When eating pizza, New Yorkers will recommend that you fold the slice in half longways to reduce mess. Now find out about the math and physics working behind the scenes of that tradition in TED Ed’s Pizza physics (New York-style) by Colm Kelleher, animation by Joel Trussell.
We wish that all of our foods explained related math and physics ideas to us… and more about shapes, too.
Director Tom Jobbins and team bring us on the epic journey of two colorful triangles in We Can Be Ghosts Now by Hiatus featuring Shura.
In this documentary short, Shaped on all Six Sides by Kat Gardiner, Andy Stewart shares his philosophies about his relationship with and respect for the craft of wooden boat carpentry. This quote on quality and his place in the work stood out:
A lot of the allure of working on wooden boats, actually, is because the sea is the final arbitrator of the quality of your work. It’s very gratifying to see repairs that I’ve done 30 years ago still holding up, and so I feel like I’m part of a long continuum of craftsman keeping vessels around and alive.
It reminded me of the NYTimes article, The Stories That Bind Us, which lays out the benefits of children knowing their family history. Sharing traditions and values through storytelling can help to develop an “intergenerational self,” an understanding of their part in a family narrative that is built with both successes and difficult challenges. A good read…
How does a virus invade your body? With the help of medical animator David Bolinsky, Robert Krulwich explain step-by-step in this NPR video from 2009. There’s also more to read at Krulwich Wonders.
Another NPR favorite: Catching Up with the Flu. Or watch more videos about how bodies work.
This is one of the kids’ favorite moments in Cape, an episode of the BBC series Africa: springboks pronking, or leaping high into the air — up to 13 feet!
In Afrikaans and Dutch, to “pronk” is to show off, though the reason that springboks pronk is not known definitively. They could be excited, agitated, exercising, spreading their individual scents, or showing off their fitness either for predators or rivals within the herd. Any which way, it’s fun to watch.
Watch more BBC videos in the archives.
