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Anti-Gravity Wheel Explained

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Anti-Gravity Wheel Explained

Title: Anti-Gravity Wheel Explained
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: It's a little shaky but if you average out the oscillations I think the result is clear. Again, huge thank you's to A/Prof Emeritus Rod Cross, Helen Georgiou, Alex Yeung, and Chris Stewart, Tom Gordon, the University of Sydney Mechanical Engineering shop, Duncan and co. Ralph and the School of Physics.

Anti-Gravity Wheel?

Title: Anti-Gravity Wheel?
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Explanation of gyro precession: http://bit.ly/U4e8HQ
More: http://bit.ly/GyroMORE
Less Than: http://bit.ly/GyroLESS
Equal To: http://bit.ly/GyroEQUAL

Huge thanks to A/Prof Emeritus Rod Cross, Helen Georgiou for filming, Alex Yeung, and Chris Stewart, the University of Sydney Mechanical Engineering shop, Duncan and co. Ralph and the School of Physics.

In this video I attempt to lift a 19kg (42 lbs) wheel over my head one-handed while it's spinning at a few thousand RPM. This replicates an earlier experiment by Professor Eric Laithwaite. He claimed the wheel was 'light as a feather' and could not be explained by Newton's Laws. I wanted to find out for myself what I really felt like.

Music By Kevin MacLeod www.Incompetech.com "Tempting Secrets"

The Most Common Cognitive Bias

Title: The Most Common Cognitive Bias
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Can you figure out the rule?
Did you see the exponents pattern? http://youtu.be/AVB8vRC6HIY
Why do you make people look stupid? http://bit.ly/12Fmlpl

How do you investigate hypotheses? Do you seek to confirm your theory - looking for white swans? Or do you try to find black swans? I was startled at how hard it was for people to investigate number sets that didn't follow their hypotheses, even when their method wasn't getting them anywhere.

In the video I say "when people came to Australia..." by which I meant, "when Europeans who believed all swans were white came to Australia..." I did not mean any offence to Indigenous Australians who were already in Australia at that time. Please accept my apologies for the poor phrasing if you were offended by it.

This video was inspired by The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb and filmed by my mum. Thanks mum!

Partly my motivation came from responses to my Facebook videos - social media mark...

Testing if 60 minutes of silence drives you crazy

Title: Testing if 60 minutes of silence drives you crazy
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: *Watch with headphones on!
Is 45 minutes really the longest anyone can stay in a perfectly silent, pitch-black room?
Support Veritasium on Patreon http://bit.ly/VePatreon
Check out Audible: http://bit.ly/AudibleVe
Want to watch the whole hour of silence? http://youtu.be/jr1UMFC9DV0

Many stories have circulated claiming the longest anyone has stayed in an ultra-quiet anechoic chamber is 45 minutes, the reason being any longer would drive you insane. To me this sounded like unsubstantiated rubbish, like the claim the Great Wall is the only manmade structure visible from space. So I put my own psyche on the line, subjecting myself to over an hour of the most intense quiet on Earth. No, this was not THE quietest room on Earth (-9dB) but it is one of the quietest, and the truth is once you put a person inside, they are by far the loudest thing in there so the sound rating of the room is irrelevant.

I was not surprised to find that I could st...

Title: Facebook Fraud
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Evidence Facebook's revenue is based on fake likes.
My first vid on the problem with Facebook: http://bit.ly/1dXudqY
I know first-hand that Facebook's advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about Veritasium (but I wasn't aware of this at the time). They drove my reach and engagement numbers down, basically rendering the page useless. I am not the only one who has experienced this. Rory Cellan-Jones had the same luck with Virtual Bagel: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18819338

The US Department of State spent $630,000 to acquire 2 million page likes and then realized only 2% were engaged. http://wapo.st/1glcyZo

I thought I would demonstrate that the same thing is still happening now by creating Virtual Cat (http://www.facebook.com/MyVirtualCat). I was surprised to discover something worse - false likes are coming from everywhere, including Canada, the ...

Will This Go Faster Than Light?

Title: Will This Go Faster Than Light?
Date posted: 12 years ago
Description: Physics of contraptions meant to go faster than light.
Audible: http://bit.ly/AudibleVe
My video about the problem with Facebook: http://bit.ly/PwFB

Special thanks to MinutePhysics for visual effects and Prof. Geraint Lewis for revisions to earlier drafts of this video.

We Tagged a Great White Shark!

Title: We Tagged a Great White Shark!
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Veritasium second channel: http://bit.ly/2Veritasium
Rodney Fox Shark Attack Story: http://bit.ly/1frAwlI
Check out Audible: http://bit.ly/AudibleVe

For this video I went off the coast of South Australia to an island frequented by great white sharks. Here they hunt seals and fish. I've never been scuba diving before but I got into a cage and filmed the sharks under water. It was an incredible experience. Then we came back on the surface to tag the sharks.

