Awesome Learning

Did you know that in the 1600’s elephants wore massive armor to protect them in battle? Us neither. Royal Armouries Museum curator Natasha Bennett presents the incredible pachyderm armor in their collection. Oh, they also wore swords on their tusks. Damn.

It’s Okay to Be Smart’s first ever rhyming video title takes us inside the gasses inside of our digestive systems, schooling us on the reasons flatulence happens, how some animals take advantage of them, why farts smell, and why we find them funny.

We all know that the Tyrannosaurus rex was a gigantic and vicious dinosaur. PBS Eons explores why the killer dino evolved in the way that it did, and why it never lost its silly little dangly arms before going extinct.

TED-Ed shares a head-scratcher that you can solve, even with brute force thinking. You need to build a time travel machine by forming a triangle of one of two colors. But you have no way of knowing which color will appear when you connect the time travel dots.

The “normal” human body temperature is around 98.6ºF. So shouldn’t air that’s at around that temperature feel neutral? SciShow explains why air that’s that warm feels hot. Our skin is actually a few degrees cooler our body temp, and our body is constantly generating heat.

Pretty much every society in recorded history has had some form of dance as part of its culture. Why is something that seems so frivolous is so ingrained into human nature? Aeon provides their take on the importance of dance and movement to humanity.

Shopping for a mattress can be a real pain. Between the nonsensical pricing, weird product names, and confusing features, the industry seems to be engineered to bewilder consumers. Adam Conover offers his take on the extra-slimy industry of sleep.

We know there are always crumbs and debris at the bottom of containers of chips, cereals, nuts and other solid mixtures. What’s strange is that shaking the container doesn’t solve the problem – it makes it worse. Scientists call it the Brazil Nut effect.

(PG-13: Language) “What do I want a way outta here for?” Lessons from the Screenplay uses Good Will Hunting to demonstrate how writing fictional characters can sometimes be writing about psychology. Characters have traumas that need to be overcome before they change.

From falling, to avalanches, to hypothermia, to extreme altitude sickness, there are many ways to die ascending Mt. Everest. Wendover Productions offers a look at some of the many things expeditions put in place to help improve climbers’ chances of survival.

These days, we all spend countless hours staring at digital screens, from smartphones, to tablets, to televisions, to computers. But is the notion that looking at these backlit devices can permanently harm your eyesight a myth or reality? SciShow provides their brief take.

There have been numerous recorded instances of groups of people losing their minds at the same time. The always informative, and usually gross Sam O’ Nella Academy shares some of the more notable cases of the bizarre behavior known as mass psychogenic illness.

Stanford mathematician Tadashi Tokieda explains a strange phenonmenon which occurs when tapping the inside of a coffee mug with a spoon – as it creates differently-pitched tones depending on where you place the spoon. More from Quanta Magazine. (Thanks Susan!)

From black bears to grizzly bears to gummy bears to the Chicago Bears, we have a fascination with these wonderfully cuddly, smart, and imposing mammals. Mental Floss is here to school us on many random facts about bears in the latest episode of Scatterbrained.

Mark Rober wanted to demonstrate how horns work, so he built what’s quite possibly the largest air horn in the world. After explaining how horns amplify sound, he tested the horn in a remote area. It carried sound clearly from as far away as 2.5mi.

TierZoo looks at the differences between these flippered marine mammals, and determines that one of them comes out on top. Seals can stay underwater longer and swim deeper, but sea lions are agile in water and better able to get around on land.

People often use the terms 4-wheel drive and all-wheel drive interchangeably, but that’s just wrong. The Team O’Neil Rally School explains how the two types of drivetrains differ. Proper 4x4s might be better at off-roading, but modern AWD systems are typically more versatile.

(Gross) How to Make Everything wants to make a collection of musical instruments from scratch. First up is a drum. He made it out of maple wood, pigskin and twine. He had a lot of help from a woodworker, but he did all the gross stuff for the leather.

If you’ve ever wondered why so many areas of land are considered federal property here in the good old U.S. of A., you’ll want to tune into CGP Grey’s video, which provides a great lesson on how land went from being doled out for free to being closely held by the government.

For all of our efforts to explore space – and maybe someday colonize other planets – humans have been creating lots of space junk, which will make it harder to leave the Earth over time. Kurzgesagt explores the dangers of filling up the low Earth orbit with stuff.

RealLifeLore pumps up, then quickly deflates every state in the U.S. with this look at what each state statistically does best and worst in the country. And here we thought Alaska would be a nice safe place to live.

(Gore) Yes, very much so. TierZoo justifies why he ranks sloths as one of the worst builds in any meta. They are slow, only mildly stealthy, predictable, and weak. Yet it’s the fact that they are scrubs that has allowed them to survive.

Techmoan looks at the history of the DataPlay, a tiny optical disc format. Launched in 2001, it could carry up to 500MB of data in a disc just a tad bigger than a dollar coin. Unfortunately, its reliance on other companies and non-rewritable nature spelled doom for the disc.