33 Million Things - American Museum of Natural History

What if you could open up a drawer full of hundreds of pinned insect specimens to study them under a microscope, or unscrew the jar cap to scan a curious creature that swam in the deep sea decades ago? For collectors everywhere, this is a lovely series from the American Museum of Natural History: Shelf Life, episode 1 – 33 Million Things.

From centuries-old specimens to entirely new types of specialized collections like frozen tissues and genomic data, the Museum’s scientific collections (with more than 33,430,000 specimens and artifacts) form an irreplaceable record of life on Earth, the span of geologic time, and knowledge about our vast universe.

33,430,000 specimens and artifacts!!

Can You Grow a Glacier?

In the 13th century, Genghis Khan embarked on a mission to take over Eurasia, swiftly conquering countries and drawing them into his empire. But, legend has it that there was one obstacle that even he couldn’t overcome: a towering wall of ice, grown by locals across a mountain pass.

Learn more about how ancient cultures created glaciers high above their villages, sources for reliable water to nuture their crops. Watch How to Grow a Glacier, a TED-Ed by M Jackson, with animation by Artrake Studio.

Then explore how this ancient practice is still happening today with the help of some simple engineering. In 2013, Ladakhi engineer Sonam Wangchuk created The Ice Stupa Project, an artificial glacier that can serve as storage for a quarter of a million gallons of freshwater in Kashmir, India‘s high desert. The siphon and sprinkler-made ice pyramids resemble stupa Buddhist monuments used for meditation. From The New Yorker:

The [artificial ice] stupas are created in winter, using runoff or spring water that’s been piped underground and downslope. The water is released at night, when temperatures can drop below zero degrees Fahrenheit. It shoots through a sprinkler into the air and freezes. In the course of the season, elaborate conical structures take shape, with the contours of the drip castles that kids make on the beach.

Ice stupas can reach the height of a ten-story building. They start to melt in March, and at higher elevations—some villages in Ladakh sit more than fifteen thousand feet above sea level—the process can last through July. The meltwater helps farmers get through the crucial spring planting season, when they sow vegetables, barley, and potatoes. (Rainfall in the region averages only around four inches a year.)

See how Wangchuk’s plans for a desert oasis with help from the conceptual animations in this Mashable video: 

Glasswing Butterflies - KQED

Glasswing butterflies aren’t made of glass, but their transparent wings help them blend with their surroundings, protecting them from predators. This Deep Look episode from KQED takes the time to observe the life cycle of glasswing butterflies (Greta oto), as well as the special nanopillars responsible for their non-reflecting wings.

While camouflage is common in nature, actual attempts at invisibility are rare. “Glasswings excel at being dull, and that helps them hide in plain sight.”

File this video under biomimicry. From KQED.org:

By better understanding how these butterflies reduce glare, [Nipam Patel Lab doctoral candidate] Aaron Pomerantz and the other researchers hope that technologies might arise to increase the efficiency of solar panels by reducing the amount of light that bounces off the surface of the panel before it can be turned into electricity.

“Nature’s already figured out solutions to many of the problems that we have today,” he said."

View this post on Instagram

What would it take to become invisible? Have something fun cookin’ up on Glasswing butterfly research & a media project - can’t wait to share them soon! #gretaoto #glasswing #butterfly #transparency #invisible

A post shared by Aaron Pomerantz (@nextgenscientist) on Apr 17, 2020 at 5:05pm PDT

More from Pomerantz’s site TheNextGenScientist.com:

So, what’s the deal Glasswings? Are you transparent to go unseen? Are you bright to show off warning colors? Perhaps a bit of both? I think it’d be interesting if the dual nature serves to avoid a certain kind of predator under reflected light. Another possibility is that they’re showing off ultraviolet colors as warnings, which would be invisible to us, but clear as day to other animals such as birds, many of which contain opsins in their eyes capable of detecting UV. Either way, they’re a beautiful group of butterflies and it’s a beautiful scientific mystery to (attempt to) solve the evolution and development of transparency."

 

Building a Giant Furry Electric Dog Car

When eleven-year-old Alex designed her Giant Furry Electric Dog Car, the team at Kids Invent Stuff rose to the challenge of making it real. In this how-it’s-made video, makers Ruth Amos and Shawn Brown team up to weld, wire, staple, tape, glue, and screw together the canine-themed vehicle, complete with a huge wagging tail.

Here’s the result of their month of work. See it in action when they take it out for a spin in the video below:

Interested in submitting your ideas? Check out their form here. From their site:

Kids Invent Stuff is the YouTube channel where 4-11 year olds have the chance to get their invention ideas built by real engineers. We do this to give more primary school kids the chance to engage with real engineering projects.

Their efforts are in support of the United Kingdom’s “Engineering: Take a closer look” campaign to inspire the next generation of innovators, inventors and problem solvers.

The Story of Physics - Dara O'Briain

Balls, pendulums, apples and magnets all played their part in the story of modern physics, but then things got weird. And when Albert Einstein combined time and space, things got even weirder – step forward quantum uncertainty, black holes and the Big Bang.

This short animation, The Story of Physics, is one in a series of simplified historical summaries from the BBC2’s Science Club series hosted by Dara O Briain. Learn how 300 years of physics was mostly about observing and measuring, until x-rays, radioactivity, and other new discoveries stopped fitting neatly into initial observations.

And then “a Swiss patent clerk started a full-on storm.” That, of course, was 26-year-old Albert Einstein, who, along with other scientists, changed the story of physics and pushed our understanding of how the universe works.

Animated Science: Periodic Table - Luis Perez

Celebrate the periodic table’s 150th anniversary with this episode of Animated Science, a series produced by the Universitat de Barcelona and animator Luis Pérez.