Bullet Block Experiment Result

Title: Bullet Block Experiment Result
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: SEE THE SETUP FIRST: http://bit.ly/bulletblock
Click here for the explanation: http://bit.ly/1dHPk2K
Spinning Tube: http://bit.ly/Va43Z6
Spinning Disk: http://bit.ly/14MSKsT
Chain Drop: http://bit.ly/1713VQO
Spool: http://bit.ly/14wkxfn

Special Thanks to:
Henry (MinutePhysics): http://www.youtube.com/minutephysics
Destin (Smarter Every Day): http://www.youtube.com/smartereveryday
Greg and Mitch (ASAP Science): http://youtube.com/asapscience
Elise Andrew (I F***ing Love Science): http://youtube.com/iflscience

Thanks to everyone at RIT and Dickinson College who helped with the making of this video:
Rochester Institute of Technology
Robert Teese, Katelyn Wilkerson, Andrew Gillie, Andrew Stidwill

Dickinson College
This experiment was the brainchild of David Jackson based on a demo at Princeton.
Priscilla Laws, Catrina Hamilton-Drager, Maxine Willis

High-speed ca...

How We’re Fooled By Statistics

Title: How We’re Fooled By Statistics
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Is punishment or reward more effective as feedback? Do new medical treatments really work? What about streaks in sport? Without considering regression to the mean, we are prone to making significant errors.

Check out Audible.com: http://bit.ly/ZJ5Q6z
Filmed at Perimeter Institute: http://pitp.ca

Is punishment or reward more effective for helping people learn. A lot of people would say different incentives motivate different people, or in different circumstances, but in psychology there is a sizable body of evidence that in order to learn skills, positive feedback is more effective. This fining has been verified not just with humans, but also with other species.

It was strange then that after Daniel Kahneman discussed this research with Israeli fighter pilot instructors that he was met with resistance. They found the opposite was true: when they reprimanded a cadet for performing poorly, he invariably improved, but if they praised a cadet for...

How a Shark Attack Survivor Invented Cage Diving

Title: How a Shark Attack Survivor Invented Cage Diving
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Thank you to Rodney Fox for sharing his story. He was attacked by a shark 50 years ago - Dec. 8 1963. If you're interested in his book or in going shark cage diving in South Australia, check out: http://bit.ly/rodneyfox

10 Facts About Great White Sharks

Title: 10 Facts About Great White Sharks
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Remarkably little is known about great white sharks, but they are similar to humans in a lot of ways - they give birth to live young, maintain a higher body temperature than their surroundings and they are apex predators. There are also many misconceptions about these sharks: people think they don't get cancer and that they reside mainly in shallow waters near beaches. In this video I summarize some of the most interesting things I learned about sharks on my cage diving adventure.

Special thanks to Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions for making this trip possible: http://bit.ly/rodneyfox

Thanks also to Tourism South Australia for facilitating the trip: http://bit.ly/1aq9MgV

Chris Cassella or C² as he is known after this trip was a shark spotter extraordinaire. He also took some of the best shark footage in this video. It was his idea to go on this expedition, which was definitely a once in a lifetime experience, so I am in his debt. Chris, I look forwar...

How Special Relativity Makes Magnets Work

Title: How Special Relativity Makes Magnets Work
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: MinutePhysics on permanent magnets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFAOXdXZ5TM
Subscribe to Veritasium: http://bit.ly/SuBVe
Support Veritasium- get a t-shirt: http://dft.ba/-vetshirt
Subscribe to MinutePhysics: http://bit.ly/1eVPynh

Magnetism seems like a pretty magical phenomenon. Rocks that attract or repel each other at a distance - that's really cool - and electric current in a wire interacts in the same way. What's even more amazing is how it works. We normally think of special relativity as having little bearing on our lives because everything happens at such low speeds that relativistic effects are negligible. But when you consider the large number of charges in a wire and the strength of the electric interaction, you can see that electromagnets function thanks to the special relativistic effect of length contraction. In a frame of reference moving with the charges, there is an electric field that creates a force on the charges. But in the lab fram...

Bullet Block Explained!

Title: Bullet Block Explained!
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Watch the bullet block experiment first: http://bit.ly/bulletblock
Click for a free audiobook from Audible: http://bit.ly/ZJ5Q6z
An interactive vignette of the bullet block http://ivv.rit.edu/bby/

Can you figure out the spinning disk? http://bit.ly/spinningdisk

Thank you all for the awesome video responses and comments!!

Simulation: http://bit.ly/19SCVnl
Web comic: http://bit.ly/17o8HrR
Wired Blog: http://bit.ly/17o9Dwu
Science Blogs: http://bit.ly/17o9au3
Scientific American: http://bit.ly/19SDoWC
Le's Blog: http://bit.ly/18q1m8a

Video responses from which I borrowed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hup-l4_Qt_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwZ1Mhy0BS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgylTbknFdM

Thanks to everyone at RIT and Dickinson College who helped with the making of this video:
Rochester Institute of Technology
Robert Teese, Katelyn Wilkerson, A...

