Awesome Videos

Musician Bonnin Gabriel connected a hurdy-gurdy to the spinning wheel from a vintage Singer sewing machine to maximize its playing speed. In this first clip, he shows off just how badass the thing sounds with a performance of Daft Punk’s Aerodynamic. Bonnin has also posted some hurdy-gurdy tracks by The White Stripes, DJ Snake, and Die Antwoord.

Every time we’ve tried making something with one of those 3D drawing pens, we end up with a messy blob of plastic. But with enough patience, effort, and skill, it’s possible to make incredible things. Momandeum shows how they created a unique 2-door Porsche Taycan model using a Sanago 3D pen. It took about 40 days to complete the sculpture.

The refrigeration used to make most ice cream has only been around since the early 20th century. But as TED-Ed points out, societies have been making frozen desserts for centuries. The earliest examples date back to the first century in locations as far and wide as Italy, China, and India, but ice cream as we know it didn’t emerge until the late 1600s.

A while back, Make It Extreme built a monowheel cycle. That machine was powered by a gas engine from a dirt bike. They’re back with a new version of the funky one-wheeler that runs on battery power. To drive its outer wheel, they used electric motors swiped from a hoverboard. It looks cool but needs a better place to put your legs while driving.

We’ve seen how a factory makes pencils; now, learn how they help undo your mistakes by making erasers. ProcessX toured the Iwako factory in Japan to see how they crank out millions of fun and fanciful erasers shaped like animals, food, and other objects. After designing a 3D model, they injection mold the plastic, remove the sprues, and hand-assemble the parts.

The Clavemusicum Omnitonum Modulis Diatonicis Cromaticis et Enarmonicis is a microtonal harpsichord that can play diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic melodies. Musician Georg Vogel demonstrates its unusual sound with an excerpt from Chick Corea’s You’re Everything, played on a modern replica of the 17th-century instrument. More here.

What you’re looking at is a model of a KTM Duke 390 motorcycle. If it was made from plastic or 3D printed, it would be impressive. But this tiny replica was made entirely from paper harvested from cookie boxes. YouTuber Paper Modelling shows how they created the mini bike with such precision. Even the wheel spokes and chain links are crafted from paper.

Art collective teamLab has interactive installations around the world. For their Borderless project, they created a series of light sculptures that immerse visitors in brilliant beams of light and colorful projections. Versions of the installation are in Tokyo, Japan, and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with another location coming to Hamburg, Germany, in 2025.

The 1983 New Order song Blue Monday incorporated plenty of synthesized sounds. Polaroids of the Pyramids thought it might be fun to play the track entirely on those lo-fi Casio synthesizers of the era. They recorded this multi-track rendition on instruments like the VL-1 mini keyboard, SK-1 sampling keyboard, DG-20 digital guitar, and DP-1 drum pads.

WhistlinDiesel has moved on from modding cars to tampering with playground equipment. After strapping a 7000 hp jet engine to his monster truck, Cody Detwiler and his pals tried the same with a playground merry-go-round. It takes a moment to get up to speed, but once it gets going, it’s nearly unstoppable.

Private space exploration company SpaceX has been launching rockets from Florida’s Cape Canaveral for more than a decade. Hazegrayart put together this captivating digital animation, which shows each launch attempt through the end of 2023, and does a great job demonstrating the increasing frequency of blast-offs. (Thanks, Frenk!)

Despite living in a concrete world, many millennials are unnecessarily aware – or even afraid – of quicksand. Weird History traces the surprisingly ancient lineage of this pop culture trope until its height in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the video weighs us down with the fear again by sharing real life tragedies related to the sticky trap.

The A-Ha hit Take on Me has been remade a million different ways, but once in a while we come across a new variant that’s worth a listen. Algal the Bard transported the pop classic from 1985 to 1485, conjuring images of burly men swigging down flagons of mead while a fight breaks out in the local tavern.

Alan Becker’s Animation vs. series is consistently entertaining. After his stick figure drawings schooled math and physics, it was time for a geometry lesson. As the video progresses, the shapes that our orange hero faces get increasingly more complicated and challenging to defeat. At least they have a special sidekick to help guide the way.

In preparation for Independence Day, Warped Perception wanted to do something that involved fireworks. So he took an already-toasted junkyard Audi, covered it with 100,000 firecrackers, and lit it with a blowtorch. The whole thing was over in just a few seconds, but fortunately, he recorded it in slow motion for a longer fireworks show.

Gas-powered cars are gradually being replaced with hybrids and electric vehicles. This Mercedes runs entirely on human power. Andrzej Burek of Foton Automotive created this replica of a Mercedes SLS AMG Coupe that can be pedaled like a recumbent bicycle. It has a top speed of 13 mph and a 0-to-60 time of never. Andrzej is now working on a Bugatti Chiron.