@nanodash / nanodash.tumblr.com
So, I'm really bad at this whole self-promotion thing, and I forgot to obnoxiously force this video on all of you. So here it is! It's about Fluorine and how ridiculous it was isolating it. If you like it, please share it! Also I spent so long worrying whether I did enough to ward off the anti-fluoride people. Here's hoping.
I've got a new video out. It's about a drink, and how the science in that drink shaped world history. Take a look! And if you like it, maybe share it on.
Hey, after a while absent, I made a thing! If you like the thing, please like it, share it, maybe even subscribe!
My new video is about Hero. A man who...almost changed the world. Let me know what you think!
If you enjoy, please comment like, share, subscribe...all that Youtuber stuff.
My new video for SciShow Space discusses the American military being weird about space. You should watch it!
NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg is a self proclaimed crafter. A week ago she made a stuffed dinosaur from scraps on the space station. The little T-rex is made form the lining of Russian food containers and the toy is stuffed with scraps from an old T-shirt. While many toys have flown into space, this is the first produced in space.
Photos: Karen Nyberg, via CollectSpace
Water striders are masters of life at the interface of water and air. Their spindly legs are skinnier than the capillary length of water, meaning that, at their size, surface tension is strong enough to overcome gravitational effects. Thus, their feet leave dimples on the interface, but the water itself holds them up. To keep from getting accidentally drenched (and thus weighed down), the striders are covered in tiny hairs that trap a layer of air that makes them hydrophobic or water-repellent. To get around, these masters of the interface use their middle legs in a manner similar to oars. They push against the dimple around their legs, which generates vortices under the surface and helps propel them. Even more impressive, the water strider can jump off the surface, a feat that requires remarkable adaptation in order to maximize the jump without breaking surface tension. (Video credit: Deep Look)
Since making Nazis look foolish has become a priority again somehow, here's the story of Georges de Hevesy using chemistry to trick Nazis.
If you like this, please consider liking, sharing or subscribing. Thank you!
A pheasant-size dinosaur found in China is causing a stir among scientists trying to understand the origins of flight.
The newly named species, Serikornis sungei, adds to the ranks of dinosaurs that effectively had four wings, thanks to heavily feathered hindlimbs and forelimbs. But in a twist for paleontologists, the evidence suggests that Serikornis couldn’t fly.
Gideon Mantell was one of the first dinosaur experts, and has been completely forgotten. That should change.
If you enjoy it, please like, share, subscribe, all those Youtube things.
If you don’t enjoy, let me know why!
If you have taken a sneak peak into a washing machine then you might have noticed that it has a concrete block inside (also why they are heavy).
Their primary purpose is to absorb vibrations caused by the rotating body (in this case the drum) and keep the machine stable.
But this begs the question of what would happen if it didn’t have the concrete dampener. The above gif from the secret life of machines shows you exactly that.
With no cushion to dampen out the vibration, the machine propels forward from the unbalanced linear and torsional forces and eventually breaks down.
Have a great day!
**
A report compiled by a US government agency has confirmed that 2016 was the warmest year on record and the third year in a row of record global warmth.
The heat was the result of long-term global warming and a strong El Niño weather phenomenon, the report said.
Global surface and sea temperatures, sea levels and greenhouse gases levels were all at record highs, it added.
The hand might look like an X-ray from the doctor’s office, but it is actually a cloud of material ejected from a star that exploded. NASA’s NuSTAR spacecraft has imaged the structure in high-energy X-rays for the first time, shown in blue. Lower-energy X-ray light previously detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown in green and red
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/McGill
Seeing images of animals or faces in clouds and cars or seeing a smiley face crater on mars or the ‘hand of god’ are all due to a psychological phenomenon known called Pareidolia. Learn more about Pareidolia here and here.
What have eclipses ever done for science? Quite a lot, actually!
The first measurement of the width of the Atlantic ocean in the 16th Century
When British settlers arrived in Virginia in the US, they weren’t sure how far across the globe they’d gone. They recorded the local time of a total eclipse of the moon - which is seen all across the night-time side of the planet. Their colleagues in London did the same, and when the travellers returned they could figure out the five hour time difference.
Edmond Halley discovered that the moon is moving away from the Earth
Halley realised you could back-calculate when previous eclipses would have occurred. But he noticed a mismatch between his predictions and the history books. The reason, he discovered, what that he was assuming the moon stayed the same distance from the Earth. It is actually getting further at about the rate your fingernails grow. And that means that one day (in a few million years, that is), the moon will be too far away to create any more total solar eclipses.
In 1919 a solar eclipse proved Einstein’s theory of relativity
Einstein’s theory predicted that the sun’s gravity should bend the light of nearby stars, meaning that in theory we should be able to see stars that are hidden just behind the sun. However, sunlight always blocks our view of these stars, and it was only during a solar eclipse that there was a short window to see if hidden stars were visible, as predicted. Astronomer Arthur Eddington travelled to West Africa and took photos that proved Einstein right.
Scientists still use solar eclipses today
It’s very hard to study the sun’s corona - a tenuous hot gas, which just one millionth of the light intensity of the sun. The shapes and lines of the corona show the nature of the sun’s magnetic field, and are only visible to study during an eclipse. NASA are also using this opportunity to help create the first thermal map of Mercury!
Salps are small, jellyfish-like marine invertebrates that swim by ejecting a pulsatile jet. They are unusual creatures whose lives have two major stages: one in which salps swim individually and one in which they link together and swim in large chains. In the chain, salps don’t synchronize their jetting; each salp jets with its own phase and frequency. A new study suggests that, in spite of this lack of synchronicity, the salp chain’s swimming reduces the animals’ drag. There are several factors that contribute to this result. One is that drag is generally lower on a body moving at constant speed compared to one moving in bursts. When linked together and firing randomly, all the individual jets tend to average out into one continuous swimming speed. There’s even a benefit to being out of sync: previous work showed that synchronized jets lose some of their thrust when they are too close together. Salps avoid that loss by keeping to their own beat. (Image and research credit: K. Sutherland and D. Weihs, source; via Gizmodo)