The Bullet Block Experiment

Title: The Bullet Block Experiment
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Higher: http://bit.ly/blockhigher
Same height: http://bit.ly/SameHeight
Lower: http://bit.ly/BlockLower

Special Thanks to:
Henry (MinutePhysics): http://www.youtube.com/minutephysics
Destin (Smarter Every Day): http://www.youtube.com/smartereveryday
Greg and Mitch (ASAP Science): http://youtube.com/asapscience
Elise Andrew (I F***ing Love Science): http://youtube.com/iflscience

Thanks to everyone at RIT and Dickinson College who helped with the making of this video:
Rochester Institute of Technology
Robert Teese, Katelyn Wilkerson, Andrew Gillie, Andrew Stidwill

Dickinson College
This experiment was the brainchild of David Jackson based on a demo at Princeton.
Priscilla Laws, Catrina Hamilton-Drager, Maxine Willis

High-speed camera support:
Charles Zwemer and Bria Antoine

Slow-Mo Non-Newtonian Fluid on a Speaker

Title: Slow-Mo Non-Newtonian Fluid on a Speaker
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Subscribe to Veritasium - it's free! http://bit.ly/YSWpWm
Support Veritasium - get a t-shirt: http://dft.ba/-vetshirt
Happy Geek Week! http://bit.ly/16wdDuk

Everyone has played with a mixture of corn starch and water (or at least I hope they have). This was one of my favorite experiments as a kid. Your hand slides into the slime easily when moving slowly but the mixture behaves as a solid if you hit it quickly. That is what is meant by 'non-Newtonian' - the fluid's properties change depending on its relative motion. These properties can be exploited to dramatic effect as has been shown on speaker cones before. Here I wanted to understand what is going on, what frequencies and amplitudes work best so I used a slow-mo camera.

Thanks to everyone at the YouTube Space LA for helping me film this. I couldn't have done it without you.

Music licensed from http://www.cuesongs.com
Love Lost (Instrumental) by Temper Trap
A Life in the...

How To Make a Quantum Bit

Title: How To Make a Quantum Bit
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: How does a transistor work? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcrBqCFLHIY
Silicon-28 sphere: http://bit.ly/10J1G2o
This episode supported by audible.com: http://bit.ly/ZJ5Q6z

We have looked at how a transistor works, the fundamental unit of classical computers, and how a quantum computer works in theory, taking advantage of quantum superposition to hold exponentially more information than classical computers. Now we look at the practical side of making a quantum bit, or qubit. How do you put it in a state where it is stable? How do you read and write information on it? These processes are described for a solid state qubit - a phosphorous atom in a silicon crystal substrate. Both the electron and the nucleus of the phosphorous atom can be used as qubits.

Thanks to A/Prof. Andrea Morello: http://bit.ly/17wZ7lt

Thanks to Henry Reich (MinutePhysics) for pushing me to make the explanations and visualizations clearer.

How Does a Transistor Work?

Title: How Does a Transistor Work?
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: How does a transistor work? Our lives depend on this device.
Support Veritasium on Patreon: http://bit.ly/VePatreon
Subscribe to Veritasium - it's FREE! http://bit.ly/YSWpWm

When I mentioned to people that I was doing a video on transistors, they would say "as in a transistor radio?" Yes! That's exactly what I mean, but it goes so much deeper than that. After the transistor was invented in 1947 one of the first available consumer technologies it was applied to was radios, so they could be made portable and higher quality. Hence the line in 'Brown-eyed Girl' - "going down to the old mine with a transistor radio."

But more important to our lives today, the transistor made possible the microcomputer revolution, and hence the Internet, and also TVs, mobile phones, fancy washing machines, dishwashers, calculators, satellites, projectors etc. etc. A transistor is based on semiconductor material, usually silicon, which is 'doped' with impurities to carefu...

Can We Really Touch Anything?

Title: Can We Really Touch Anything?
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Can we really touch things? Well if by touch we mean exchange a force-carrying particle with, then yes. The photon is the force-carrier of the electromagnetic interaction. But if the photon is also a particle of light then why aren't magnets glowing? Because the photons are virtual particles, which means they can't be directly detected (without changing the outcome we are trying to measure.
Supported by Audible: http://bit.ly/ZJ5Q6z
Who would win in a chin-up competition between me and MinutePhysics? What is going to be the most exciting area of scientific discovery in the next few decades? Where can you get a Veritasium t-shirt? http://dft.ba/-vetshirt
Huge thanks to Brady, CGP Grey, and Henry for their cameos.

Thank you to PhET for the Bohr model simulation: http://phet.colorado.edu/

How Does a Quantum Computer Work?

