Dutch artist Piet Mondrian's abstract, rectangular paintings inspired mathematicians to create a two-fold challenge. Can you solve the puzzle and get to the lowest score possible? Gordon Hamilton shows how.

Mining unobtainium is hard work _ the rare mineral appears in only 1% of rocks in the mine. But your friend Tricky Joe has something up his sleeve. The unobtainium detector he's been perfecting for months is finally ready, and it returns...

You're the chief advisor to an eccentric king who needs to declare his successor. He wants his heir to be good at arithmetic, lucky, and above all else, honest. So he's devised a competition to test his children, and ordered you to...

Science, while often the result of a stroke of genius, can just as easily be a stroke of extraordinarily good luck. Mendel’s work just happened to be a mix of the two.

The weekend. Social Security. Health insurance. What do these things have in common? They all exist thanks to the advocacy of labor unions. Political economist Margaret Levi explains how these organizations forge equality and protect...

Plastics are everywhere -- they're in our favorite electronic devices, they package our food and insulate our homes. Today, the total mass of plastic is twice the total mass of all living organisms on the planet, and it's starting to...

For life to evolve on Earth, a bunch of complex organic molecules had to evolve a way to assemble into cells. So how did those proto-cells get cell membranes? Some researchers have a new hunch. Also, scientists are borrowing a trick from...

In this video Paul Andersen describes the structure and explains the properties of molecular solids. High intramolecular forces hold electrons and reduce conductivity, whereas low intermolecular forces decrease the melting point. ...

We've talked about mixtures and solutions, solutes and solvents, but what about things that can't be undone? What about Chemical Changes? Would it surprise you to know that baking a cake is a Chemical Change? Or striking a match? In this...

The human eye is an amazing mechanism, able to detect anywhere from a few photons to a few quadrillion, or switch focus from the screen in front of you to the distant horizon in a third of a second. How did these complex structures...

Is our universe a definitive single reality or is it merely one within an infinitely branching multiverse?

In which John Green teaches you about the beginnings of the American Revolution in a video titled The Seven Years War. Confusing? Maybe. John argues that the Seven Years War, which is often called the French and Indian War in the US,...

Imagine something small enough to float on a particle of dust that holds the keys to understanding cancer, virology, and genetics. Luckily for us, such a thing exists in the form of trillions upon trillions of human, lab-grown cells...

For the last 12 years, Carter Emmart has been coordinating the efforts of scientists, artists and programmers to build a complete 3D visualization of our known universe. He demos this stunning tour and explains how it's being shared with...

You might have a roommate who rolls their eyes a lot and leaves sassy sticky notes all over the place, but no matter how frustrating it is, it’s probably not a personality disorder.

Each year in the United States, players of sports and recreational activities receive between 2.5 and 4 million concussions. How dangerous are all those concussions? The answer is complicated and lies in how the brain responds when...

It's 1954. Vietnamese nationalists are on the verge of securing an independent Vietnam under communist leader Ho Chi Minh. U.S. President Eisenhower claims that by virtue of the "falling domino principle," communist control of Vietnam...

In this episode of Crash Course, Hank introduces you to the complex history and terminology of Anatomy & Physiology. -- Table of Contents: Anatomy: The Structure of Parts 2:34 Physiology: How Parts Function 3:50 Complementarity of...

Looking around, you might think it’s obvious that the abundance of screens and social media are ruining our lives, but what does the research actually tell us?

What trials unite not only Harry Potter or Frodo Baggins but many of literature's most interesting heroes? And what do ordinary people have in common with these literary heroes? Matthew Winkler takes us step-by-step through the crucial...

This video demonstrates how to translate a word problem into an algebraic equation and solve it, specifically addressing the problem: "when a number is divided by five the result is seven more than the number" (0:00). It covers defining...

Whenever I give a talk on the sorry state of the US health care system, someone asks me what we should do. My first comment is always something along the lines of "if we knew what to do, we'd have already done it". But if I'm pushed, I...

Live-action video footage illustrates whether the mixing of two or more substances results in new substances. Step-by-step instructions help students set up their own investigation to prove this concept. This video correlates to the Next...

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered a black hole growing at a record pace. Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart