Awesome Learning

Did you know that the smartphone in your pocket has moving parts inside of it? Devices such as accelerometers use a hybrid of mechanical and electronic mechanisms known as MEMS. New Mind puts this fascinating and complex tech under the microscope to explain how they work, and how they’re made.

The Art Assignment argues that whether it be something as primitive as bones or as advanced as a neural network, there’s always a human touch at the root of all machines used to make art. We like to think of it from the other end: art is unfinished until a human mind ponders it.

You’d think that you wouldn’t get rid of an airplane until it was beyond its useful life, but it turns out that some airlines dump their older jumbo jets because they’re just not cost effective to operate. Half as Interesting takes us on a one-way flight to Victorville, California to see where these flying behemoths are often retired.

Technically, all of the world’s oceans are connected and therefore they’re a single, giant body of water. Still, geographers sliced them into sections and named them so we’d know roughly where we are. Minute Earth explains where the boundaries are located, and suggests a more logical way of breaking them up based on science.

At TEDx Minneapolis, lawyer and musician Damien Riehl discussed how lawsuits between songwriters can be bad because there are a finite number of melodies. His project AlltheMusic is hoping to help protect musicians by copyrighting all of the unused melodic sequences and putting them into the public domain.

What do you mean “what if?” But seriously, don’t do it. AsapScience explains just how bad things would get if your diet consisted of only chips or other fried potato products such as fries. You’d get lots of Vitamin C, but not much else.

Many of us loved to play with our toy fire twucks when we were little kids, but the real fire-fighting machines are much more impressive. Donut Media dropped by the Oxnard Fire Department to learn all about the many features and gear on board their shiny new 2020 Pierce Arrow XT fire truck.

There’s a lot of debate as to whether the universe goes on and on forever, or if you kept going, you’d eventually reach its edge. PBS Space Time digs into this astrophysics quandary. Whether the universe is geographically-flat and infinite, or it curves in on itself, it’s still more enormous than most of us can fathom.

Ever wonder why we add a day to the end of every fourth February? Well, as it turns out, the Earth orbits the sun every 365.242 days, so we get off by about a quarter day every year. Dr. James O’Donoghue provides a concise graphical explanation of this time tweak we do to make things right, and what would happen without leap years.

Want to keep neighborhood rugrats off your lawn? Minutephysics and Randall Munroe of xkcd have got you covered, with their step-by-step plan for installing a moat filled with molten hot lava. Sadly, it would cost about $60,000 a day to keep it running unless you dig down deep enough and power it with geothermal energy.

Over the years, we’ve broken at least a couple of those oscillating fans, but could never figure out how to fix them. Jared Owen’s insightful 3D animation could have been a big help, as he shows us exactly how its mechanisms work to keep it moving from side to side.

(PG-13: Language) “The irritating screech of a dial-up connection was replaced by the equally grating sound of teenagers expressing themselves.” Ordinary Things turns into Ordinary People, as our host walks us through a history of the Emo movement, as it evolved out of punk into something more suburban, then imploded.

Did you know that vacuum cleaners don’t actually need to be as loud as they are? Cheddar explains how companies often manipulate the sounds their products make to make them more satisfying, to provide feedback, and to demonstrate that they are actually doing their job.

It’s a word we hear every day – “O.K.”, “OK”, or “Okay” is an acknowledgement that we understand something. But most of us have no idea why we say it. Vox delves into the history of the word, and how it became the nearly universal affirmation it is today.

When it comes to holding things together, two of your best bets are glue or tape. Elizabeth Cox and TED-Ed explore the science behind adhesives, and which are the best for specific uses. We always wondered what kept glue from sticking to its own container, and now we know.

If you’ve ever played with one of those drinking bird toys, you know it can be quite fascinating to watch as it dunks its beak in and out of a glass of water. Engineerguy Bill Hammack pops off the bird’s festive blue hat to explain the thermodynamics which make the nearly endless fun happen.

From birth, mammals rely on milk for nutrition. We’ve been taught for decades that drinking cow’s milk is good for us, and part of a nutritious day. But as Kurzgesagt explains, recent studies call into question whether milk is really good for us, or if it’s slowly killing us. Plus, its production has dire environmental consequences.

The U.S. has had 45 presidents, most of whom served for at least a full term in office. But back in 1849, David Rice Atchison was the de facto president of our country for roughly a day. Half as Interesting explains how this happened, and why it’s still debated to this day.

While it might not look so huge up in the sky, the sun is big enough that it could fit 1,300,000 Earths inside of it. What If ponders what might life be here on our planet if it were that huge. While we’d have way more room to roam, we’d also have some pretty insurmountable problems.

If you’ve ever played the The Game of LIFE board game, you know it’s a pretty innocuous way to pass the time. But as Vox points out, the original version that came out in the 1860s included much darker milestones than just buying a house or sending your kids to college.

If you’re into surfing, you’re actually using your body and mind to take on the interactions between fluid mechanics, tectonic geography, weather patterns, and more. TED-Ed’s Nick Pizzo provides a brief explanation of how these systems of nature work together.

Cheddar shares the origins of the controllers of the N64, and the Xbox and PlayStation series to point out how their designs were not based on ergonomics alone. Sometimes, management or technological constraints led to these familiar forms.

Want to know about our genetic ancestors? American Museum of Natural History’s fascinating video takes us back to the moment where humans branched off from chimpanzees, and illustrates our progress via maps of significant archaeological discoveries.