Title: How Does a Quantum Computer Work?
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: For more on spin, check out: http://youtu.be/v1_-LsQLwkA
This video was supported by TechNYou: http://bit.ly/19bBX5G
A quantum computer works in a totally different way from a classical computer. Quantum bits or 'qubits' can exist in a superposition state of both zero and one simultaneously. This means that a set of two qubits can be in a superposition of four states, which therefore require four numbers to uniquely identify the state. So the amount of information stored in N qubits is two to the power of N classical bits.

Thank you to Andrea Morello and UNSW. For more info, check out: http://bit.ly/17wZ7lt

Do Aliens Exist?

Title: Do Aliens Exist?
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Subscribe to Veritasium - it's FREE! http://bit.ly/YSWpWm
Check out other unanswered science questions: http://youtu.be/UFydagCS9fg

The universe is huge. That means two things: 1. there is probably life elsewhere, 2. It is likely too far away to have reached us.

Fast, Furious & Funny - http://www.youtube.com/fastfuriousand... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWxub2...)

The Brain Scoop - http://www.youtube.com/thebrainscoop (http://youtu.be/mNuu0y6ZmAs)

ASAPScience - http://www.youtube.com/AsapSCIENCE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgxJhp...)

The Royal Institute of Great Britain - http://www.youtube.com/TheRoyalInstit... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm02Oi...)

PBS Idea Channel - http://www.youtube.com/pbsideachannel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbNymw...)

The Spangler Effect - http://www.youtube.com/TheSpanglerEffect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fQ4uB...)

Minute Physi...

Why the Sky ISN'T Blue

Title: Why the Sky ISN'T Blue
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: I actually have many, many more questions and answers so if you want to see them, like this video and let me know in the comments and I will edit them. Thank you for your support! I wouldn't have gotten this far without you.

Your Mass is NOT From the Higgs Boson

Title: Your Mass is NOT From the Higgs Boson
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: The Higgs Boson is awesome but it's NOT responsible for most of your mass! Thanks to audible.com for supporting this episode: http://bit.ly/ZJ5Q6z
The Higgs mechanism is meant to account for the mass of everything, right? Well no, only the fundamental particles, which means that electrons derive their mass entirely from the Higgs interaction but protons and neutrons, made of quarks, do not. In fact the quark masses are so small that they only make up about 1% of the mass of the proton (and a similar fraction of the neutron). The rest of the mass comes from the energy in the gluon field. Gluons are massless, but there is so much energy in the field that by E=mc^2 there is a significant amount of mass there. This is where most of your mass comes from and the mass of virtually everything around you.

Thanks to Professor Derek Leinweber for his great images, animations and explanations. Check out his site to find out more: http://bit.ly/ZZTKFP

Empty Space is NOT Empty

Title: Empty Space is NOT Empty
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: An atom is mostly empty space, but empty space is mostly not empty. The reason it looks empty is because electrons and photons don't interact with the stuff that is there, quark and gluon field fluctuations.
It actually takes energy to clear out space and make a true 'empty' vacuum. This seems incredibly counter-intuitive but we can make an analogy to a permanent magnet. When at low energies, like at room temperature, there is a magnetic field around the magnet due to the alignment of all the magnetic moments of the atoms. But if you add some energy to it by heating it, the particles gain thermal energy, which above the Curie temperature makes their magnetic moments randomly oriented and hence destroying the magnetic field. So in this case energy is needed to clear out the field, just as in the quantum vacuum.

Special thanks to Professor Derek Leinweber, find out more about his research here: http://bit.ly/ZZTKFP

The Science of Jetpacks and Rockets!

Title: The Science of Jetpacks and Rockets!
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Check out 2Veritasium! https://ve42.co/2Ve
MinutePhysics has a great video on Milkman, vomiting levitator: http://dft.ba/-vomphysics
Jetpacking was awesome fun! Despite the fat lip I had a great time. I think knowing a bit about physics actually helps fly the jetpack. It works on the same principle as a rocket (Newton's 3rd law) but unlike the shuttle, you don't carry your own propellant with you. Instead, water is pumped out of the lake by the jetski at up to 60 litres a second. It is then fired out of the nozzles at around 15 m/s creating 1800 N of force, the equivalent of about 150 fire extinguishers. On me this can produce acceleration of about 1.5g's.

Music by Kevin McLeod (http://incompetech.com) Silly Fun, Also Sprach Zarathustra
Supported by Science Alert: http://on.fb.me/14ehuxA
Slow motion filming by Questacon: http://bit.ly/ZoWFGR

Epic Slow-Mo Drum Implosions!

Title: Epic Slow-Mo Drum Implosions!
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Negative Pressure Exists! http://bit.ly/TFilQ8
Vsauce's Space Straw: http://bit.ly/XubIm3
Smarter Every Day's Prince Rupert's Drop: http://bit.ly/10VQBGW
ViHart's Optimal Potatoes: http://bit.ly/14egJoe

Thanks to Questacon for filming! Check out their slow-mo playlist: http://bit.ly/ZoWFGR
Science Alert brings science to your news feed: http://on.fb.me/14ehuxA

Music by Kevin Mcleod (http://incompetech.com): Pale Rider & The Cannery

World's Roundest Object!

