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 four year old co-collector.
Tip Jar: Finding great content for 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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The Caterpillar and the Brook is from the animated series Minuscule. A French-made collection of short stories, Minuscule is about the private lives of ants, snails, bees, caterpillars, wasps, spiders and other tiny creatures, all told without any speaking at all. Highly recommended! For a caterpillar double feature, enjoy Caterpillars in Pairs:
And for the kid’s favorite Minuscule short of the series, finish up with zzzeplin, about a spider and a balloon.
Thanks, Annie.
David Attenborough narrates ant life in the Australian mangroves — “various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics.” Such excellent footage, it’s yet another fascinating nature clip from the BBC’s Life in the Undergrowth. The kid should see this!
A bit of water and mud fun while learning to be an elephant in Samburu. From the BBC’s Planet Earth Live: baby elephants!
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.
The Robust Ghost Pipefish’s capacity for camouflage never ceases to amaze me!
We came upon this adult pair, the smaller is the male, first, out in the open, and then swimming near some vegetation in the predominantly mucky area that characterizes Secret Bay. Isn’t the likeness to the sea vegetation remarkable?
If you look closely at the larger one, you can see its mouth and eyes moving as it adopts its typical vertical, head downward orientation.
There’s a great collection of Ghost Pipefish photos here. Plus, another video of them from our archives.
via La Boite Verte.
Don’t adjust your sound as this video has none, but wow, does it have a picture! This is a deepstaria enigmatica, a deep-sea jellyfish that was caught by a remotely operated underwater camera about 5000 feet (1500 m) down. Wikipedia places them “in Antarctic and near-Antarctic seas” and puts their size at “approx. 60 cm” (or almost 2 feet) wide. Impressive, nature. Impressive.
via io9.
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.
We love when kids take science and the art of making into their own hands. This kid made his own balloon-powered boat!
Related: Inexpensive balloon-powered boat kits found online and DIY Ideas on How to Make Balloon-Powered Vehicles!
Geysers are a rare phenomenon that exist in only a few places on the Earth. Some of the tallest are in New Zealand, Iceland, Geyser Valley in Russia, and Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone’s 500-ish geysers — a handful of which are shown in this video — are the product of the geothermal heat of a massive, ancient and active volcanic caldera (an exploded crater) that is a majority of the park.
Geysers such as Old Faithful are a type of geothermal feature that periodically erupt scalding hot water. Increased pressure exerted by the enormous weight of the overlying rock and water prevents deeper water from boiling. As the hot water rises it is under less pressure and steam bubbles form. They, in turn, expand on their ascent until the bubbles are too big and numerous to pass freely through constrictions. At a critical point the confined bubbles actually lift the water above, causing the geyser to splash or overflow. This decreases the pressure of the system and violent boiling results. Large quantities of water flash into tremendous amounts of steam that force a jet of water out of the vent: an eruption begins. Water (and heat) is expelled faster than the geyser’s recharge rate, gradually decreasing the system’s pressure and eventually ending the eruption.
Old Faithful, a cone geyser named in 1870, is called the most predictable in this geothermic process, erupting for 2.5 minutes every 91 minutes.
Our favorite: Beehive. Bonus: immediate rainbow sighting.
