The Kid Should See This.
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 ad-free 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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Make a very lovely hovercraft! This super awesome DIY project requires a bit of parent or teacher supervision (sharp needle needed to make a hole), but overall, it answers all of my wishes: Not only does it teach about physics and get kids making things that are fun, but it gives us a great use for the old CDs that we have in boxes around the house! (And there are quite a few.) That alone makes this project a gem in my book.
YAY, Toys from Trash! We’ll definitely be seeing vids from Team Arvind Gupta here again…
Francisco Prieto animates the assembly of a Lego Millennium Falcon, Lego set 10179 from Star Wars Ultimate collector series. He writes: “Created using 3ds max and V-ray. A very long work over 3 years, modeling all the pieces by myself. and rendered frame by frame.”
And of course, because it’s the internet, there are (many) other versions of the Millennium Falcon’s assembly out there…
via reddit.
Have the kids seen W.T. “Wally” Wallington yet? He’s a retired carpenter who believes he knows how Stonehenge was built. With 35 years experience in construction under his belt, he’s been practicing how to move 300 lb blocks… 1600 lb blocks… 1 ton blocks… massive barns… all by himself! Wally has been working on building his own Stonehenge at his home in Michigan using no machinery — just his engineering techniques using structures of sticks, stones, and his favorite tool: gravity!
Now here’s some candy-making skill! Watch this candy dragon get drawn with what appears to be melted caramel/sugar or malt (mak ngah) somewhere in China. Despite the many videos found online of this art, the caption of this video (and comments below it) have suggested that it’s sadly a skill fading from the culture…
The first 3/4 of the video are a chemistry experiment breakdown of what goes into a glow stick and what each of those ingredients is meant to do. But at the end, all of this coalesces into a fine explanation of the difference between light-absorbing dyes and fluorescent dyes. Come for the glow-stick “how to”, stay for the better understanding of how light works and how it influences what you see!
via BoingBoing.
Find out how they make chicken wire and get hypnotized at the same time!
Chicken wire, also known as poultry netting and hexagonal netting, is a woven wire mesh. The video shows how chicken wire mesh is woven. You can see how the wires are twisted together to make the hexagonal opening.
Thanks, @wizzyrea.
Created, drawn and colored by the director David Wilson, this “how to” about the making of a music video is an excellent primer for how the praxinoscope works.
An introduction to the zoetrope from the team at Pixar, who wanted to show exactly how animation works.
The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.
A promotional video by a Canadian ink maker, this video not only explains the behind the scenes of how ink colors are made, but its artful presentation makes the process actually feel inspirational. (The music helps, too.)
Thanks, @focusmitch.
Classic Sesame Street time! Kids get help making drum from a barrel against the backdrop of New York City in the early 80s. The video doesn’t dive deep into it, but there’s even more detail in just how the notes are made exactly to specification:
…fine-tuning is done by lightly tapping the note area to stretch it appropriately. Tune down, hit it from above. Tune up, hit it from below. That’s the easy way to describe it, but the full tuning process involves making sure the whole note area is harmonically balanced (getting the octaves to match)…
For more detail, check out the set-up of the notes on the Tenor Pan.
via mikesenese.com.
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.
A robot built for blowing massive bubbles! This Bubble Bot was invented by Zvika Markfeld, who wrote a how-to on making them for MAKE. You can see another video of one of his Bubble Bots here.
