Escher’s Waterfall – The Video
Nice forced perspective illusion from YouTube user mcwolles. [via Boing Boing]
videos
Entire James Burke Connections series streaming free
If I were going to be a super hero, it would be hard to choose between Carl Sagan Man and James Burke Man. I love this show, and now I can watch it to my heart’s content, for free. All three Connections series are available, as well as The Day The Universe Changed. [via adafruit]
Jaw-dropping “unmixing” demo appears to reverse entropy
I identify as a scientist, but I gotta admit: When I saw this video from Steve Spangler Science, my first impulse was to jump back from the computer, cross myself, and douse the screen with holy water. It reminded me of a line from John Carpenter’s underappreciated 1987 horror movie, Prince of Darkness:
And we assume time is an arrow because it is as a clock…Cause precedes effect – fruit rots, water flows downstream. We’re born, we age, we die. The reverse NEVER happens…
Unless, apparently, you’re dealing with a system operating under conditions of laminar flow. Obviously, there is no real “violation” of the second law of thermodynamics, here, but because almost all of our intuitions about how liquids are going to behave are formed under conditions of turbulent flow, it sure does seem like it.
Latest Fatman and Circuit Girl vids
Here are some recent video clips from George Sanger and Jeri Ellsworth, aka The Fatman and Circuit Girl. In the first vid, Jeri attempts to build a Sprinthariscope, a tool for viewing radiation, using the radioactive Americium from a smoke detector. She also attempts to pronounce Sprinthariscope and Americium. All three attempts fail, but it […]
Marine life videos from Gulf Specimen
Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory supplies aquariums and scientific institutions with living marine specimens (not to individuals, sorry). Their site has a lot of information on jellyfish, corals, starfish, all sorts of marine life. Look around for links to YouTube videos, like this one of an octopus egg hatching and an octopus opening a jar – […]
Simpsons intro in LEGO
Urmas Salu (a teenager!) won all of $40 for this re-enactment of The Simpsons opening sequence in LEGO. Watching it makes me ridiculously happy. via Boing Boing
Periodic Table of Videos
The University of Nottingham has produced a series of YouTube videos, each about a different element. Here’s their YouTube channel (via BoingBoing), and here is their website for more information. I poked around a bit and found out that there’s a documentary being made about the scientists, and they’re posting wonderful snippets here. They’re really […]
