives, scissors, and even an axe head with the push of a button. Everyday Carry has a roundup of Work Sharp’s best models.

What If explores the hypothetical question of what would happen if you were like Ant-Man, and could shrink yourself down to whatever size you wanted. As you descend from the size of a frog’s egg to the size of an atom, would things be totally awesome at that scale, or absolutely horrifying?

We’re not sure why, but the Eiffel 65 song Blue (Da Ba Dee) seems to be having a bit of a renaissance. Now, musician Charles Berthoud has given the track his “the hardest song in the world” treatment, ramping up the complexity of this relatively simple Europop track to Level 9999 – and turning himself into a member of Blue Man Group along the way.

The Clash’s London Calling is arguably one of the greatest albums ever. In terms of its messages and music, it’s incredible. Ieatmdf extracted the vocals from every song, giving us an amazingly fresh perspective on the Brits’ 1979 punk record. It’s hard to decide which is our favorite, but we’re leaning toward Rudie Can’t Fail and Spanish Bombs.

In 2016, Paweł Zadrożniak turned his Floppotron electromechanical orchestra loose on Europe’s 1986 hit The Final Countdown. He’s revisited the tune with his much more powerful Floppotron 3.0, a system that’s powerful enough to load all the diskettes from Microsoft Office 97 Standard simultaneously with plenty of room to spare.

“What happens when you try to cut a saw blade with a saw blade?” The Hydraulic Press Channel rigged up a pair of angle grinders with circular saw blades, then pushed them into each other while spinning to see how they would hold up. Under no circumstance should you try anything like this at home.

Playing pool requires skill and precision more than brute force. But that didn’t stop I did a thing from building the world’s most powerful pool cue. To motivate his killer pool stick, he built a mechanism that smacks the cue ball with the explosive power of a gun ammo blank. It’s terrifyingly potent – enough to split a cue ball in half.

Mehdi from ElectroBOOM demonstrates the relationship between voltage and amperage by reducing the output voltage of a microwave transformer to the point that it produces massive amounts of current. Expect lots of buzzing noises, noxious smoke, math equations, and melted objects along the way.

After showing off his square-wheeled bicycle, maker, The Q is back with another bike with oddly-shaped geometry. This model features triangular wheels with a slight curve. The trick to maintaining contact without huge bumps is a flexible suspension and a pair of conveyor belts that press against the tires as he pedals.

Hand Tool Rescue previously created a unique tabletop vice with jaws that used a fractal design to grip irregular objects. He came across a 1913 patent for a fractal device – a chair that uses rotating sections to adapt to the shape of someone sitting on it. He collaborated with Josh Fick to create the metal parts with a fiber laser.

Sit back and enjoy this 14-minute video from a bread factory in Korea, where ingredients are combined, then kneaded into dough and baked in industrial ovens. Then the freshly-baked loaves of white and chestnut bread glide along an assembly line, tumble out of their pans and head to the cooling racks before slicing.

Like many things on the internet, the cotton candy gun exists solely because nobody had done it before. Kevin Kohler, aka The Backyard Scientist experimented with various overly-complex methods to fire a molten mixture of sugar, water, and food coloring, ultimately realizing that the simplest approach is often the best.

Artist and ex-physicist Julian Voss-Andreae is known for making sculptures that seem to disappear as you approach them directly from the front or rear. He was commissioned by Max_LA to create this see-through astronaut with an even more effective design thanks to its mirrored slices. The finished piece will be installed on a granite slab over water.

This laser-engraved stainless steel card is packed with reference information for scientists. Its front side has the periodic table of the elements, along with rulers and a protractor, while its back offers up quick access to important constants, formulas, and conversions. There are also versions for chemistry, engineering, and physics.

The 2024 Toyota Tacoma is getting a rugged new variant. The Tacoma Trailhunter is a factory-developed overlanding config driven by an i-FORCE MAX hybrid powertrain with 326 hp and 465 lb-ft. of torque. It has a lifted frame, off-road suspension, all-terrain tires, MOLLE mounting points, an air intake snorkel, skid plates, a high-output AC inverter, and more.

Ammunition blanks are often used in stunt work and military practice exercises. While they don’t fire the same metal projectile as a regular bullet, they can cause serious damage at close range. The Slow Mo Guys shot footage of blanks being fired at various objects, revealing incredible details at speeds up to 82,000 fps.

(PG-13: Language) Whether you love or hate Howard Stern, there’s one thing you can say for sure – his brash personality and distinctive New York accent are unmistakable. Howard recently invited impressionist Matt Friend onto his SiriusXM show and knocked it out of the park with his spot-on impression of the radio host. Close your eyes and you won’t be able to tell who’s who.

There are many projectors that use a laser diode to display big images. But they generally have a very short range. Ben Makes Everything used a bright green laser to project images that can be seen from a much greater distance. His design relies on an old hard drive to create a persistence of vision illusion and can only display primitive text and numbers.

There are much easier ways to split a log than with a 150-ton hydraulic press, but we’re not sure there’s any more entertaining method. The guys from the Hydraulic Press Channel start out trying to cut through their wooden target with knives, then bring their A-game with a custom tool made from four axes assembled into an “X” shape.

Blower fans use a spinning metal cage to move large amounts of air. See how a factory makes these fans in this video from All Process of World. At the core of the operation is a machine that accepts a pair of rings and curved metal blades, then bends the ends to hold them in place. The outer housing is assembled by hand using a rivet gun and power screwdriver.

Getting off the ground in an airplane takes a reasonable amount of speed. Still, there’s a substantial difference in each plane’s speed potential. This fascinating video from Red Side compares the speeds of all kinds of aircraft, from The Wright Brothers’ famed flyer to Mach-3.4 military jets like the SR-71 Blackbird and NASA’s rocket-powered experimental X-43.