Awesome Learning

SmarterEveryDay looks at the behavior of the unusually strong Prince Rupert’s drop when subjected to the firepower of a bullet. The 150,000 fps slow-mo footage reveals some truly fascinating properties as shockwaves travel through these tadpole-shaped glass droplets.

(Spoilers) “Give the audience a role in filling in what’s happening.” Lessons from the Screenplay’s latest episode lays out the fundamentals of exposition in movies, from their logical progression to making sure not to spoon-feed the audience.

…or rather, debunked. Kurzgesagt, Our World in Data and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation point out that nightmare scenarios involving global overpopulation are unlikely, and that human population will likely never exceed 12 billion.

Member the ’80s? Yeah I member! Wisecrack looks our fascination with going back to the well of our youth and endlessly rebooting, reissuing, and remixing the content of the past, and explores how nostalgia often peaks during times of uncertainty and change.

ElectroBOOM’s Mehdi Sadaghdar debunks the outlandish claims of Biba Struja, aka “The Battery Man,” who says he’s not only impervious to electric shocks (which Mehdi knows all about,) but that his body actually generates a meaningful amount of power.

Engineer Mark Rober teamed up with Jake from Vsauce3 to take on some classic scenes from Christmas movies to see if they’d hold up in the real world. Check out Jake’s Home Alone video here. The paint bucket test alone is worth the price of admission.

A different perspective from Simone Giertz’s visit to Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, China, The Verge stopped by the massive electronics marketplace which has long been home to countless knock-offs, but has been gradually becoming a center for innovation.

Google employees Nat and Lo spoke with their colleagues and visited a ship that lays new Internet cables to give us a comprehensive yet still digestible explanation of how these critical communication links are made and deployed. More here.

Our favorite wordy educator provides numerous examples to hammer in the physics of spinning to help us understand its strange consequences. Leave it to Michael to not go off on a tangent when talking about tangents.

Vox spoke with effects artist Todd A. Marks about the work that goes into showing computers and devices in movies. Marks and his colleagues don’t just make fake websites or programs – they often shoot their own scenes, scrounge for old tech, and secure licenses.

(PG-13: Language) Exurb1a presents a painfully sarcastic self-help video that still manages to provide some sage advice despite its snarkiness: most problems are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, and it’s better to take action than to just sit there and whine.

(PG-13: Language, Flashing images) “The whole point of editing is to get the most out of a film emotionally.” Channel Criswell gives us a brief history of film editing before going through several editing techniques and emphasizing editing for emotional context.

If you’re aiming to be a world renowned explorer or the ultimate survivor, or you just want to get away from other humans, RealLifeLore has a list of places that you should look up, from islands in Canada to the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Adam Ruins Everything digs a little deeper into the obvious – that free online services sell our data to advertisers. On one hand, targeted ads sustain the free stuff we enjoy (like this website). On the other hand, we don’t know just how much of our data is kept and by whom.

YouTuber Mike Boyd takes on one of the most daunting instruments to pick up. The violin sounds distinctively annoying in the hands of a rookie, but Mike quickly figured out a basic tip: it’s all in the grip. And the time you put in. Here’s what 13 hours of practice sounds like.

The vast majority of legally blind people don’t use Braille. Miniature horses are great alternatives to guide dogs. People who are totally blind don’t see black, they see nothing at all. All that and more in one of Mental Floss’ most fascinating and informative videos so far.

Kurzgesagt looks way back at the history of humanity, and suggests a new calendar that reminds us of mankind’s achievements dating much further back than we typically acknowledge. You can order the 12,017 Human Era Calendar here.

“The surface of a sphere cannot be represented as a plane without some form of distortion.” That pretty much sums up the fact that there’s really no way to accurately represent the earth in flat maps, as Vox explains. After you stop saying “Winkel Tripel,” go play with this.

Kurzgesagt talks about Neglected Tropical Diseases or NTDs. These communicable diseases affect over a billion people in 149 countries, mainly indigents living in remote areas. Fortunately, we have shown that we can eradicate NTDs by working together.

ASAPScience shows us how human vision is highly imperfect, with a demonstration of our blind spots, and the frequent assumptions and shortcuts our brains take which result in misperceptions and optical illusions.

Destin of SmarterEveryDay wanted to learn about Tesla coils. Imagine his delight when he found out that Cameron Prince, one of the world’s biggest Nikola Tesla fans, was his neighbor. Cameron showed Destin his 9ft Tesla coil and a sick Fallout-ready Tesla coil gun.

Self-teaching YouTuber Mike Boyd discovers the wonders of one of the simplest but most fascinating toys: the boomerang. He successfully caught it after a little over 2 hours. Then he kept going and actually became decent at it.

CaptainDisillusion is getting so good at debunking, he’s now tackling two lies in a single short video. The cup levitation trick is easier to do, but at least you know it’s a trick. The train track near miss video on the other hand leverages realism for views.