Awesome Learning

What could be more terrifying than a regular volcano? A supervolcano, that’s what. Kurzgesagt explains how these massive ash, lava, and gas-spewing volcanoes form, and what sort of catastrophic consequences they might have on the Earth and its inhabitants for if the planet’s superheated insides erupted.

The Holothuroidea, aka sea cucumber, is one of the many strange-looking creatures that dwell at the bottom of the ocean. ZeFrank explains the unusual way these spiny, slug-like things reproduce, develop, and thrive – along with just how diverse their species can be. Expect Frank’s usual mix of information and innuendo.

With enough power, lasers can engrave and cut materials. In this video from WIRED, laser expert Alexander Sellite explains the physics at work as a fiber laser works its magic, vaporizing designs into sheet metal. By adjusting its scanning speed, pulse length, and power level, it can mark different metals and even create colors.

It’s been a while since we got a lesson from the Sam O’Nella Academy, but after a nearly 3-year hiatus from YouTube, the snarky educator takes us back to school to learn about scientific animal names and where they come from. Those taxonomy mnemonics are just as good as the ones on TV Funhouse.

The Universe is enormous. But here on earth, there’s a seemingly endless universe inhabited by insects, bacteria, plants, microorganisms, molecules, and atoms. Kurzgesagt zooms in beneath our feet for a journey to these tiny worlds among us, using the size of our world as a frame of reference.

Despite many people despising the fake, sugary flavor of candy corn, it’s still a wildly popular Halloween treat. Mental Floss explores the history of this divisive, tri-colored candy and why it’s so closely associated with the holiday. We never thought about it before, but candy corn has real corn in it, sorta.

Mark Rober likes to use his engineering skills to help the little guy get a fair shake. After showing us how to improve our chances at carnival games, he built a series of portable devices that help him cheat and score the most at skill-based arcade games, and also shows us which ones are complete scams.

We’ve driven through some places with weird names like Hell, Michigan and the Bong Recreation Area in Wisconsin. Lost in the Pond studied a map of America to find more strange place names, and explained the history of their unusual monikers. Though Newfoundland has them all beat.

The idea that our bodies make more heat than the sun seems outlandish. In this video from minutephysics and XKCD, we learn how – going strictly by volume – a human radiates more heat than an equivalent amount of the sun. You’ll also find out what might happen if planets were made out of their corresponding element.

Nature can be weird, gross, and sometimes downright cruel. In this video from Ze Frank, we learn about a kind of bird that lays its eggs in another bird’s nest while they go off and make more babies. Sometimes they even eat the other bird’s eggs, and their eggs have even evolved to look like the ones they replaced.

Ready to have your mind blown? Much like a Christopher Nolan movie, PBS Space Time host Matt O’Dowd is here to make us question our understandings about time, as he explores theories that look at the relationships between the past, the present, and the future.

Mike Boyd has made a career out of learning how to do things that he didn’t know before shooting his videos. With the help of DailyPuzzles, he got his hands on 3000 Rubik’s Cubes and tried his hand at creating a massive piece of pixel art by rearranging one face on each cube into a specific pattern.

Jake O’Neal from Animagraffs creates detailed see-through 3D illustrations which show how things work. In this video, he walks us through the inner workings of a typical fire engine for a look at how firefighters ride inside the truck, its lights and sirens, its powerful water-pumping system, and onboard safety gear.

Released in 1952, the de Havilland Comet was the world’s first commercial jetliner. Sadly, engineers did not know at that point that a seemingly innocuous feature – square windows – would doom the pioneering plane and many people’s lives. Real Engineering explains the physics, and how we ended up with oval windows.

Inspired by the story The Library of Babel, the Babel Image Archives has randomly generated every combination of 4096-color dots that can fit into a 640 x 416-pixel canvas. In theory, that should mean the archive should contain an image of everything that ever has, will, or might exist. Solar Sands explains why it doesn’t.

Previously, CGP Grey explained the surprisingly simple numbering scheme for U.S. interstates. Now he’s back to teach us how the numbers on airport runways work. You’ll also learn how airports decide which way to run their runways and what the North Pole has to do with everything. Oh, and this is not a physics video.

Nature show host ZeFrank offers up a detailed look at a kind of amoeba known as Dictyostelium and explores how they work. These strange microscopic organisms gobble up bacteria and other tiny things, then divide over and over to reproduce. But the weirdest part is what they do once the colony runs out of food.

Every decade, the words we use to describe things evolve. The 1920s Channel rewinds 100 years to examine the slang words and phrases that were in vogue at the time, including classics like “whoopee,” “zozzled,” and “heebie jeepbies.” We really want to bring back “and how!”

Since landing in 2021, NASA’s Mars Perseverence Rover has sent back fascinating images and data from the red planet. Jared Owen offers up an in-depth look at how the rover was launched, the scientific equipment it carries, and how it was engineered to survive the journey and the harsh conditions on Mars.

When you want to read another language, you usually have to learn that language. But RobWords shows us a three simple tricks that English speakers can use to comprehend written words in French without having to understand the vocabulary. We wonder if other Romance languages have similar hacks.

Looking to add some interesting analog effects to your photography? COOPH’s handy tutorial video shows us eight ways to use common household items to create lens filters for any camera on the cheap. The plastic cutout ones are our favorites with their dreamy look.

We always had it in our minds that all matter was a solid, a liquid, or a gas. But as PBS Space Time explains, there are numerous other states of matter – some of which are understandable like plasma – and others that require a PhD in physics to fully comprehend. And then there’s sand.

We all have a pretty specific image in mind when someone says “caveman.” But did these thick-browed, cave-dwelling early humans exist, or is this just a caricature created by popular culture? Today I Found Out digs into what we now know about the Stone Age, and how closely it matches up with these stereotypes.