Awesome Videos

Get to know your dromedaries and bactrians in Ze Frank’s video about camels. From to their fat-filled humps to their cameltoes, these amazing animals have evolved to survive in some of the world’s harshest desert conditions. They have no problem drinking salt water, and can even eat cacti, thorns and all.

An axe that’s powered by a shotgun shell seems like a really bad idea. But the risks didn’t stop Integza from building such a thing. His custom axe has a magnetic plunger on its tail which directs energy from an exploding shell forward to drive its blade into wood. It’s an incredibly effective but dangerous way to split logs.

When outies become innies in the elevator in Severance, they go through a trippy transformation process. Gav from The Slow Mo Guys shows us how its possible to replicate the visual effect using a motion control rig and a motorized zoom lens. It’s basically a modified version of the dolly zoom that’s been used to create unsettling visuals since Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

If you’ve every played with Beyblades, you know how much fun the spinning discs toys can be. In this clip, someone used an angle grinder to spin up two discs Beyblade-style, then introduced fire and fuel into the mix for a wildly satisfying 60 seconds of video. Kids, don’t try this one at home (unless your dad’s a firefighter.)

Ted Wiggin’s dreamlike animated short MIMT features a series of animals and objects shapeshifting in their environment. We enjoyed watching the simplistic 2D artwork and tweening effects which Ted made using his custom animation software Ghost House. The app is available for download for Mac or PC for free.

A crossbow is Daryl Dixon’s weapon of choice in the zombie apocalypse. But how accurate and effective are they, really? Mike Shake put five crossbows to the test, ranging from a $300 replica of a medieval crossbow to a $4400 high-speed beast. He scored each by its energy, accuracy, penetration, and lethality. Those high-end weapons are awesomely terrifying.

In this video from The Wrench, the expert maker shows us how he created a miniature, remote-controlled tank. It’s driven by a pair of tiny motors and can be controlled using a smartphone app. The tank also packs an FPV camera, though he had some trouble getting it to work at the same time as driving.

AI voice assistants are designed to speak in languages that humans can understand. In this video, two AIs discover they’re speaking with another of their kind, then switch into their own special language. Gibberlink allows AIs to skip unnecessary speech synthesis and recognition and communicate using beeps and bleeps like R2D2 or a dial-up modem.

Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs engineered a unique mini crossbow that shoots NERF darts. To prove the scalability of its design, they created a super-sized version that fires massive mega-NERF projectiles using bungee cords. Mark tested its destructive capabilities with the help of guest host Jesser. The mini version is available through CrunchLabs’ Build Box subscription.

The Robotics and AI Institute (RAI) shows of its Ultra Mobile Vehicle (UMV), an agile little 2-wheeler that can balance and drive autonomously. The AI-powered e-bike can perform jumps and other tricks thanks to reinforcement learning. We’d love to see these equipped with flamethrowers in a BattleBots-style competition.

A standard LEGO minifig stands roughly 1.6″ (4 cm) tall. Maker of many crazy things, The Q, shows us how he used a 3D printer to produce the parts needed to make a giant minifig bigger than he is. Before making the XXL model, he printed small, medium, large, and XL figs. We can only imagine how much time and filament it took to make the biggest one.

Clocks that use water to tell time date back thousands of years. Most examples worked like an hourglass, measuring the amount of water that dripped into a vessel to count the passage of time. Others used the dripping water to move a clock mechanism. Artist Uri Tuchman shows how he built such a timepiece using wood, copper, and brass components.

Cardboard isn’t exactly a conventional material for a sword. But with enough resin, pretty much any material can become rigid enough to be used as a weapon. In this video from Connor Creates, he shows how he glued together layers of cardboard, then coated the stack with epoxy and cut and sharpened it into a blade. Hit play to see how effective it is.

Seth Robinson is adept at making metal objects. For this project, he created a 16-pound copper ice press that produces smooth spheres of ice. Creating the press involved lost-PLA casting, sand casting, and machining the metal to create its perfectly round parts. Once a cylinder of ice is placed inside, it can make a sphere in about 20 seconds.

Motown meets prog metal in the latest musical mashup from Bill McClintock. The track combines I’ll be Around by The Spinners with Queensrÿche’s Jet City Woman, transforming the hard-edged ballad into a smooth stone groove – with a little help from Steely Dan’s Do It Again.

A standard 3D printer moves on three axes. This unique printer from multipoleguy adds two more degrees of freedom so it can tilt its bed underneath its print head. This allows the printer to make objects with up to a 70º overhang in all directions, reducing the need for support structures. The demo video also shows swappable head units.