Title: World's Roundest Object!
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: The world's roundest object helps solve the longest running problem in measurement -- how to define the kilogram.
Support Veritasium on Patreon: http://bit.ly/VePatreon

A kilogram isn't what it used to be. Literally. The original name for it was the 'grave', proposed in 1793 but it fell victim to the French Revolution like its creator, Lavoisier. So begins the tale of the most unusual SI unit. The kilogram is the only base unit with a prefix in its name, and the only one still defined by a physical artifact, the international prototype kilogram or IPK.

But the problem with this definition has long been apparent. The IPK doesn't seem to maintain its mass compared to 40 similar cylinders minted at the same time. The goal is therefore to eliminate the kilogram's dependence on a physical object. Two main approaches are being considered to achieve this end: the Avogadro Project and the Watt Balance.

The Avogadro project aims to redefine Avogadro'...

Single Photon Interference

Title: Single Photon Interference
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: What happens when single photons of light pass through a double slit and are detected by a photomultiplier tube? In 1801 Thomas Young seemed to settle a long-running debate about the nature of light with his double slit experiment. He demonstrated that light passing through two slits creates patterns like water waves, with the implication that it must be a wave phenomenon.

However, experimental results in the early 1900s found that light energy is not smoothly distributed as in a classical wave, rather it comes in discrete packets, called quanta and later photons. These are indivisible particles of light. So what would happen if individual photons passed through a double slit? Would they make a pattern like waves or like particles?

What Can Frogs See That We Can't?

Title: What Can Frogs See That We Can't?
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Check out the original double slit experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuv6hY6zsd0 - oh, and for the sun to be seen as single photons, you would have to be ~1000 light years away, so well past Pluto. For clarification on this video, please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW7tfrTh66c
What would you see if you were drifting through space, looking back at the sun? Well its light intensity would decrease as the inverse square of distance from the sun. And you would imagine the intensity would decrease smoothly, asymptotically approaching zero.

But this is not what happens.

If you had sensitive enough eyes, like frogs' eyes, you would find that at some point the sun would start to flicker. You would see flashes of light separated by complete darkness. And as you drift further from the sun, what's strange is that these flashes do not decrease in brightness, but they do become less frequent. That's because light comes in lumps, called quanta or photo...

The Original Double Slit Experiment

Title: The Original Double Slit Experiment
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Light is so common that we rarely think about what it really is. But just over two hundred years ago, a groundbreaking experiment answered the question that had occupied physicists for centuries. Is light made up of waves or particles?

The experiment was conducted by Thomas Young and is known as Young's Double Slit Experiment. This famous experiment is actually a simplification of a series of experiments on light conducted by Young. In a completely darkened room, Young allowed a thin beam of sunlight to pass through an aperture on his window and onto two narrow, closely spaced openings (the double slit). This sunlight then cast a shadow onto the wall behind the apparatus. Young found that the light diffracted as it passed through the slits, and then interfered with itself, created a series of light and dark spots. Since the sunlight consists of all colours of the rainbow, these colours were also visible in the projected spots. Young concluded that light consist of waves an...

Veritasium Trailer

Title: Veritasium Trailer
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Veritasium is a channel of science and engineering videos featuring experiments, expert interviews, cool demos, and discussions with the public about everything science.
Clips featured in this video:
Trees are Freaking Awesome - http://bit.ly/TFilQ8
Gyroscopic Precession - http://bit.ly/U4e8HQ
Can We Go The Speed of Light? (Principle of Relativity) - http://bit.ly/X1BlXZ
Where Does The Sun Get Its Energy? - http://bit.ly/125jbeM
Where Do Trees Get Their Mass? - http://bit.ly/11AA817
What Is A Candle Flame Made Of? - http://bit.ly/Q3enCb
Levitating Barbecue (Electromagnetic Induction) - http://bit.ly/SWgOWh
Imploding Drum - http://bit.ly/125jG8B
Microwave Grape Plasma - http://bit.ly/QkCwUt
Spinning Tube Trick - http://bit.ly/Va43Z6
Spinning Disk Trick - http://bit.ly/14MSKsT
Why Do You Make People Look Stupid? - http://bit.ly/12Fmlpl
Awesome HD Slinky Slow-Mo - http://bit.ly/TRa4sE
Subscribe to Ve...

Why Do Venomous Animals Live In Warm Climates?

Title: Why Do Venomous Animals Live In Warm Climates?
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: As a Canadian-Australian, I have always wondered why it is that Australia has so many venomous animals that can kill you while Canada has virtually none.
Subscribe to Veritasium - it's free! http://bit.ly/YSWpWm

But it's not just Australia - it seems like all beautiful, warm places are cursed with venomous native species. So I set out to find the truth: why have all these venomous species evolved in the world's best holiday destinations?

