Awesome Science

You might feel like you’re standing still right now, but we are always moving. But our place in the universe isn’t absolute. Instead, our location is entirely relative to other objects. Kurzgesagt explores this concept, and how each person, place, and thing has its own point of view for its position and movements.

After building a mirrored room that lights up the entire space no matter where a light source is placed, James from The Action Lab wanted to see if he could build a mirrored room that won’t reflect light onto all of its walls. The trick is a space that uses curved mirrors with wraparound corners in specific locations.

Every now and then, you might see a story in the news about a “brain-eating amoeba” that turned up somewhere. But is this microscopic organism as terrifying as it sounds, or is it all just hyperbole? Kurzgesagt digs into the true story of the naegleria fowleri, and what it’s likely to do should it enter your body.

A hero’s engine is a spherical device that spins using steam pushed through a pair of opposing jets. Jimmy Kimmel Live regular “Science Bob”​ Pflugfelder created this unique version of the hero’s engine that spins up rapidly as liquid nitrogen vapors create the necessary pressure to get it spinning fast.

In this compilation video from Journey to the Microcosmos, they point their microscope’s powerful lens at tiny organisms to see what happens to them as they reach the end of the line. It’s a fascinating and sobering look at this universal truth for all living organisms. (Thanks, Rob!)

Whether on a sammie with bacon, chicken and cheese, or in a spicy guac, we delight in our delicious avocados. But this tasty and nutritious natural treat might not even exist today if it weren’t for some prehistoric farmers who saved them from extinction. SciShow explains.

This yucky blob looks like something your dog might leave on the grass, but it’s actually a liquid robot that can be controlled by a human. AsapSCIENCE speaks with Professor Li Zhang to learn about his team’s so-called slime robot, how it works, and its potentially life-saving applications.

Time isn’t as simple as what shows up on your phone’s screen. Erin McCarthy of Mental Floss offers up a number of interesting tidbits about the nature of time, how humans perceive its passage, how space and time relate, and the different ways of measuring time itself.

Carbon fiber is an amazing material, combining strength and weight efficiency. When set into resin and woven properly, it can be used to build airplanes and cars. But this clip from JPRC shows the dramatic difference in strength that carbon fiber exhibits when its fibers are pulled in a straight line versus tied into a knot.

If you’ve ever visited one of Disney’s theme parks, you have been tricked. The parks frequently employ an optical illusion known as forced perspective to make structures look bigger or smaller than they actually are. Art of Engineering explains the trickery and why our brains get so easily fooled by it.

This set of 20 colorful wooden blocks helps kids and adults learn about science and chemistry. 118 of the block faces are printed with the name, symbol, and atomic number of the elements of the periodic table. For fun, see what words you can make by combining elements like “CoBRa” and “BeCoOl.”

Because of their positions at the top and bottom of the Earth, the North Pole and South Pole experience both the longest and shortest days of the year. This fascinating time-lapse animation shows how the top of our planet goes from 24 hours of sunlight a day in the summertime to complete darkness in the winter.

Imagine, if you will, that the entire 4.5 billion year history of the Earth was collapsed down to a 24-hour single day. Bright Side’s educational video does just that, taking significant events in the development of our world and giving us a relative sense of how closely together they played out.

Chemistry can be pretty awesome (and dangerous at times). MEL Science show off an energetic reaction that happens when you soak aluminum foil balls in sodium hydroxide, then expose them to oxygen and a flame. By placing the balls inside of a tube, the combustion causes them to race around like tiny cars on fire.

We still don’t know if there are other species out there in space, but it certainly seems possible that we’re not the only life forms in the universe. Kurzgesagt goes one step further to explore the possibility that aliens life once roamed the Earth long before the dinosaurs.

Howdy, folks! It’s science time! Veritasium explains how gravity isn’t a force according to the General Theory of Relativity. He then demonstrates how the way we are moving through space-time while standing on Earth isn’t really any different from what an astronaut experiences as their rocket accelerates through space.

Until now, most of the images we’ve seen of Venus have been shrouded in a thick blanket of clouds. Recently, the Wide-Field Imager (WISPR) on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was able to capture the first-ever visible-light images of the surface of Venus. By comparing these with radar-based images, we get the best understanding so far of the planet’s features.

Bowling has been around in one form or another for roughly 7000 years. Veritasium explores some of the significant technological advancements that the seemingly simple sport has experienced in the last few decades, along with the physics at play in the design of bowling balls, pins, and alleys.

Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall envisions what might happen if the Moon came out of its orbit and crashed into the Earth. Kurzegesagt takes a more scientific approach, and explains what might happen if the moon gradually got closer to the Earth, and the big problems we’d experience long before the Moon ever got here.

We love the rainbow of colors that can be found on some titanium objects. If you’ve wondered how those colors appear without paint, The Action Lab explains the science at work when heating or anodizing titanium. By applying different voltages to the metal in an ionizing bath, you can change how light reflects off of its surface.

Live Science and physicist Anton Peshkov take us inside the microscopic world of the turbatrix aceti, otherwise known as the vinegar eel. These tiny nematodes thrive on the kind of microbes that transform juice into vinegar and wriggle around like tiny bolts of lightning as they cluster in a single droplet of water.

If you heat up a penny with a blow torch then lower it over a puddle of acetone, the reaction with the vapors will make the penny glow like a dim red lightbulb. NileRed shows off the reaction and points out that it must be done with a copper penny and not one with zinc or it will melt. And remember, chemistry is dangerous.

When it comes to watching our diet, counting calories is one of the most common methods of tracking food intake. AsapSCIENCE explains how the nutritional composition of foods, our individual metabolisms, genetics, and microbiomes affect how we process food, impacting our health far more than calories alone.

According to the work of Albert Einstein, the speed of light in a vacuum is the fastest thing in the universe. Bright Side ponders how strange life would be if light moved at a more leisurely pace than its current rate of 299,792,458 meters per second and ambled along at the same speed as the average human walks.

Cognitive Surplus offers all kinds of great gifts for lovers of science, engineering, nature, and the world around us. We love their festive flasks which feature detailed illustrations with a tactile feel. They’re made from stainless steel with a wide mouth opening, and hold up to 18oz of hot or cold beverages.

What If explores the hypothetical question of what would happen if you were like Ant-Man, and could shrink yourself down to whatever size you wanted. As you descend from the size of a frog’s egg to the size of an atom, would things be totally awesome at that scale, or absolutely horrifying?