TED Talks
Shimpei Takahashi: Play this word game to come up with original ideas
Shimpei Takahashi always dreamed of designing toys. But when he started work as a toy developer, he found that the pressure to produce squashed his creativity. In this short, funny talk, Takahashi describes how he got his ideas flowing...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The journey to Pluto, the farthest world ever explored - Alan Stern
As of 1989, mankind had successfully sent craft to every known planet in the solar system except one: Pluto. Located in an mysterious region called the Kuiper Belt, Pluto is a scientific goldmine, and could hold clues to the formation of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do nuclear power plants work? - M. V. Ramana and Sajan Saini
Our ability to mine great amounts of energy from uranium nuclei has led some to bill nuclear power as a plentiful, utopian source of electricity. But rather than dominate the global electricity market, nuclear power has declined from a...
TED Talks
TED: The rise of boring architecture -- and the case for radically human buildings | Thomas Heatherwick
Where did all the lumps and bumps on buildings go? When did city architecture become so ... dull? Here to talk about why cities need inspiring architecture, designer Thomas Heatherwick offers a path out of the doldrums of urban monotony...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The history of the barometer (and how it works) - Asaf Bar-Yosef
A barometer is an instrument that measures air pressure, allowing weather forecasters and scientists to better predict extreme weather events. Despite its incredible usefulness, inventing the barometer was no walk in the park. Asaf...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: A brief history of plastic | TED-Ed
For centuries, billiard balls were made of ivory from elephant tusks. But when excessive hunting caused elephant populations to decline, they began to look for alternatives. John Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. In five years, he...
Crash Course Kids
Architecture Adventure
If we want to build a place for us to live, or to hang out, or do eat dinner with our friends, we're going to need a special kind of engineering called architecture. In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina gets us to help her build...
TED Talks
TED: The genius behind some of the world's most famous buildings | Renzo Piano
Legendary architect Renzo Piano -- the mind behind such indelible buildings as The Shard in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the new Whitney Museum of Art in New York City -- takes us on a stunning tour through his life's work....
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The mathematics of sidewalk illusions - Fumiko Futamura
Have you ever come across an oddly stretched image on the sidewalk, only to find that it looks remarkably realistic if you stand in exactly the right spot? These sidewalk illusions employ a technique called anamorphosis - a special case...
TED Talks
TED: How video games turn players into storytellers | David Cage
Have you ever watched a film or read a novel, wishing that you could change the narrative to save your favorite character? Game designer David Cage allows you do just that in his video games, where players make decisions that shape an...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: When is water safe to drink? - Mia Nacamulli
Water is refreshing, hydrating, and invaluable to your survival. But clean water remains a precious and often scarce commodity - there are nearly 800 million people who still don't have regular access to it. Why is that? And how can you...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How to make a baby (in a lab) - Nassim Assefi and Brian A. Levine
Infertility affects 1 in 8 couples worldwide. But in the last 40 years, more than 5 million babies have been born using in vitro fertilization (IVF). How does it work? Nassim Assefi and Brian A. Levine detail the science behind making a...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The race to sequence the human genome - Tien Nguyen
In 1990, The Human Genome Project proposed to sequence the entire human genome over 15 years with $3 billion of public funds. Then, seven years before its scheduled completion, a private company called Celera announced that they could...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Can 100% renewable energy power the world? - Federico Rosei and Renzo Rosei
Every year, the world uses 35 billion barrels of oil. This massive scale of fossil fuel dependence pollutes the earth, and it won't last forever. On the other hand, we have abundant sun, water and wind, which are all renewable energy...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How transistors work - Gokul J. Krishnan
Modern computers are revolutionizing our lives, performing tasks unimaginable only decades ago. This was made possible by a long series of innovations, but there's one foundational invention that almost everything else relies upon: the...
Crash Course
How Seawater Sabotages Ships: Crash Course Engineering #43
This week we’re headed out to sea for some marine engineering. How do we design ships to handle aquatic environments? How do we deal with marine life and corrosion and all of the other problems that come with engineering in the ocean?...
TED Talks
Sergey Brin: Why Google Glass?
It's not a demo, more of a philosophical argument: Why did Sergey Brin and his team at Google want to build an eye-mounted camera/computer, codenamed Glass? Onstage at TED2013, Brin calls for a new way of seeing our relationship with our...
SciShow
Squid Proteins, but Make Them Fashion
Humans often take inspiration from nature when coming up with inventions, and this includes breakthroughs in fabric design that help to forward the fabulous and functional world of fashion.
SciShow Kids
The Coolest Machine Ever!
Jessi and Squeaks have a new invention to show you! They built it using what they know about simple machines and with a little inspiration from a cartoonist named Rube Goldberg!
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Can you solve the bridge riddle? - Alex Gendler
Taking that internship in a remote mountain lab might not have been the best idea. Pulling that lever with the skull symbol just to see what it did probably wasn't so smart either. But now is not the time for regrets because you need to...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The science of smog - Kim Preshoff
On July 26, 1943, Los Angeles was blanketed by a thick gas that stung people’s eyes and blocked out the Sun. Panicked residents believed their city had been attacked using chemical warfare. But the cloud wasn’t an act of war. It was...
Crash Course
Why Moving People is Complicated: Crash Course Engineering #41
Transportation is a big part of our world and engineers play a big role in making it happen. Today we’ll explore how transportation systems are designed and some things transportation engineers have to take into consideration, like...
Crash Course Kids
Let's Build a City
So, we've built a lot of things over the last year and we've become awesome engineers in the process. But now it's time for a real challenge. Let's build a city! That's right, you heard me! In this episode, Sabrina shows us what we need...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Is there a limit to technological progress? - Clement Vidal
Many generations have felt they've reached the pinnacle of technological advancement. Yet, if you look back 100 years, the technologies we take for granted today would seem like impossible magic. So - will there be a point where we reach...