SciShow
Why the Hardest Rocks Can Be Easy to Break
So, rocks are hard. But the scale we use to rank them, the Mohs scale, is only really good at quantifying that for one kind of hardness, and topaz is a perfect stone to talk about to explain that. And you can check it out in our SciShow...
SciShow
Fool’s Gold Might Be Better Than the Real Thing
This month's Rocks Box is pyrite, also called fool's gold. But this fool's gold might not be so foolish, since we can use it to get all kinds of other minerals we really need, and it may be a key to getting real gold after all.
SciShow
The Human Era Has an Official Start. It’s a Lake in Canada
Recently, a group of scientists have declared that the start of the Anthropocene, the time of outsize human influence on Earth, to be Crawford Lake in Canada. But how can a time be a place? We'll explain, and maybe grab some maple syrup.
SciShow
The Island Made Of Gemstones
Zabargad Island in the Red Sea is so crusted with peridot that it's fair to say the place is literally made of it.
SciShow
The Secrets of Life’s Toughest Material
One of the toughest materials known to science is made not by humans, but by nature... and it's inside of oysters.
SciShow
Bivalves Could Be the New Lab Rats
Bivalves—animals like mussels, clams and oysters—might be a more familiar sight in a restaurant than a lab. But it turns out that studying them might help us learn more about our own health.
SciShow
The Mollusk Hiding Rare Minerals in its Teeth
Chitons are constantly scraping their teeth on rocks to eat the algae off of them, but that means their teeth need to be pretty tough. And it turns out one species's teeth are the hardest, stiffest biominerals in any living thing we've...
SciShow
Why is Organized Crime Buying Sand?!
Some might call sand coarse, rough and irritating, but there’s no denying that it’s used everywhere: from glass to asphalt, sand is a key ingredient for all sorts of materials in construction and technology. But this heavy reliance on...
SciShow
8 Structure Secrets of Gemstones
Gems are more than just pretty rocks! Hosted by: Michael Aranda
Crash Course
What Are Rocks and How Do They Form? Crash Course Geography
From towering mountains to pebbles along a river, the Earth is made of a huge variety of rocks. In today's episode, we're going to follow the rock cycle of a piece of granite in the Himalayan mountains, and as you'll see, every rock has...
SciShow
The World's Most Abundant Mineral, and Oddball Whales
SciShow News takes you to the depths of the Earth, where the world’s most abundant mineral is found, and to the Arabian Sea, where a strange population of whales has been living in isolation for 70,000 years!
SciShow
Weird Places Mexico's Giant Crystal Cave
SciShow explores a place that’s as beautiful as it is dangerous: Mexico’s Giant Crystal Cave, where chemistry has created the world’s largest crystals -- but in an environment so hostile that you’d only survive a few minutes if you saw...
SciShow
The World Is Built on Sand... and We're Running Out
Some might call sand coarse, rough and irritating, but there’s no denying that it’s used everywhere: from glass to asphalt, sand is a key ingredient for all sorts of materials in construction and technology. But this heavy reliance on...
Be Smart
Where Do Teeth Come From?
Teeth. We've all got 'em (most of us, anyway). But how do they grow? Teeth are made from some biological nanotechnology that will blow your mind. They are strong enough to last hundreds of millions of years. Oh, and if you've ever...
SciShow
5 Clues to Earth's Climate History
As Earth’s climate changes, one of the hardest things to figure out is exactly how the planet will change in response. And while we can’t know the future for sure, we can get a lot of good clues from the past.
SciShow
Ancient Lake in Antarctica Reached!
Hank gets to the bottom of an exciting, and kinda weird, announcement from Russian scientists at the Vostok Research Station in Antarctica. Have they reached a 20-million-year old underground lake? Maybe! Is there a hoard of Nazi secrets...
SciShow
The Mollusk Hiding Rare Minerals in its Teeth
Chitons are constantly scraping their teeth on rocks to eat the algae off of them, but that means their teeth need to be pretty tough. And it turns out one species's teeth are the hardest, stiffest biominerals in any living thing we've...
SciShow
Bivalves Could Be the New Lab Rats
Bivalves—animals like mussels, clams and oysters—might be a more familiar sight in a restaurant than a lab. But it turns out that studying them might help us learn more about our own health.
SciShow
How Ancient Pollen Can Predict The Future
We don't need a time machine to learn from the past (but let us know if you find one)! Air bubbles trapped in ice for millennia and ancient pollen grains can tell us a lot about climate shifts hundreds of thousands of years ago!
SciShow
Special Valentine Science!
Want to get your sweetheart something really special? Give them a mineral called fingerite, and then stare at them for a while! Find out why, in this Valentine's Day edition of SciShow News.
SciShow
The Science of Hangovers
So what exactly is it that makes a hangover suck so hard? Turns out there are three things interacting to make you feel miserable. Hank's got the details in this episode of SciShow.
SciShow
SciShow Quiz Show: Jessi Knudsen Castañeda
Hank and the gang return with SciShow Quiz Show, where Sci Show's resident geniuses compete to win prizes for our subscribers!
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Mysteries of vernacular: Jade - Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel
Now known for its beauty and green hue, the stone jade was previously thought to espouse magical properties, such as kidney treatment. Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel explain the word's travels from 15th century to Spain to today (and why...
TED Talks
Janine Benyus: Biomimicry's surprising lessons from nature's engineers
In this inspiring talk about recent developments in biomimicry, Janine Benyus provides heartening examples of ways in which nature is already influencing the products and systems we build.