From Science Friday, behold A Spacesuit Ballet: 

Of the suit he wore on the moon, Neil Armstrong wrote, “it was tough, reliable, and almost cuddly.” But that cuddly suit, made by the company Playtex, had some stiff competition (literally) from rival rigid, metal designs. This video features archival NASA footage of mobility tests for several spacesuit prototypes. Music is from the band One Ring Zero’s album “Planets”.

Hey kids! Go rest your hands on a speaker playing loud music. Feel the sound vibrations? Good. Now you might want to adjust your volume for this one.

Sound frequencies produce a variety of increasingly intricate resonance patterns. And if you sprinkle sand or salt on a metal plate that is vibrating from these sound frequencies, you can see the patterns.

Did I explain that correctly? If not, Science Friday has a great video that explains it super clearly. Highly recommended. 

Food coloring tests and a robot water strider? We love @SciFri!

Water striders don’t really stride, they row on the water. But their legs are spindly and don’t seem good for paddling. To find out exactly how water striders propel themselves mechanical engineer David Hu, of Georgia Tech, filmed them rowing on food coloring and built his own robostrider.

From Science Friday.

Camouflage octopus! The story and science behind the famous animated gif. 

From Science Friday. 

This video has no sound and that’s a good thing; Jello dropping onto a flat surface in slow motion needs nothing else to be entertaining. They’ll need to be played a few times, but the Kid Should See this water balloon pop and this popcorn pop, too.

Slo-mo Jello videos aren’t rare on YouTube, but this one was made by the Modernist Cuisine: The Art of Science and Cooking team, whose $625 set of books was featured (for you adults) on The Colbert Report in March. 

We watched a lot of Jello-related videos after this one. My favorite was this promo illustrating the physics behind General Electric’s hybrid locomotives. My 3 year old co-curator liked it, too, but felt this one was more fun. (He’s right.) 

via Science Friday.