I asked chemists, visited the zoo, interviewed entomologists and snake experts. The answer I found was complicated:
1. The majority of venomous species are ectotherms, cold-blooded creatures whose internal temperatures are governed by their surroundings.
2. This means they have limited periods of activity - mainly while it's warm out, and can only exert short bursts of energy, so they are generally "sit and wait" predators. This may explain why they, more than mammals or birds, evolved venom.
3. ...

How To Make Colour With Holes

Title: How To Make Colour With Holes
Date posted: 13 years ago
Description: Scientists are being inspired by nature to design the next generation of security devices. Arrays of nanoscale holes create beautiful reflected colours that are almost impossible to forge. This video was supported by TechNyou - check out their series on logical fallacies: http://bit.ly/WBsD31

Soon these nanoscale security devices could replace holograms. They are many times more reflective than holograms, and although the structures are smaller scale, they are lower aspect ratio and therefore easy to manufacture in bulk.

The electron wiggle simulation is from PhET, the best physics simulations ever: http://phet.colorado.edu

Special thanks to Thomas from Copenhagen who showed me around the city including the science museum where he assisted with the soap bubble demonstration.

Clint Landrock is the Chief Technology Officer for Nanotech Securities: http://www.nanosecurity.ca

Music is "Firefly in a Fairytale" by Gareth Coker

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Explained

Title: Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Explained
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that it is impossible to simultaneously measure the position and momentum of a particle with infinite precision. In our everyday lives we virtually never come up against this limit, hence why it seems peculiar. In this experiment a laser is shone through a narrow slit onto a screen. As the slit is made narrower, the spot on the screen also becomes narrower. But at a certain point, the spot starts becoming wider. This is because the photons of light have been so localised at the slit that their horizontal momentum must become less well defined in order to satisfy Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

I based this video on one by Prof. Walter Lewin of MIT: http://bit.ly/100Wk2K

Henry (MinutePhysics) has previously made a video about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle where he treats it as less spooky and more a consequence of waves: http://bit.ly/TV3xO5

Sixty Symbols has a great video on Planck's constant: h...

What Could Survive An Atomic Bomb?

Title: What Could Survive An Atomic Bomb?
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: I am nearing the end of a 6-week road trip filming for an Australian TV show called Catalyst (http://abc.net.au/catalyst). Along with co-presenters Anja and Simon, I have travelled from Perth towards our destination, Melbourne, picking up all the interesting science stories along the way.

Since we have been working long days I haven't had time to make any new Veritasium material. Instead I thought I'd share some things I have done for this show in the past, including narrating short 'factoid' segments like this one. Hope everyone is having a great holiday season and I look forward to getting back to Veritasium stuff in a few weeks.

Nuclear Fungus
Producer: Nicky Ruscoe
Researcher: Kiri Beilby
Editor: Chris Spur
Graphics: Rapt Animation P/L

http://abc.net.au/catalyst

Paralysed Rats Made To Walk Again

Title: Paralysed Rats Made To Walk Again
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Innovative research conducted in Lausanne, Switzerland has shown that a combination of neurotransmitters and electrical stimulation can restore movement to the lower limbs of previously paralysed rats. But in order for this motion to be made voluntarily the rats must be motivated to walk. This motivation comes in the form of cheering, visual cues, and of course, chocolate.

Why Trees Are Amazing: http://bit.ly/TFilQ8
Space Junk: http://bit.ly/XlLdjG
Why Astronauts Are Weightless: http://bit.ly/SuF2p1
Higgs Boson Update: http://bit.ly/Vw1Sgu

How To Clean Up Space Junk

Title: How To Clean Up Space Junk
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Space junk is a real problem. NASA now tracks around 20,000 pieces of debris orbiting Earth, most of them larger than 10cm across. Since the average speed of a collision between orbiting objects is 10 km/s these pieces of trash can cause a lot of damage despite their small size.

Scientists in Switzerland have a plan to clean up space junk - it involves creating a 'Janitor Satellite' that will seek out pieces of space junk to drag back into the atmosphere causing them to burn up.

This video was created for the Aussie science show Catalyst on the ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst

Corn Flour Fireball

Title: Corn Flour Fireball
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Corn flour blown through a funnel produces an excellent fireball. This both looks cool and demonstrates some interesting science. In any chemical reaction, the reactants must mix with each other significantly in order to increase the rate of reaction. Here we demonstrate that corn flour on a spoon burns slowly, but blown from a funnel, the reaction is dramatic and violent. This is because the surface area where the reaction can occur is greatly increased.

HD Slinky Slow-mo http://bit.ly/TRa4sE
How to make solid nitrogen http://bit.ly/RqPw8l
Levitating BBQ http://bit.ly/SWgOWh
Electric Flame http://bit.ly/Q3enCb

As always, if you are planning to recreate this experiment, make sure you have appropriate supervision and take necessary precautions.

