TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Are the Illuminati real? | Chip Berlet
The year was 1776. In Bavaria, new ideals of rationalism, religious freedom and universal human rights competed with the Catholic church's heavy influence over public affairs. Adam Weishaupt, a law professor frustrated with the Church's...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why are some people left-handed? - Daniel M. Abrams
Today, about one-tenth of the world's population are southpaws. Why are such a small proportion of people left-handed -- and why does the trait exist in the first place? Daniel M. Abrams investigates how the uneven ratio of lefties and...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The most important anus in the ocean
Is it a fuzzy sock? An overripe banana? A moldy tube of toothpaste? In fact, it’s a humble sea cucumber: a brainless, fleshy form surrounding a digestive tract, and bookended by a mouth and an anus. And while it might look odd, its daily...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Could we harness the power of a black hole? | Fabio Pacucci
Imagine a distant future when humans reach beyond Earth, forge cities on planets thousands of light-years away, and maintain a galactic web of trade and transport. What would it take to make that leap? And where would we get enough...
TED-Ed
The "myth" of the boiling frog | TED-Ed
Since 1850, global average temperatures have risen by 1 degree Celsius. That may not sound like a lot, but it is. Why? 1 degree is an average. Many places have already gotten much warmer and if average temperatures increase one more...
TED-Ed
The artist who won a Nobel Prize... in medicine | Melanie E. Peffer
In the 1860s, scientists believed they were on the verge of uncovering the brain's biggest secret: how the brain's signals travel through the body. They believed these impulses travelled uninterrupted along a massive web of tissue. But...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How art can help you analyze - Amy E. Herman
Can art save lives? Not exactly, but our most prized professionals (doctors, nurses, police officers) can learn real world skills through art analysis. Studying art like Rene Magritte's Time Transfixed can enhance communication and...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Can machines read your emotions? - Kostas Karpouzis
Computers can beat us in board games, transcribe speech, and instantly identify almost any object. But will future robots go further by learning to figure out what we're feeling? Kostas Karpouzis imagines a future where machines and the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The fish that walk on land | Noah R. Bressman
We think of fish as completely aquatic animals. But there are actually hundreds of fish species that are amphibious, meaning that they possess adaptations that enable them to survive on land. Once on land, however, they face suffocation,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Daniel Finkel: Can you solve the alien probe riddle?
Your team has developed a probe to study an alien monolith. It needs protective coatings — in red, purple and green — to cope with the environments it passes through. Can you figure out how to apply the colors so the probe survives the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Kay Almere Read: The Aztec myth of the unlikeliest sun god
Nanahuatl, weakest of the Aztec gods, sickly and covered in pimples, had been chosen to form a new world. There had already been four worlds, each set in motion by its own "Lord Sun," and each had been destroyed. For a new world to be...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: What is the shape of a molecule? - George Zaidan and Charles Morton
A molecule is nearly all empty space, apart from the extremely dense nuclei of its atoms and the clouds of electrons that bond them together. When that molecule forms, it arranges itself to maximize attraction of opposite charges and...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why don't we cover the desert with solar panels? | Dan Kwartler
Stretching over roughly nine million square kilometers and with sands reaching temperatures of up to 80° Celsius, the Sahara Desert receives about 22 million terawatt hours of energy from the Sun every year. That's well over 100 times...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Mysteries of vernacular: X-ray - Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel
The story of the word X-Ray is one of great thinkers. French philosopher Rene Descartes isolated the letters X, Y and Z to stand for unknowns, and centuries later, Wilhelm Rontgen discovered the X-ray, using the X for the unknown nature...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The power of the placebo effect - Emma Bryce
The placebo effect is an unexplained phenomenon wherein drugs, treatments, and therapies that aren't supposed to have an effect -- and are often fake -- miraculously make people feel better. What's going on? Emma Bryce dives into the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why do we pass gas? - Purna Kashyap
Flatulence is a daily phenomenon. In fact, most human beings pass gas 10-20 times a day (yes, that includes you). Where does your bodily gas come from? Purna Kashyap takes us on a journey into the intestines, shedding light on how gas is...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How optical illusions trick your brain - Nathan S. Jacobs
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...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Which voting system is the best?
Imagine we want to build a new space port at one of four recently settled Martian bases, and are holding a vote to choose its location. Of the 100 colonists on Mars, 42 live on West Base, 26 on North Base, 15 on South Base, and 17 on...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How epic solar winds make brilliant polar lights - Michael Molina
Why do we see those stunning lights in the northern- and southernmost portions of the night sky? The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis occur when high-energy particles are flung from the Sun's corona toward the Earth and mingle with...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Music and math: The genius of Beethoven - Natalya St. Clair
How is it that Beethoven, who is celebrated as one of the most significant composers of all time, wrote many of his most beloved songs while going deaf? The answer lies in the math behind his music. Natalya St. Clair employs the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed A brief history of graffiti - Kelly Wall - MENA
Spray-painted subway cars, tagged bridges, mural-covered walls -- graffiti pops up boldly throughout our cities. And it turns out: it's nothing new. Graffiti has been around for thousands of years. And across that span of time, it's...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Iseult Gillespie: Frida Kahlo: The woman behind the legend
In 1925, Frida Kahlo was on her way home from school in Mexico City when the bus she was riding collided with a streetcar. She suffered near-fatal injuries and her disability became a major theme in her paintings. Over the course of her...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Is life meaningless? And other absurd questions | Nina Medvinskaya
Albert Camus grew up surrounded by violence. His homeland of Algeria was mired in conflict. He lost his father in World War I. Seeing World War II's devastation, Camus grew despondent. What was the meaning behind all this endless...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What is color? - Colm Kelleher
Have you ever wondered what color is? In this first installment of a series on light, Colm Kelleher describes the physics behind colors-- why the colors we see are related to the period of motion and the frequency of waves.