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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A slow fly-over of London at (what looks like) dawn by aerial photographer Jason Hawkes. After you’ve watched it once, watch it again and see if you can spot which shots are running backwards.
via Devour.
Space Shuttle Discovery, atop its Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, NASA 905, is shown from various vantage points around the National Capital region on April 17 on the final leg of its ferry flight from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
A bittersweet flight — but what an amazing view! This video was shot by the T-38 Chase Aircraft that was following the shuttle. You can see the National Mall in Washington DC at 40s and again at 7m25s. You can also see what Discovery’s last flight and landing looked like from the ground, from CBS News.
Previously: Riding the Boosters of the Space Shuttle.
Dear Hummingbirds, you are amazing in the air. But it looks like this fly has at least one trick up its sleeve: a somersault. And it won an award for it, too:
The move is seldom observed in real time due to its speed, but Joris Schaap and Emile van Wijk managed to capture the behaviour using a high-speed camera. The escape manoeuvre is performed when a fly is taken by surprise, allowing it to regain control during the tumble.
The same behaviour in fruit flies has been observed in the lab by biologists Michael Dickinson from the University of Washington and Gwyneth Card from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dickinson and Card typically study fruit flies in flight, for example to find out more about wing dynamics and how the brain translates decisions into motion.
The short film is one of the winners in a competition organised by the Flight Artists group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The team taught amateur filmmakers how to use high-speed cameras to capture flying animals, or plant seeds, and selected the best results.
Flight Artists has a huge collection of slow motion flying creatures including this white dove, this red admiral butterfly, and this hovering robin.
And previously here: hummingbirds, owls, pollinators, and the northern goshawk.
via Science Dump.
Kilauea’s Pu`u O`o crater has been erupting off and on, with little interruption, since January 3, 1983. In the last few months, it took over a green area called Royal Gardens, where a lone house, a bed and breakfast called The Lava House, was the only structure. It was run by Jack Thompson, who moved into his home in 1983, the day before a huge eruption that destroyed all other homes nearby. Tourists visited Jack’s home via helicopter in a video — the beginning and the end from about 5:15s really give a good view. From June 2011:
Jack and his home are completely cut-off from the outside world. Jack uses a generator for a few hours a day and has a cell phone to chat with the reporters who frequently call him, as well as the helicopter companies that call to check on the weather. Jack does have satellite TV. His water is collected from rain water and stored in a large tank (very common in remote areas of Hawaii).
Every seven to ten days Jack hikes to town for supplies. The hike is an eerie, risk filled trek across three and a half miles of lava to the closest road, which was also cut-off by a lava flow. From there Jack rides a bike he stores nearby, to town.
Spared for three decades, the home was finally consumed a month ago (video with shots from above to compare). Documentarian Leigh Hilbert was on site when Jack had to evacuate his home on March 2nd, 2012. It shows both the power of the lava and Jack’s positive attitude as he prepares to change his life and leave his home.
Meet Biologist Doug Altshuler. He’s a hummingbird fan and has created a “hummingbird training center” in his lab to test their agility, as well as to record their twists and turns with multiple slow motion cameras. The secret to their talents: hovering… which ties into that whole flying backwards and upside down while turning on a dime thing that they do. #incredible
This clip is from “Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air.” You can watch the entire documentary on pbs.org. We also have a few more slow motion hummingbirds in the archives.
Almost a year ago, a National Geographic Channel show called How Hard Can It Be tried to recreate the balloon house from the Pixar movie Up!
On Saturday morning, March 5, at dawn, a team of scientists, engineers and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16’ X 16’ house 18’ tall with 300 8’ colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted. The entire experimental aircraft was more than 10 stories high and reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet and flew for approximately one hour.
Job, Joris & Marieke created The Tumblies as a children’s series. The characters are made from discs, which gives them a lot of chances to fall apart and switch around as they figure stuff out. In addition to Balloon, you can also watch Telephone and Doors. Super cute!
via The Curious Brain.
The world record for longest throw of a paper airplane has been broken.
Joe Ayoob throws a John Collins design, officially breaking the world record by 19 feet, 6 inches. The new world record, once verified by Guinness, will be 226 feet, 10 inches. The current record is 207 feet and 4 inches set by Stephen Kreiger in 2003.
Ayoob was a quarterback for two seasons at Cal and played three years of arena football as a professional, so he knows about throwing… and knows about paper airplanes: he used to make them and throw them while he walked home from school as a kid! The airplane’s designer, John Collins, is known as The Paper Airplane Guy and has studied both origami and aerodynamics.
“A lot of people could throw this plane and get some pretty crazy distance out of it,” Ayoob said. “But in order to achieve the distances we were trying to reach, it took a pretty precise throw, and it took a lot of strength. … There’s a lot of finesse involved, so it’s kind of blending power, balance and control while you’re throwing this fragile, little paper airplane.”
More details on ESPN’s Page 2.