World's First Electric Generator

Title: World's First Electric Generator
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Huge thanks to the Royal Institution, Professor Frank James, and Katie Atmore for filming.
For the Sixty Symbols version of this experiment click http://bit.ly/RGfLY5

Michael Faraday created the first electric generator in 1831 using a coil of wire and a permanent magnet. When the magnet was moved relative to the coil, current was induced in the coil. A similar experiment can be performed with a copper tube and a magnet. Although copper is not magnetic, it is a conductor. As the magnet falls through the pipe, the magnetic field changes over different sections of the pipe. This induces swirling currents (called eddy currents), which create a magetic field that opposes the motion of the magnet. This means work must be done to move the magnet through the pipe. This work generates the electrical energy, which is then dissipated as thermal energy in the pipe. The same basic principle is used to generate electricity throughout the world: moving a magnet inside copper coils...

How Trees Bend the Laws of Physics

Title: How Trees Bend the Laws of Physics
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Hope this was worth the wait! So many people helped with this video: Prof John Sperry, Hank Green, Henry Reich, CGP Grey, Prof Poliakoff, my mum filmed for me in beautiful Stanley Park and Jen S helped with the fourth version of the script.

Prof John Sperry http://biologylabs.utah.edu/sperry/john.html
Hank Green (SciShow) http://www.youtube.com/user/scishow
Henry Reich (minutephysics) http://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics
CGP Grey http://www.youtube.com/user/cgpgrey
Prof Poliakoff (Periodic Videos) http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos

Also thanks to the Palais de la Decouverte - they helped me with the whole vacuum pump setup in Paris. No, I could not actually suck water up 10m - I did about 4m, but the vacuum pump was easily able to do it and I saw spontaneous boiling on all of our various trials. Footage from this may end up on 2Veritasium.

Trees create immense negative pressures of 10's of atmospheres by evapor...

What Now For The Higgs Boson?

Title: What Now For The Higgs Boson?
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: For a report on ABC's Catalyst program (http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/), I visited the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to find out what is being done now that the Higgs Boson has been discovered.

Although its mass has been measured around 125-126 GeV most of the other properties of the particle remain unknown. Its spin appears to be 0 or 2 but more results are required to nail this down. If it is the standard model Higgs, the spin should be 0, resulting in a fairly symmetric distribution of decay products in the detectors.

We may know this year if it's not the standard model Higgs - this would be the case if it doesn't decay into specific particles with the expected frequency. However if it is the standard model Higgs, it may take many more years to be certain. The large hadron collider will be shut down in 2013 for upgrades so that higher energies up to 14 TeV can be tested. Right now the LHC is operating at 8 TeV. The next announcement is expected in D...

Levitating Barbecue! Electromagnetic Induction

Title: Levitating Barbecue! Electromagnetic Induction
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: At the Palais de la Decouverte in Paris, they showed me this experiment where a 1kg aluminium plate is levitated above a large coil of wire that is being supplied with 800A of alternating current at 900Hz. This is by far the best demonstration of electromagnetic induction I have ever seen.

Back in London, I visited the magnetic lab of Michael Faraday in the basement of the Royal Institution. It was here that he did his groundbreaking work on induction. People had previously observed that current in a wire causes a compass needle to deflect, but more exciting was the prospect of using a magnetic field to generate current. Faraday created his famous induction ring by winding two coils of insulated wire onto an iron ring. When he connected a battery to one coil, a small pulse of current was induced in the other. When the battery was disconnected, current was induced in the other direction. This led Faraday to the conclusion that current was induced in the second coil only whe...

Misconceptions About Falling Objects

Title: Misconceptions About Falling Objects
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Yes, I have made a similar vid before. This is the Australian TV version for the ABC show Catalyst http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/
Misconceptions About Temperature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqDbMEdLiCs
The Mysterious Falling Slinky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAA613hqqZ0
Why Are Astronauts Weightless? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQOHRKKNNLQ

And for those of you wanting a more General Relativity based explanation. Don't worry, it's coming.

Making SOLID Nitrogen!

Title: Making SOLID Nitrogen!
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: What happens when you decrease the pressure around a liquid? It boils. Water boils at room temperature once the pressure is low enough. What is interesting is that this decreases the temperature of the liquid. The fastest molecules escape, leaving the slower ones behind.
Using this trick with liquid nitrogen, it is possible to create solid nitrogen at a temperature of -210C. We then poured the solid and liquid nitrogen mixture onto a tray of water. The surface of the water became so cold that CO2 solidified out of the atmosphere on its surface. Then, since CO2 does not pass through the liquid phase at atmospheric pressure, it was propelled on the water surface by jets of gas as it sublimed.
Huge thanks to the Palais de la Decouverte.
Music by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com (Mirage)

What's In A Candle Flame?

