Awesome Science

Ever wonder why it stings and feels so uncomfortable if you get water up your nose? SciShow explains how the warm and salty environs of your sinuses don’t care for the cool and fresh water found in most swimming pools.

When your dog sits there and stares at the TV, do they see the same thing we do? According to this clip from SciShow, your pup’s probably sees something more like a flipbook in shades of yellow and green. Though they might actually enjoy the soap opera effect more than humans.

If you’ve ever played with a gyroscope toy, you know it’s pretty cool how they balance when spun. But did you know that effect even continues when it’s placed back in the box? We want to go buy a gyroscope right now so we can try this trick for ourselves.

It’s a question that literally none of us were asking, but the guys at PBS Space Time decided to put the concept to the test anyhow: If your spacesuit had a butt porthole – could you move yourself through space using only your flatulence as propulsion?

After using science and math to point out all the ways in which the decks are stacked against you at carnival games, engineer Mark Rober is back to show us how coin-operated arcade prize games aren’t any better.

“So you’re saying as you dig deeper, you find computer code writ in the fabric of the cosmos.” No Bad Days stitched together discussions from scientists, enthusiasts and art forms about the possibility and consequences of our reality being a simulation.

Kurzgesagt wraps up 2017 with a follow up to its fascinating clip about the relationship between an organism’s size and the way it evolves. This time out, we learn how we might actually explode if we weren’t the size we were meant to be. Say, was that Barb at 1:30?

Modern image recognition technology is getting really good at identifying objects. But engineers at MIT CSAIL show us how simply playing with their textures can confuse the AI into thinking an object is something completely different than what it actually is.

Engineers from MIT have developed a fascinating way to enhance plant leaves so they can subtly glow in complete darkness for up to four hours. Their aim is to someday create plants which are bright enough to illuminate an entire workspace.

A fascinating simulation created by a team of scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The animation approximates the movements of smoke, sea salt, and dust as they traveled around the globe due to storms and wind currents in 2017. Original video here.

If you’ve ever seen a glacier up close and personal, you know they’re a beautiful blue-green color that’s unlike just about any ice or water you’ve ever witnessed. It’s Okay to Be Smart reveals the science behind what we see, then gives us a 360º view inside an ice cave.

It’s not too hard to travel faster than sound, but amping things up to the speed of light is a whole other level. Life Noggin pontificates on the what might happen if we could exceed 186,000 miles per second. The whole slowing down light thing seems like a cheat though.

“We live in an ocean… in an ocean of vibration.” Remix artist Melodysheep’s Symphony of Sound gets meta with their latest clip, which uses sound bites of famous scientists and musicians as they speak about the art and science behind sound and music.

A while back, The Backyard Scientist built a massive mousetrap and used it to smash things. He decided to take all of the energy stored up in that giant spring and use it to drive an axle. Unfortunately, it seems as if its power should be measured in mousepower, not horsepower.

Individual insects have limited skills, but when they form a colony, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Kurzgesagt explores the phenomenon known as “emergence” – which sounds like a great name for a flick where billions of ants rise up to take over the world.

Kurzgesagt follows up their earlier clip about the moral and ethical dilemmas of longer life with a video about scientific developments which could extend our lives – or the quality of our healthy years – much sooner than you might think.

Science channel Cody’s Lab shows us how the interactions between magnets are similar to the way that molecules work, with the most fascinating bit being the glass and aluminum rig he built to simulate the way molecules work in a gaseous state.

Vsauce host Michael Stevens digs deep into the ever-changing concept of the direction “down,” what causes things to fall, and digs into how masses really, really want to pull towards each other in our universe, thanks to gravitational forces.

To celebrate Halloween a couple of years back, The Royal Institution filled a tiny pumpkin with a ceramic superconductor and liquid nitrogen, allowing it to float and glide above a special track made from neodymium magnets.

Kurzgesagt teamed up with CGPGrey to explore the moral, ethical, and practical concerns about our longevity as humans, and whether being able to control our mortality is a good or a bad thing. Be sure to watch the second part here.

While you might assume that modern day pharmaceuticals are all some kind of synthetic, many of them are derived from fungi, bacteria, plants, and other organic matter, each of which contains properties which can be beneficial to humans. MinuteEarth explains.

Animator Eoin Duffy and Amber L. Stuver of TED Ed explain how the gravity of every object affects every other object in the cosmos, and the technology that researchers use to detect and track these waves so they can better understand our universe.

It’s a nasty thought, but our bodies are teeming with billions of bacteria all of the time. At times, these microbes are helpful partners, doing things like digesting food, and at other times, they want to kill us. Kurzgesagt explores the delicate balance of the human microbiome.