Two college student designers (Luke Greenway and Laura D’Asaro), 27 volunteers, seven hours of work, five attempts, and 2,131 books mixed together at the Seattle Public Library to create the longest book domino chain in the world. The library used the new world record to celebrate and promote their 2013 Summer Reading Program.

There are many, many more chain reactions, world records, and books in the archives, including this stop motion fun: The Joy of Books.

via Daily of the Day.

Magnifying carbon monoxide (CO) atoms to over 100 million times their actual size, arranging them into a series of 242 still images, and then animating them together, scientists at IBM Research have made the smallest movie ever. Wait, how small is that again?

“If an atom was the size of an orange, then the orange would be the size of the whole planet Earth.”

The movie is called A Boy and His Atom, and it is Guinness World Records verified(!) as the smallest stop-motion film in the world.

You can read more about the project here, you can listen to the sound of moving atoms, and can watch how scientists Susanne Baumann, Andreas Heinrich, Christopher Lutz and Ileana Rau made the movie here:

The future is now.

Thanks, Monika. 

Maersk’s Triple-E is a new class of fuel-efficient container ships, designed for lower speeds and CO2 emissions. The 400-meter long ships break the record in container ship capacity and are expected to be the world’s largest ships in service. With the Discovery Channel, Maersk is giving a sneak peek of the construction of one of their massive vessels at the DSME shipyard in Okpo, Korea with this 76-second time-lapse.

More time-lapse videos and more world records in the archives.

From Devour.

After flying to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) in a helium-filled balloon, Felix Baumgartner completed a record breaking jump for the ages from the edge of space, exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying in an experimental rocket-powered airplane. Felix reached a maximum of speed of 1,342.8 km/h (833mph) through the near vacuum of the stratosphere before being slowed by the atmosphere later during his 4:20 minute long freefall. The 43-year-old Austrian skydiving expert also broke two other world records (highest freefall, highest manned balloon flight), leaving the one for the longest freefall to project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger.

Related watching includes the jump in legos, the suit cam view, and really, the best one: the realtime jump-prep, jump and landing — the jump starts right around here.

via Discovery News, Kottke, and EarthSky.

I thought this video of a dog jumping double dutch was about the most surprising “dog jumping rope” video I was ever going to see… until I googled and ran into this video of many dogs jumping rope… in japan, of course.

Uchida Geinousha’s ‘Super Wan Wan Circus’ based in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, offers a unique act for its audience; the incredible sight of 13 dogs skipping on a rope.

via Laughing Squid (twice)