Last week we introduced p-values as a way to set a predetermined cutoff when testing if something seems unusual enough to reject our null hypothesis - that they are the same. But today we’re going to discuss some problems with the logic...

We don't live in a perfect world, and neither do gases - it would be great if their particles always fulfilled the assumptions of the ideal gas law, and we could use PV=nRT to get the right answer every time. Unfortunately, the ideal gas...

Today we're going to talk about a fundamental part of all modern computers. The thing that basically everything else uses - the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (or the ALU). The ALU may not have the most exciting name, but it is the...

This week we answer skeptics like Descartes with empiricism. Hank explains John Locke’s primary and secondary qualities and why George Berkeley doesn’t think that distinction works -- leaving us with literally nothing but our minds,...

So today Craig is going to talk about where our political opinions come from. Of course, most people’s politics are grounded in their ideologies, but there are also other external influences such as the government itself, interest...

Do we really have free will? Today Hank explores possible answers to that question, explaining theories like libertarian free will and it’s counterpoint, hard determinism.

Today, we're looking at measures of spread, or dispersion, which we use to understand how well medians and means represent the data, and how reliable our conclusions are. They can help understand test scores, income inequality, spot...

Today we're going to start our two-part unit on data visualization. Up to this point we've discussed raw data - which are just numbers - but usually it's much more useful to represent this information with charts and graphs. There are...

I know things can seem a bit overwhelming when you’re out of school, there are no more grades, and all of a sudden people are talking about five-year plans when it feels like you don’t know what’s happening in five weeks. But we’ve got...

In which John Green teaches you about China's Revolutions. While the rest of the world was off having a couple of World Wars, China was busily uprooting the dynastic system that had ruled there for millennia. Most revolutions have some...

Hank takes us on the fascinating journey through our excretory system to learn how our kidneys make pee.

In which Hank blows our minds with the different kinds of Solids out there and talks about why they're all different and have different properties. Today, you'll learn about amorphous and crystalline solids, types of crystalline solids,...

In which John Green teaches you about the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the largest of the ancient civilizations. John teaches you the who, how, when, where and why of the Indus Valley Civilization, and dispenses advice on how to be...

It can be daunting to move from the abstract idea stage to the realm of bank accounts, taxes, and liability. Sometimes, it can feel like you’re making arbitrary decisions, but we’re going to wade through the legalese together. Things are...

Today, we're going to begin our discussion of Big Data. Everything from which videos we click (and how long we watch them) on YouTube to our likes on Facebook say a lot about us - and increasingly more and more sophisticated algorithms...

Today we’re looking at silicon, and how introducing small amounts of other elements allow silicon layers to conduct currents, turning them into semiconductors. We’ll explore how putting two different types – N and P semiconductors –...

Today we’re talking all about fluid mechanics! We’ll look at different scales that we work with as engineers, mass and energy transfers, the no-slip condition, stress and strain, Newton’s law of viscosity, Reynold’s number, and more!

Nachos are great...if you are among the lucky ones whose body can digest them. When digestion goes according to plan, the small intestine performs most of your chemical digestion in the duodenum, while accessory organs including the...

Today we’re going to talk about confidence intervals. Confidence intervals allow us to quantify our uncertainty, by allowing us to define a range of values for our predictions and assigning a likelihood that something falls within that...

In today’s episode we’ll explore thermodynamics and some of the ways it shows up in our daily lives. We’ll learn the zeroth law of thermodynamics, what it means to reach a thermal equilibrium, and define the first law of thermodynamics....

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?...

On November 26, 2020, trade unions in India reported that over 250 MILLION people took part in a strike. What could prompt such massive protest? Farming. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at GMOs, which are organisms whose DNA has...

Continuing with last week's introduction of calculus, Shini leads us through the ways that integrals can help us figure out things like distance when we have several other key bits of information. Say, for instance, you wanted to know...

A lot of work goes into managing our impact on the environment and its impact on us. That work is the work of environmental engineers. In this episode we’ll explore water quality, air quality, noise pollution, waste management, and more.