The Kid Should See This.
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There's just so much science, nature, music, art, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...
But we don't underestimate kids around here.
Kid-friendly not-made-for-kids videos for all! Collected by Rion Nakaya and her three four year old co-curator.
Tip Jar: Curating this blog takes work! If you like the videos on this site, please support the science education projects that we've picked on DonorsChoose.org.
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An 86-year-old Yorkshire man, Brendon Grimshaw may have lived alone for many years on the tiny island paradise of Moyenne in the Seychelles in the middle of the Indian Ocean since he bought it in 1962 for £8000, but he is rarely lonely.
For Brendon has spent the years reintroducing the indigenous giant tortoise to Moyenne and now shares the island with 120 of the magnificent creatures, on one of the world’s smallest national parks.
The BBC’s Simon Reeve went to visit him.
Once a hideaway for pirates, the island is now a paradise of accidental conservation! But it took a lot of work in the last 50 years to change it.
He hired his own Man Friday, a Seychellois called Rene Lafortune, who helped him transform Moyenne.
Together they planted palm trees, mango and paw-paw.
They saved rainwater and pumped it up the hillside by hand, or rowed back to the main island to collect a barrel of fresh water.
It was backbreaking, exhausting work. ‘My hands were covered in blisters,’ said Brendon…
Slowly the trees grew and fruited, and eventually water, electricity and a phone cable were piped across from Mahe.
Brendon also encouraged around 2,000 native birds back to the island by feeding them. Fifty years very well-spent.
via Kottke.
Professor Brian Cox builds sandcastles in the Namib Desert to explain why time travels in one direction. It is a result of a phenomenon called entropy; a law of physics that tells us any system tends towards disorder.
“Entropy explains why, left to the mercy of the elements, mortar crumbles, glass shatters, and buildings collapse.”
Google “Jigokudani Yaen-koen” and you will happen upon many relaxing (and adorable) Snow Monkeys, or Japanese macaques, who live in the famous monkey park in the Nagano Prefecture of Japan.
The heavy snowfalls (snow covers the ground for 4 months a year), an elevation of 850 meters, and being only accessible via a narrow two kilometer footpath through the forest, keep it uncrowded despite being relatively well-known… Starting in 1963, the monkeys descend from the steep cliffs and forest to sit in the warm waters of the onsen (hotsprings), and return to the security of the forests in the evenings.
Next stop: this BBC Wildlife video feature, which explains more backstory about the wild monkeys’ hot spring spa and, well, shows a lot of macaques! Reason enough.
h/t This Is Colossal.
A 2009 pilot project in Fiji, Coral Gardening is a process of transplanting and growing coral in ways that help make damaged coral reefs healthy again. This clip is from the BBC’s Fragile Paradise, part of their series South Pacific.
The Inuit call their homes iglu, which is where the term “igloo” for “snow house” comes from. First built by hunters to survive in extreme cold weather conditions, igloos have been around for thousands of years…
An igloo’s walls block the icy wind that’s common in these areas. Snow also happens to be a very good insulator. This means that the heat inside the igloo — whether from a small oil lamp or just body heat — tends to stay inside the igloo. The result is that the inside of an igloo can be as much as 40 degrees warmer than the outside temperature.
Igloos also get stronger and warmer over several days after they’re first built. As trapped heat causes the inside of an igloo to melt slightly, the melted snow will then refreeze when the igloo is unoccupied. A few days of this thawing/refreezing cycle will eventually turn the entire structure to solid ice, which is even stronger and warmer than the original structure…
An experienced igloo builder can construct an igloo in about an hour. If you’ve never built an igloo before, it’ll probably take you three to six hours or more. All you need, though, is plenty of packed snow, a few tools and patience.
via Wonderopolis.
Professor Brian Cox uses the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia, Argentina to help explain the Arrow of Time; a concept that tells us why sequences happen in the order they do.
From wikipedia: “Entropy is the only quantity in the physical sciences… that requires a particular direction for time… Hence, from one perspective, entropy measurement is a way of distinguishing the past from the future.”
The power and beauty of irreversible change. There is poetry in science.
Phillipe Coustaeau and the team dive in the Red Sea, one of the warmest seas in the world. Despite the warm temperatures, coral reefs flourish with their flourescent pigmentation putting on an amazing show of technicolour. Fantastic clip taken from the BBC Oceans series.
Arachnocampa is a genus of four fungus gnat species which are, in their larval stage, glow worms. They are found mostly in New Zealand and Australia in caves and grottos, or sheltered places in forests.
The larva spins a nest out of silk on the ceiling of the cave and then hangs down as many as 70 threads of silk (called snares) from around the nest, each up to 30 or 40 cm long and holding droplets of mucus…
The larva glows to attract prey into its threads, perhaps luring them into believing they are outdoors, for the roof of a cave covered with larva can look remarkably like a starry sky at night.
