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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Early this morning at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, SpaceX launched the first ever private spacecraft — the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket — to the International Space Station on an unmanned mission to deliver food, clothes, other supplies, and science experiments to the astronauts who are currently stationed there. And this is only the first of 11 more planned flights to the space station. Incredible and historic!!!
And stay til the end of the video, where at around the 10m mark, Falcon 9 and Dragon go into orbit and we get to see Mission Control, and (eventually) some (relieved) high fives and hugs.
from NASA Television. (Updated with embed-capable video.)
From the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Measuring the Universe! So how exactly do we measure things that are incredibly far away? Positioning over time, light, and math, math, math! This video contains a lot of information — even about sound waves and color shifts in light — but it’s such a great start to understanding how we see and measure what’s out beyond our Earth and our galaxy. And it demonstrates how important math and patience are in science!
via The Awesomer.
From the team that brought us The Secret Life of Plankton and The Plankton Chronicles comes this wonderful TEDEd video from their amazing microscopic footage, re-created to explain How Life Begins in the Deep Ocean:
Where do squid, jellyfish and other sea creatures begin life? The story of a sea urchin reveals a stunningly beautiful saga of fertilization, development and growth in the ocean depths.
from TEDEd.
Why do we yawn? The kiddo isn’t often into all of the great science-content videos that are a bit heavier on the talking (and many of them are more for older kids anyways), but he stuck with this particular one — I’m sure seeing the animals helped, as did his direct relationship with yawning. And we learned something. And we yawned a lot!
via Irene’s Internet.
From TEDEd, there is a five finger trick for understanding and remembering the five processes — small population, non-random mating, mutations, gene flow, adaptation — that impact evolution (ie. the changes in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation). This video, narrated by Paul Andersen and animated by Alan Foreman, is seriously so excellent.
via Explore.
ZeroN, a project by Jinha Lee, Rehmi Post, and Hiroshi Ishii at MIT’s Media Lab:
What if materials could defy gravity, so that we could leave them suspended in mid-air? ZeroN is a physical and digital interaction element that floats and moves in space by computer-controlled magnetic levitation.
From It’s Okay to Be Smart:
By using computer-controlled magnetic field manipulations, a metal sphere is suspended in mid-air. Even more, it can be made to follow complex paths, “remembering” and repeating actions. If that somehow isn’t enough, just wait until he lights it up like an orbiting planet, and demonstrates Kepler’s Laws [of planetary motion]!
Melvin the Traveling Mini Machine is two suitcases filled with a wonderfully detailed Rube Goldberg Machine, all to put a stamp on a postcard.
Besides doing what Rube Goldbergs do best – performing a simple task as inefficiently as possible, often in the form of a chain reaction – Melvin has an online identity as well, which he uses to connect to and interact with his audience. Melvin the Mini Machine uses a smartphone and bespoke code and software to determine its location, write messages and recognize the people around him…
Once a picture is uploaded after it’s been processed, the data and the picture are published to Facebook and Twitter… Melvin’s travels page runs the Google Maps API with a custom layout… In short, this new Melvin is a Rube Goldberg machine specifically built to travel the world… Information on how the new Melvin works, its different parts and how to contact us can be found here.
My guess is that after it’s traveled for a while, we’ll have a whole map of photos taken by the machine that show happy audiences watching Melvin as intensely as this.
via This Is Colossal.
Penguins can’t fly, but they can jump! Seriously. They can jump over 9 feet (or up to 3 meters), depending on their species. How? They wrap their bodies in a cloak of air bubbles that come from their feathers — swimming quickly to the surface, they burst out of the water and leap to their destination.
These are Gentoo Penguins and they’re demonstrating both the ease and difficulty of their jumping skills. Pretty phenomenal. (And it sounds like the tourists filming this video think so, too.)
Be sure to check out the BBC video in this post that shows the “coat of air bubbles” underwater.
via Science Dump.
Fascinating! See what your vocal cords (or larynx) look like when you’re speaking or making sounds. Your larynx is where pitch (musical tones) and volume are controlled. You can also make it louder or more quiet depending on how much air is being pushed out through your lungs!
This is footage from a video laryngoscopy — larynx or voicebox + scope:
From the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (with permission). This is what happens when I say “eee” with a camera down my throat… Note also that the trachea is visible when I breathe. Cool huh? Actual size: roughly that of a quarter.
