Ah, spring. As Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, it's your favorite season. Humans and animals look to you to balance the bounty of the natural world which, like any self-respecting Goddess, you do with a pair of magical dice. But then,...

Improving batteries is a tough problem, but it’s also an important one because in many ways the future of our planet also depends on the future of batteries. Luckily, scientists are on the case, figuring out ways to give this essential...

In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, we get to meet the brain. Hank talks us through the Central Nervous System, the ancestral structures of the brain, the limbic system, and new structures of the brain. Plus, what does...

Imagine you have a square-shaped room, and inside there is an assassin and a target. And suppose that any shot that the assassin takes can ricochet off the walls of the room, just like a ball on a billiard table. Is it possible to...

What is Pick's Theorem and how can we prove it?

Optical illusions are images that seem to trick our minds into seeing something different from what they actually are. But how do they work? Nathan S. Jacobs walks us through a few common optical illusions and explains what these tricks...

Back in 1862, soldiers fighting in the American Civil War noticed a strange blue glow on their wounds. It took a couple of High School students to figure out what it was.

In 1901, David Hänig published research that led to what we know today as the taste map: an illustration that divides the tongue into four separate areas. It has since been published in textbooks and newspapers. There is just one...

Known worldwide for her courage and clarity, Christiane Amanpour has spent the past three decades interviewing business, cultural and political leaders who have shaped history. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Amanpour...

Within each of us are two selves, suggests David Brooks in this meditative short talk: the self who craves success, who builds a r_sum_, and the self who seeks connection, community, love -- the values that make for a great eulogy....

Flanked by two powerful nations, the English Channel has long been one of the world’s most important maritime passages. Yet for most of its history, crossing was a dangerous prospect. Engineers proposed numerous plans for spanning the...

Infinitesimally small quantum dots can turn a window into a see-through solar panel!

One could say that snowflakes are simply frozen water — but if you compare a snowflake to an ice cube, you’ll notice a big difference. Why are all snowflakes six-sided? Why are none of them exactly the same? And how do we ski on them?...

They call you the human cannonball. Your act involves flying through rings of fire, bouncing through a trampoline course, and catching the trapezist in the grand finale. Today's pre-flight test fails dramatically, and upon inspection,...

The human brain is visibly split into a left and right side. This structure has inspired one of the most pervasive ideas about the brain: that the left side controls logic and the right side controls creativity. And yet, this is a myth,...

As the world's cities undergo explosive growth, inequality is intensifying. Wealthy neighborhoods and impoverished slums grow side by side, the gap between them widening. In this eye-opening talk, architect Teddy Cruz asks us to rethink...

NASA recently sponsored new research into turning human waste into useful things, like food and plastic. And it might be used on long-term spaceflight someday.

This video is chapter 5 in my series on special relativity, and it covers how things that are moving (that is, moving relative to an inertial reference frame) at different speeds appear to be shorter in length... and longer in...

In the frozen mini volcanoes on Maunakea in Hawai'i there lives a scavenger-predator that prefers its meals delivered.

Squeaks got hurt playing outside and had to get stitches! Jessi explains what happens at the doctor's office and how stitches help us heal!

Losing half of the world sounds like a weird, abstract dream state. But for those that develop hemispatial neglect, that’s exactly what happens, without them even realizing it.

If you've ever talked to a vinyl purist (or are one yourself) you know that people can be pretty passionate about what format is king when it comes to music. And based on how much people like to brag about what band they saw live and how...

In this video Paul Andersen shows conceptual thinking in a mini-lesson on similarities and differences.

T
ERMS:
Patterns - regularity in
the world
Simil
arities - alike
Di
fference - not alike
Sort - arrange...

Since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, for millennia we could only guess what mysteries lay on its 'dark side.' Then in 1959 the Luna 3 spacecraft sent back a photo that prompted more questions than it answered.