Awesome Science

This entertaining and easy to understand video will remind you of the basics of evolution. It could also make you want to play Pokémon. Designed by Phillipp Dettmer and animated by Jacques Alomo.

YouTube experimenter Tao Fledermaus decided to see what would happen if you submerge a sponge in mercury. The ensuing demo shows the impressive surface tension encountered when dipping a foreign object in the liquid metal.

Why do you need to go to school when you’ve got Mental Floss? Guest host Emily Grasile from The Brain Scoop fills our noggins with numerous animals we’re pretty sure you’ve never heard of. Dugongs? Huh? Gerenuks? Wha?

The smart guys at AsapSCIENCE explore how signals flowing through our brains could be modified to influence our thoughts, moods or actions. While there are ethical questions, the possibilities for improving lives cannot be denied.

ASAPScience explores the sort of weird and unpleasant things that start to happen to our bodies and minds if we’re deprived of sleep. There’s not a lot of conclusive data, since the longest anyone’s ever stayed awake is 11 days.

Chef Eduardo Garcia lost his left hand and lower arm after an accident back in 2011. He recently had his left hand replaced with a high-tech bionic prosthesis which allows him to work in his kitchen once again. Original clip via KPTV.

An interactive exhibition in which fluids appear to run upstream, static objects come to life, people float, and figures appear out of light – all achieved by tricking our brains. Runs through 9/29/13 at Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland.

One of the biggest risks boats face is capsizing from large waves. Check out this amazing technology which creates inverse waves inside the boat to keep it from rocking. The boat model on the left has the system in place.

Visit one of the world’s most biodiverse locales thanks to Google Street View’s newly-released 360-degree POV maps and footage of the Galapagos Islands. View the amazing animals and vistas captured during their journey here.

Milano’s 6-foot-tall bookcase has 13 undulating shelves which spiral off of its center post, creating a double-helix shape from your books, discs or collectibles. Made from steel, and available in black or white. Ships from Australia.

So if you’re watching this, chances are you’re sitting indoors. AsapSCIENCE explores what might happen to us if we no longer went outside. Maybe we should start selling vitamin D supplements and stand-up desks.

While bees are some of nature’s most helpful stinging insects, wasps are just nasty buggers. Here, one does in a poor bee with the ultimate finishing move – the full body slice. We have a saying around here: “Nature… it’s disgusting.”

BuzzFeed staffer Andrew Gauthier wanted to test the difference between people’s ability to function when they’re stoned and drunk so he did what anyone would: filmed two videos of himself “doing” the same tasks in both states.

While you could do it with a proper bottle cutter, the Crazy Russian Hacker shows us how to slice a glass bottle in half the only way a crazy Russian hacker knows how – with acetone, a piece of string and a lighter.

Each face on these wood blocks shows the name of an element, but when viewed through an augmented reality app, they come to life, showing how they interact. We only wish they had the whole periodic table in block form.

While in upper Michigan, Jason Asselin managed to capture a rare weather phenomenon, as the sky turned yellow, then a beautiful orange, casting its light through bubbly, ethereal clouds called Mammatus. Yes, this was shot on Earth.

On his trip to the Amazon Rainforest, Destin of Smarter Every Day found a group of caterpillars that seem to have figured a way for all of them to move faster. How? By acting as each other’s conveyor belt. Unedited video here.

A reboot of Carl Sagan’s classic series, this epic 14-part documentary stars astrophysics badass Neil deGrasse Tyson – and is produced, surprisingly, by Seth MacFarlane. Coming to FOX in 2014. (Thanks, Wille from Feber!)

A chemistry experiment starts out innocently enough, when all of a sudden, the gates of Hell open, and a creature emerges from its bowels. Kill it with fire! Oh, wait… Dowse it with water! Memo to self, never mix NH4Cr2O7 with HgSCN.

The latest educational clip from Mental Floss debunks dozens of things we always thought were true. We were most disappointed to find out that the brontosaurus didn’t actually exist. Why? No brontosaurus burgers.

Ever wanted to float in space like an astronaut? It turns out that it’s less like floating, and more like a free-fall in orbit around the Earth. Watch and learn in this short TedEd lesson from Matt J. Carlson, animated by Josh Harris.

We’ve seen a hovering superconductors before, but this nifty neodymium magnet-covered track propels a floating vehicle along a looped surface, infinitely twisting upon itself, the vehicle floating both above and below the track.

A mind-blowing science experiment in which a beaker filled with a 50-meter-long string of metal beads wriggle their way out on their own. Stick around long enough, and you might learn something about Newtonian physics.