Title: What's In A Candle Flame?
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Microwave grape plasma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwTjsRt0Fzo
Northern Lights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knwiWm4DpvQ
Nanodiamonds in candle flames: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzOkuGQC3Rw
Relight Candle Trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tXPVTIisl0

Is a flame really a plasma? Well it depends on your definition of plasma, but there are certainly ions in a flame, formed as molecules collide with each other at high speed, sometimes knocking electrons off of their atoms.

Special thanks to the Palais de la Decouverte for helping me perform this experiment. Using tens of thousands of volts on two metal plates, we created a strong electric field around the plasma. This pulled positive ions in one direction and negative ions in the other direction elongating the flame horizontally and causing it to flicker like a "papillon" (butterfly). Then we showed that much longer sparks can be made through the flame than through air since the io...

How Can Trees Be Taller Than 10m?

Title: How Can Trees Be Taller Than 10m?
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Answer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BickMFHAZR0
The longest vertical straw you can use is 10.3 m http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUmZrtiXDik
This is because the weight of water in the straw must be supported by the pressure difference at its two ends. At the bottom, the pressure is atmospheric, and at the top, the lowest pressure you can create is a perfect vacuum (pressure = 0). Atmospheric pressure can support a water column about 10m high - BUT with 0 pressure at the top, the water would start boiling. This is called cavitation and it obviously can't be happening in trees.
After I posted the straw video, I received a lot of questions about how trees could be taler than 10m. I assumed there was a simple answer because there are plenty of trees taller than that. But as I asked around and read articles about it, I couldn't really find an explanation I was happy with.

Maybe there is not a continuous water column inside the tree, so each section on...

Misconceptions About Temperature

Title: Misconceptions About Temperature
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Made for ABC TV Catalyst http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/ as an extended version of my Comparing Temperatures video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNGJ0WHXMyE

How Does A Boomerang Work?

Title: How Does A Boomerang Work?
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: A boomerang can execute its unique roundtrip flight by making use of three fundamental physics principles: lift, relative velocity, and gyroscopic precession.

numberphile http://bit.ly/numberphile
efit30 http://bit.ly/O4CMme
appchat http://bit.ly/NxAMlX
erikaanear http://bit.ly/MdyUzQ
whoisjimmy http://bit.ly/LtFzpW
minutephysics http://bit.ly/Muh6CC
1veritasium http://bit.ly/MrupzL

In high jump, your centre of mass goes under the bar

Title: In high jump, your centre of mass goes under the bar
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: The strange thing about high jump is that the technique changed dramatically after 1968, when Dick Fosbury used his trademark flop to win the gold medal at the Olympics in Mexico City.
Previously the scissors and straddle had been the most common jumping technique, but after the introduction of safer landing matts, the new unorthodox Fosbury Flop became the jump of choice. There are good physical reasons for this - the style allows the jumper to pass over the bar while his or her centre of mass actually passes below the bar.

Huge thanks to Elly (Appchat http://bit.ly/NxAMlX ) for filming, editing, and music!

numberphile http://bit.ly/numberphile
efit30 http://bit.ly/O4CMme
appchat http://bit.ly/NxAMlX
erikaanear http://bit.ly/MdyUzQ
whoisjimmy http://bit.ly/LtFzpW
minutephysics http://bit.ly/Muh6CC
1veritasium http://bit.ly/MrupzL

How Does A Sailboat Actually Work?

Title: How Does A Sailboat Actually Work?
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: How lift actually works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFO4PBolwFg
More with Canadian Olympian Hunter Lowden: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YVOPUkbu6g

How does a sailboat work? The standard idea is that the wind pushes the sails from behind, causing the boat to move forward. Although this technique is used at times, it is not the most efficient way to sail a boat (and it means the boat can never go faster than the wind). Lift is the key mechanism driving a boat forwards. As air flows over the sails, it moves faster over the outer side, creating lower pressure than on the inner side. This produces a force which is mostly to the side and a bit forwards. Lift on the centerboard pushes to the opposite side, cancelling the sideways force and adding a forward component of force to the boat.

numberphile http://bit.ly/numberphile
efit30 http://bit.ly/O4CMme
appchat http://bit.ly/NxAMlX
erikaanear http://bit.ly/MdyUzQ<...

How Does A Wing Actually Work?

Title: How Does A Wing Actually Work?
Date posted: 14 years ago
Description: Lift is an important concept, not only in flying but also in sailing. This week I'm talking to Olympic Sailor, Hunter Lowden. But before I get to the physics of sailing I thought I would explain lift since it's generally poorly understood.

minutephysics http://bit.ly/Muh6CC
1veritasium http://bit.ly/MrupzL
efit30 http://bit.ly/O4CMme
appchat http://bit.ly/NxAMlX
erikaanear http://bit.ly/MdyUzQ
whoisjimmy http://bit.ly/LtFzpW
numberphile http://bit.ly/numberphile

Music by Nathaniel Schroeder
youtube: http://bit.ly/pakJLE
myspace: http://mysp.ac/qtmZQj

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