Follow the main character as he struggles to understand the periodic table, the elements, and chemistry for the first time. After a rough start, he listens to the teacher and, with some contemplation, begins to understand how everything is made from atoms and their different combinations.

In this case, he considers the water molecule, “composed of two hydrogen atoms, each linked by a single chemical bond to an oxygen atom.” This leads to how he thinks about elephants, plants, and everything around him.

The animation comes with Spanish and Catalan labels, too.

AGU's Collection of Virtual Field Trips

Spring in the northern hemisphere is the time for students pile into vans with camping gear, rock hammers, pocket transits and field notebooks, and head out to explore the marvels of the Earth’s surface. It is a wonderful part of learning Earth science. But those trips are off as another kind of science — epidemiology — takes precedence. Luckily for students today, the COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t mean they have to lose every aspect of field trips. Virtual field trips like those highlighted below are a way for students to experience geology, and at very least prime them for the real thing, when we’re all on the other side of the current societal crisis.

Check out all of the HERE

The word ‘isochronal‘ means “equal or uniform in time”—iso meaning equal and chrono referring to time—which makes sense when watching this mysterious isochronous curve video.

In this old Curiosity Show clip, science educator and co-host Rob Morrison demonstrates how to draw an isochronous or tautochrone curve and why these curves are extraordinary. Watch as every steel ball dropped on any point in the curve meets in the middle of the curve at the same time as a marble dropped from any point on the other side. Or as described by mathematician, physicist, astronomer and inventor Christiaan Huygens in 1659:

On a cycloid whose axis is erected on the perpendicular and whose vertex is located at the bottom, the times of descent, in which a body arrives at the lowest point at the vertex after having departed from any point on the cycloid, are equal to each other…

The award-winning Curiosity Show ran from 1972 to 1990 for school-age kids in Australia. Co-hosts Morrison and Deane Hutton won the rights to the show in 2012, and now share clips on their YouTube Channel.

The Alchemist: Turning Lead into Gold - Julie Yu

Is it possible to transmute lead into gold? Scientific American explains that “it is indeed possible—all you need is a particle accelerator, a vast supply of energy and an extremely low expectation of how much gold you will end up with.”

For scientists and teachers who don’t have all that, there’s the golden rain experiment. In this video, Exploratorium Senior Scientist Julie Yu mixes lead nitrate Pb(NO3)2 (toxic to your health) with potassium iodide KI to create gold-colored lead iodide PbI2 (also toxic to your health). The short video provides an excellent demonstration of this dangerous experiment.

What’s going on in this ionic bonding demo? A golden rain summary from Compound Chemistry:

This mixing leads to a double displacement reaction, essentially resulting in the metals ‘swapping’ their places in the two compounds, producing lead (II) iodide, and potassium nitrate. It also produces a rapid colour change, as the lead iodide is very insoluble in water at room temperature. When the solutions are added together, they immediately produce a bright yellow precipitate of lead iodide…

These hexagonal crystals take some time to meander gently to the bottom of the flask, giving the reaction mixture a shimmering, glittering effect commonly referred to as a ‘golden rain’.

The effect can last for up to an hour as the crystals fall out of the solution, so it’s a great experiment to instill an awe of chemistry!

There’s more information at both Education in Chemistry and The Home Scientist.

Building a Glitter Firing Saxophone

When five-year-old Benjamin designed his Glitter Firing Saxophone, the team at Kids Invent Stuff rose to the challenge of making it real. In this how-it’s-made video, makers Ruth Amos and Shawn Brown team up to design, print, and assemble the "Roald Dahl-esque" machine. 

You can submit your ideas for crazy inventions to their site, where they might select your idea. 

See it in action below!

Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" Song

Watch singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician Tom Lehrer perform ‘The Elements’ song live from Copenhagen in 1967. Set to the melody, ”I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, it challenges the speed at which you can recite all of the elements known in the early-1960s.

As a bonus, here is Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame) doing his own rendition.

Related browsing: TomLehrerSongs.com, a site that contains lyrics and sheet music free for download and use as if they “were in the public domain.” Permission appears to have been granted by Lehrer himself. But note: The site will disappear at the end of 2024. With that in mind…

🎵 Elements Lyrics: view or download PDF
🎵 Elements Sheet music: view or download PDF
🎵 Elements, Aristotle version:

Hollow Mask Illusion - Royal Institution

How do we perceive faces? With some balloons, newspaper, some paste for paper mâché, and paints, you can create a hollow mask that appears to follow you as you move back and forth around the room. Rachel and her children Eva and Daniel investigate the illusion in this video from The Royal Institution‘s ExpeRimental series, a resource that can help parents set up fun, easy, and cheap science experiments at home.

This classic illusion can baffle brains of all ages. Making the masks can help us explore why it works (or doesn’t work), and why our brains can be so easily tricked. Here’s the Einstein mask in video form:

This series of ExpeRimental is supported by The British Psychological Society. To avoid any spoilers/test conclusions, pause the video at 3m50s. Find the full instruction sheet here (pdf).

NASA's Women's Equality Day Video

It was on August 26th, 1920 that the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified, giving some American women full voting rights. August 26th is now Women’s Equality Day. Designated in 1973, the date celebrates the Women’s Suffrage Movement and underscores the continuing work for equality for women and girls.

NASA has marked this persistent effort with a video introduction to eleven space pioneers, including physicist Pearl Young, engineer Kitty O’Brien Joyner, mathematician Dorothy Vaughan, mathematician Katherine Johnson, Chief of Astronomy and “Mother of Hubble” Nancy Grace Roman, and launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson.

Plus: Firsts by astronauts Sally Ride, Kathryn Sullivan, Dr. Mae Jemison, Eileen M. Collins, and pictured below, Peggy Whitson.

Learn more at women.nasa.gov.