Awesome Learning

(NSFW: Language) ZeFrank talks about the armored mammal. Did you know that there’s only one species of armadillo that can roll up into a ball? And did you know that armadillos are susceptible to boner pits – dammit Jerry!

Not to be outdone by New York City, these cities drop items of their own, from a pair of pants, bologna and er, a playing card. A few others raise things instead of dropping them. Now you can drop knowledge on New Year’s Eve.

Did you know that it’s more likely for a T-rex to eat Miley Cyrus than a Stegosaurus? That and more – a lot more – in this concise outline of the major events in the past and future by Kurzgesagt and Wait But Why!

CGP Grey starts out by messing with our heads, then moves on to explore the idea of the “nocebo effect” – a psychological effect which makes people experience pain, discomfort and other symptoms from non-existent causes.

ASAPScience returns with another helping of profound trivia. Learn how it’s literally impossible to live in the present, how unborn babies have their mom’s back and that some days can really be hot as balls. Yep, those balls.

With the help of experts on wireless networks, Nickolay Lamm made mockups visualizing cellular signals. Apparently the signals’ colors change rapidly and constantly, so we’re really lucky that we don’t see them.

Mental Floss’ John Green works from his remote office at Indianapolis’ Sun King Brewery to teach us a thing or two we never knew about our brew, and to set us straight on a few things we had wrong. Also, U.S. Presidents really like beer.

Normally, if you shake up a bottle of soda and then open it, you end up with a big mess to clean up. But if you carefully follow The King of Random’s instructions, you’ll soon be opening your bottles like a true soda master.

NPR’s Planet Money made a series of short videos to show us the technology, the places and most importantly the people that make mass-produced t-shirts. You can watch the whole series on NPR, Vimeo and YouTube.

In case you haven’t noticed, 3D printers – and scanners – are quickly becoming more affordable and easier to use. If you’d like to know more about the technology, check out this great primer by ASAP Science.

Humans accept the idea that we’ll grow old and die. But some animals are resistant or immune to aging, so perhaps growing old isn’t so natural after all. Learn more in this primer by Joao Pedro de Magalhaes and PHD Comics.

Professor Dan Burns uses a sheet of spandex, some bearings, marbles and weights to demonstrate the basic principles of gravity, and how planetary orbits were established. It’s how to play with the fabric of space, literally.

The Atlantic’s “visual remix” of the results of the 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey, which mapped out the different accents and expressions used in the different states in the US. You guys/you lot/y’all call that varied?

Michael from Vsauce explains what makes a swear word a swear word. Awesomer head cheese Paul Strauss has lived in three of the top five swearingest states – so it’s no wonder he gets his mouth washed out with Lifebuoy weekly.

The SciShow explains how the Darvaza Gas Crater, more famously known as the Door to Hell, came to be. It turns out the burning hole is not entirely natural in origin, but was brought to life by accident and desperation.

Mental Floss dishes out little known facts about the popular American holiday. Actually it’s more like a Thanksgiving episode of Mythbusters, revealing that many things associated with the holiday are entirely false or unfounded.

Collective Cadenza gives us a concise history of the bass guitar, with none other than the group’s co-founder Michael Thurber handling the instrument’s various incarnations. A lesson as entertaining as it is educational.

We love warm chocolate chip cookies. But have you ever taken time out to understand what’s going on inside your oven while they’re baking? TED-Ed schools us on the science behind cookies. We’re setting our ovens to 356° from now on.

Crazy Russian Hacker shows us a very handy way to open a canned good without using a can opener. The only tools you need are your hands and a hard surface such as a concrete floor. Skip to 0:45 in the video for the trick.

If necessity is the mother of invention, human error must be its drunk uncle. Mental Floss presents 24 popular or revolutionary products and concepts that were discovered entirely by accident, from penicillin to plastic.

TechRadar explores two handfuls of modern technologies which are both awesome – and potentially deadly. While some of the inventions give us pause, we’re not too worried about being devoured by a swarm of nanobots.

A short documentary by Streetfilms about Groningen. It’s a city in the Netherlands where people are encouraged to commute using bicycles, thanks to policies enacted during the 1970s and the cooperation of its citizens.

George Zaidan and Charles Morton teach us about biochemistry using a tiny robot factory which illustrates how all living organisms are created from the same basic building blocks. View the full lesson here. Animation by Pew36.