TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do schools of fish swim in harmony? - Nathan S. Jacobs
How do schools of fish swim in harmony? How do the tiny cells in your brain give rise to the complex thoughts, memories, and consciousness that are you? Oddly enough, those questions have the same general answer. Nathan S. Jacobs...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Licking bees and pulping trees: The reign of a wasp queen - Kenny Coogan
As the sun rises, something royal stirs inside a pile of firewood. It's the wasp queen; one of thousands who mated in late autumn and hibernated through the winter. Now she must emerge into the spring air to begin her reign. This queen...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How playing an instrument benefits your brain - Anita Collins
When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What's going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The effects of underwater pressure on the body - Neosha S Kashef
Why would a fish throw up its stomach? What makes a scuba diver develop painful microbubbles in their joints? Neosha S Kashef details the basics of barotrauma, shedding light on how humans and fish alike are influenced by laws of physics...
Bozeman Science
Concept 7 - Stability and Change
Paul Andersen explains how stability and change are regulated in systems through controls and feedback. Controls are used to regulate matter and energy flowing into a system. Feedback mechanisms within the system are used to regulate...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Do you speak monkey? The language of cotton-top tamarins - Anne Savage
The cotton-top tamarin is a very vocal monkey -- the species communicates using a sophisticated language of 38 distinct and grammatically structured calls! Anne Savage teaches a few of these chirps and whistles, taking us through a day...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: If superpowers were real: Flight - Joy Lin
What if human flight wasn't just the stuff of epic comic book stories? Is it scientifically possible to fly? In this series, Joy Lin tackles six superpowers and reveals just how scientifically realistic they can be to us mere mortals.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: If superpowers were real: Body mass - Joy Lin
What if manipulating body mass wasn't just the stuff of epic comic book stories? Is it scientifically possible to manipulate your body mass? In this series, Joy Lin tackles six superpowers and reveals just how scientifically realistic...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How do we know what color dinosaurs were? - Len Bloch
The microraptor was a four-winged carnivorous dinosaur with iridescent black feathers. But if our information about this dinosaur comes from fossils, how can we be certain about its color? Len Bloch shows how making sense of the evidence...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Who is Alexander von Humboldt? - George Mehler
Have you heard of Alexander von Humboldt? Not likely. The geologist turned South American explorer was a bit of an 18th century super scientist, traveling over 24,000 miles to understand the relationship between nature and habitat....
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The great brain debate - Ted Altschuler
Throughout history, scientists have proposed conflicting ideas on how the brain carries out functions like perception, memory, and movement. Is each of these tasks carried out by a specific area of the brain? Or do multiple areas work...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What is the biggest single-celled organism? - Murry Gans
The elephant is a creature of epic proportions -- and yet, it owes its enormity to more than 1,000 trillion microscopic cells. And on the epically small end of things, there are likely millions of unicellular species, yet there are very...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why are there so many insects? - Murry Gans
If insects suddenly morphed into large beings and decided to wage war on us, there's no doubt that humans would lose. There are an estimated 10 quintillion individual insects on earth, outnumbering humans by more than a billion to one....
TED-Ed
TED-ED: What are mini brains? - Madeline Lancaster
Shielded by our thick skulls and swaddled in layers of protective tissue, the human brain is extremely difficult to observe in action. Luckily, scientists can use brain organoids - pencil-eraser-sized masses of cells that function like...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How does your body know what time it is? - Marco A. Sotomayor
Being able to sense time helps us do everything from waking and sleeping to knowing precisely when to catch a ball that's hurtling towards us. And we owe all these abilities to an interconnected system of timekeepers in our brains. But...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The evolution of animal genitalia - Menno Schilthuizen
Genitals are the fastest-evolving organs in the animal kingdom. But why is this so? And what's the point of having decorative private parts? Menno Schilthuizen explains how the evolutionary biology of nature's nether regions uncovers a...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Learning from smallpox: How to eradicate a disease - Julie Garon and Walter A. Orenstein
For most of human history, we have sought to treat and cure diseases. But only in recent decades did it become possible to ensure that a particular disease never threatens humanity again. Julie Garon and Walter A. Orenstein detail how...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The science of snowflakes - Maruša Bradač
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?...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do dogs "see" with their noses? - Alexandra Horowitz
You may have heard the expression that dogs 'see with their noses.' But these creature's amazing nasal architecture actually reveals a whole world beyond what we can see. Alexandra Horowitz illustrates how the dog's nose can smell the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do geckos defy gravity? - Eleanor Nelsen
Geckos aren't covered in adhesives or hooks or suction cups, and yet they can effortlessly scale vertical walls and hang from ceilings. What's going on? Eleanor Nelsen explains how geckos' phenomenal feet allow them to defy gravity.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: What's the difference between hibernation and sleep? - Sheena Faherty
The Arctic Ground Squirrel hibernates by burrowing under the permafrost and slipping into a state of suspended animation. The female black bear can give birth while she hibernates. The fat-tailed dwarf lemur prepares to hibernate by...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The coelacanth: A living fossil of a fish - Erin Eastwood
The coelacanth, a prehistoric fish that was mistakenly thought to have gone extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs, has managed to stick around our seas for 360 million years. Erin Eastwood details the surprising "back from the dead"...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How to unboil an egg - Eleanor Nelsen
It's so obvious that it's practically proverbial: you can't unboil an egg. But actually, it turns out that you can -- sort of. Eleanor Nelsen explains the process by which mechanical energy can undo what thermal energy has done.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The left brain vs. right brain myth - Elizabeth Waters
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,...