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!!

Stopmotion Skiing at Home - Philipp Klein Herrero

When avid skier Philipp Klein Herrero had to cancel a ski trip in the mountains, he decided to set up his GoPro and bring the mountains to him. The result: Freeride Skiing at Home. Filmed from above, this stop-motion short is a delightful escape from being stuck inside. He explains:

Just before the current health situation locked us in, I was about to go Freeriding with my family. It was supposed to be the big adventure of the year, the one I had been eagerly awaiting for a year. Therefore, the lockdown had me thinking about skiing the whole time, so I started to think how I could ski without leaving my living room…

I made this video to cheer up a little and spread positivity during these times.

Apple OpenDoc Technology Intro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow

The dogcow, named Clarus, is a bitmapped image designed by Apple for the demonstration of page layout in Mac OS. The sound she makes is "Moof!".^[1] Clarus became the archetype of surrealistic humor in the corporate culture of the original Macintosh group, particularly as the mascot of Apple’s Developer Technical Support as officially documented in Technote #31.^[1][2]

Did they have a heated conversation and holler "Dog!" "Cow!" "Dog!" "Cow!" back and forth? We may never know. But one thing is clear, Mr. Zimmerman finally gave in and said, "It's both, OK? It's called a 'dogcow.' Now will you get out of my office?"

— History of the Dogcow, Part 1^[3]

Vienna is Like... by Fernando Livschitz

Vienna is like... from Black Sheep Films on Vimeo.

Statues and buildings float, Slinkys connect articulated buses, and carnival rides get supersized in Vienna, Austria with help from Argentine director Fernando Livschitz of Black Sheep Films. Animation and live-action blend fantastical sights with reality in Vienna is like…

Watch the Upper Belvedere levitate in layers, dancers magically don colorful dance clothes mid-jump at the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera), St. Stephen’s Cathedral becomes a swing carousel, and more. Livschitz specializes in transposing “fantasy elements into meticulously captured contemporary backdrops.”

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."

 

Squirrel Obstacle Course - Hilarious!

This man looked at squirrels defeating his anti-squirrel bird feeders, and turned them into quality entertainment.

Here is a still of all the squirrels!

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 Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music (1965)

In this classic scene from Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s 1965 film adaptation of The Sound of Music, Maria and the von Trapp children sing ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ during their marionette show, a performance for their father and his friends.

Maria is played by the great Julie Andrews. Baron von Trapp is played by Christopher Plummer. Richard Haydn and Eleanor Parker are briefly in the scene. The children are played by Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner, and Kym Karath.

"Rainbow Connection" (2020) (1979) - Kermit the Frog

In a special performance from a riverbank in the woods, Kermit the Frog sings Rainbow Connection, his Oscar-nominated hit.

The song was originally written for the frog and his banjo by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher for 1979’s The Muppet Movie. 

Watch the original here:

 From Vanity Fair:

Swamp-dweller Kermit plucks a banjo, contemplating rainbows and “what’s on the other side”—much like Judy Garland’s Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. But “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was not the song’s main inspiration.

“The model we used was ‘When You Wish Upon a Star,’ which opened Disney’s Pinocchio,” Williams said. “This is Kermit’s ‘I am’ song. This song will show that Kermit has an inner life, a spiritual life…”

“The thing that is so human about the song, and spiritual at the same time, is that it honors the questions, not the answers,” Williams explained. “That moment made Kermit not the mentor, not the teacher, not the preacher. He became a seeker with the audience.”

Symmetry Eames Animated Short

What is symmetry in math? And how do you test for degrees of symmetry? Learn about “the mathematical ordering of form and the symmetrical properties of objects” with Symmetry by Charles and Ray Eames. Animation by Glen Fleck, with music composed and performed by Elmer Bernstein.

Symmetry was one of five shorts featured in a 1961 collection of educational films created for an interactive exhibition called Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond at Los Angeles’ California Museum of Science and Industry, now called the California Science Center.

A quick introduction of symmetry from Wikipedia:

Symmetry (from Greek συμμετρία symmetria “agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement”) in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, “symmetry” has a more precise definition, and is usually used to refer to an object that is invariant under some transformations; including translation, reflection, rotation or scaling. Although these two meanings of “symmetry” can sometimes be told apart, they are intricately related…

Powers of Ten Eames Videos

Elliot pointed me towards Eames and the studio's contributions.  This video is an interesting example of early computing.

Powers of Ten, written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames, was first released in 1968 and later re-released by the Eames Office in 1977. It was based on the 1957 book Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps by Kees Boeke. A summary of the film:

Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker – with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell.

Powers of Ten is culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant, as noted by the Library of Congress, thanks to its simplicity, design, and the perception-altering nature of viewing it.


Here is another Eames Office video from Scale is the New Geography:

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.