Awesome Learning

We all want to have a good time, but as this clip from The Infographics Show reminds us, our brains’ reward system can cause us to seek out too much of a good thing sometimes – whether through addiction, thrill seeking, or other compulsive behaviors.

Real Engineering talks about the history of screws to explain why there are so many kinds of them these days. Initially, various screw heads arose to improve upon previous designs. However, starting in the 20th century, different heads were made to stop consumers from fiddling with products.

For its list of the 10 best movie cars, Drivetribe chose only cars that were either custom-made from the ground up or ones so heavily modified that they’re practically new models. So you won’t find the DeLorean or the Ecto-1 here, making it a more esoteric roundup.

Our bodies, brains, and blood cells thrive on oxygen, and inhaling a little extra is good for an energy boost. But is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? What If explores the hypothetical of what might happen if the Earth’s atmosphere had twice as much o2.

You might think that mammals always ate meat, but it turns out it was an evolutionary necessity due to changes in Earth’s climate. Kurzgesagt explores whether or not this change in our diets was actually good for us, or if eating meat truly has a negative impact on our health.

(PG-13: Gross, Language) CollegeHumor’s Dropout TV series What the F 101 looks at one of the stranger types of torture. “The Boats” started out rather pleasantly with a delicious serving of milk and honey, but it quickly takes a turn for the worse.

Captain Disillusion’s latest lesson on video technology delves into why signals used to be split up into alternating fields and then reconstructed on the fly. We no longer need to use interlacing, but it was a cool solution to a challenging engineering problem.

(PG-13: Language) There’s a long, and often disturbing history of launching animals into the cosmos before space programs felt comfortable sending humans. Sam O’Nella Academy looks back at the creatures who often gave their lives so that space exploration could march forward.

AsapScience shares a number of tips that you can follow to help you fall asleep. Most of them involve do’s and don’t’s before bedtime, such as taking a hot shower or avoiding caffeine, but the most important tips are to keep yourself cool and relaxed, and to have consistent sleep times.

Polyphonic talks about the history of disco and how Daft Punk made it cool again with their album Random Access Memories. By pairing up with disco legends and highlighting the genre’s key features, the robots made disco hit after disco hit in one release.

The B1M shares details about the construction of Eko Atlantic, a city being built on reclaimed land off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria. It required the construction of a seawall built to withstand waves and storms, and will house 250,000 residents and 150,000 commuters when complete.

If possible, replacing the barren land of the Sahara Desert with a lush forest could theoretically result in a big win in the fight against climate change, even though it would be a monumental project. But What If stipulates that doing it could create more problems than it would solve.

The Engineer Guy explains how droplets form. It happens when fluid is allowed to drip such that it takes a form with the smallest surface area – a sphere. By vibrating the fluid’s container, one can control how fast droplets form. This knowledge is used in printing, painting, and even medical applications.

NASA enlisted the help of William Shatner to narrate this confident video about the space agency’s plan to go back to the Moon and establish a base of operations there by 2024. If successful, the project will serve as a launchpad for deeper space exploration.

Did you know that humans are the only animals with chins? Or that the bones in our hands and feet account for half the bones in our body? What about the fact that we glow? Learn all that and more in Mental Floss’ List Show.

Ever wonder why the sound echoes in an enclosed room? This 2013 clip from Acoustic Geometry, demonstrates some of the key principles of direct and reflected sounds using a combination of NERF disc guns, moiré patterns, and more than 1100 feet of fluorescent string.

Jonna Mendez used to be the Chief of Disguise at CIA. She sat down with Wired to look at the right and wrong ways spies behave in movies and TV shows, particularly regarding how they disguise themselves, as well as the tools they use to conceal their identities.

As part of his informative series on computer graphics and visual effects, Captain Disillusion provides a great layperson’s lesson on the fundamentals of pixels and image resolution. As the resolution war escalates, are we already at the point of diminishing returns?

These days, most of the fruits and veggies we buy at the grocery store are quite good. Sam O’Nella Academy looks back at how we got from produce that was hard to eat, lacking in edible bits, and downright weird, to produce that we discard simply for aesthetic reasons.

The Shanghai Tower is “only” the world’s second tallest building. But it has other bragging rights. It has the world’s fastest elevators – three of them, in fact – capable of going 40mph, enough to go from the first to the 121st floor in just 55 seconds.

(PG-13: Language) Hitboxes are invisible but defined areas that are often used in video games to detect a collision. They are mostly used in attack animations in fighting games and shooters. The Score esports shares how getting hitboxes wrong can rig or ruin a game.

AstroReality celebrates NASA’s 60th Anniversary with an augmented reality gift set, which includes this beautiful notebook. Available with a white or gray cover, the notebook has a few pages that feature animation and enhanced content when viewed with AstroReality’s mobile app.

“In 1818, civil engineer William Cubbitt designed the first treadmill as a device to punish inmates…” Learn this and everything else you never wanted to know about treadmills, as explained by an ordinary guy in the compelling new web series Ordinary Things. Then learn about pillows, stairs, and onions too.