Awesome Physics

A mystifying physics demonstration from science teacher Bruce Yeany, in which he shows off a simple device known as a “string shooter.” It uses a motor drive to fling a loop of string into the air and keep it there thanks to their light weight and the inertia that keeps it moving forward.

While there’s no such thing as an actual perpetual motion machine (pesky physics!), this is still a cool demonstration how an off-balance mechanism can run for a relatively long period of time with minimal energy input.

TaoFledermaus was playing around with some small magnets and decided to see what their movements would look like when captured at 4,000 fps with a prototype Chronos 1.4 camera. The resulting video reveals some of their strange and wonderful behaviors.

TheBackyardScientist shares a simple way to create a small fire tornado with no moving parts. The trick is to split the glass receptacle in half and place each half around the flame slightly off center. The wind that comes in through the gaps will create the tornado effect.

Destin of SmarterEveryDay has long wondered why water droplets sometimes bounce or slide off of a body of water instead of immediately coalescing with it. He consulted astronaut and chemical engineer Don Pettit and got two answers: air and vibration.

The 560th Flying Training Squadron invited SmarterEveryDay for a test flight in the trusty Northrop T-38 Talon, a supersonic trainer jet used by the US Air Force and NASA. It gives us a thrilling glimpse of just how hard it is to handle such powerful birds.

This footage may be 8 years old, but it doesn’t make it any less impressive. Watch as then high school student Anna Gu demonstrates a bridge she made from layered and glued sheets of paper that was so strong that the hook that held the weights failed before it did. Design here.

Computerphile sat down with nano-scientist Phil Moriarty who explains just how tiny the wires and transistors of semiconductors are these days, and how we’re approaching a point in physics where we’re going to have to build computers very differently.

If you thought that machine that could balance itself on a single point was cool, check out Andreas Eder and Tobias Glück’s robot, which can swing three pivoting sections upright and keep them balanced. It can’t hold on indefinitely, but we’d like to see you do better.

Mike Rouleau shows off a neat bit of tech – a device which stands on a needle-like tip, but keeps itself balanced by constantly adjusting the direction and speed of motors. As one commenter put it: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

PBS’ It’s Okay to Be Smart considers the intellectual concept of a shrink ray, and how if it were even possible to turn us all into Mike Teavee, we’d end up dead in the process, since many of the systems our bodies rely on would fail to do their jobs in miniature.

Practical Engineering offers up an informative look at how water pressure and depth are strongly interconnected, why self-feeding pet bowls don’t spill everywhere, how barometers work, and how to boil water at room temperature.

A cool science demonstration which shows how the electrons swirling around the outside of a Tesla coil can turn it into an impromptu motor – in this case, causing a wire balanced on top of it to spin and shoot sparks as it goes. Originally seen in a video from ElectroBOOM.

Yo-Yo master Ben Conde joined science channel Veritasium and Beyond Slow Motion to demonstrate his ability toss a yo-yo into the air, let it spin without its string attached, then recover it. You’ll be entertained, and learn a thing or two about physics along the way.

Science presenter Steve Mould shows off an unusual property of a substance called polyethylene oxide. This polymer’s long-chain molecular structure lets it keep flowing all on its own. We also have a pretty good idea where they get this stuff from.

Physics Girl and Arc Attack might sound like a superhero and her evil archnemesis, but they’re just everyday geeks who love science. Here, they show us how to rip an aluminum soda can to shreds using a powerful electromagnet, along with a couple of other fun experiments.

Vsauce’s Michael Stevens returns with a typically long-winded, yet incredibly informative video about the nature of time, the innacuracies of time zones and calendars, and the way the planet’s tilt and rotation affect time. Say, is it Local Apparent Solar Noon yet?

The theremin is one of the strangest musical instruments of all time. SciShow takes us inside the process that lets you play this retrofantastic electronic instrument without ever touching it. It’s all about using your body as part of a giant capacitor.

Our smarty pants friends at Kurzgesagt examines the idea of human exploration, and some of the currently known limitations of space travel, physics, and our own bodies which prevent us from traveling to an unfathomable portion of the great unknown.

CrazyRussianHacker demonstrates a cool science experiment which uses a glass water bottle coated with a small amount of isopropyl alcohol to create a totally cool flame which travels down the walls of the bottle. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Smarter Every Day’s Destin Sandlin takes on a tweet by Neil deGrasse Tyson in which he stated that a stalled helicopter would land like a brick. Destin and pilots Brad and Gerry Friesen not only put their lives on the line to test this, but prove that nobody is right 100% of the time.

While he was hanging out at the pool with The Backyard Scientist, engineer and YouTube celeb Mark Rober conducted a scientific experiment which demonstrates whether it’s better to be underwater or on land to escape a grenade blast. The results might surprise you.

The Backyard Scientist continues his literally and figuratively sloppy experiments by “testing” oobleck (cornstarch mixed with water). Like ketchup, quicksand and silly putty, oobleck is a Non-Newtonian fluid. It flows like a liquid but behaves differently when force is applied to it.