YouTube description: In the last 20 years it's been surprisingly common for space probes to end missions early because reaction wheels have failed, moreover there's been a large number of failures associated... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 5 years 8 months ago • 565 views • 7:10

YouTube description: View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-really-happened-to-the-library-of-alexandria-elizabeth-cox 2,300 years ago, the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill a very... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 5 years 8 months 1 week ago • 824 views • 4:53

YouTube description: Amazing high resolution photos of the Earth should show that the earth is oblate, but it's hard to see because the difference is about 0.3%. So here's a quick demo highlighting the difference. ... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 5 years 10 months 3 weeks ago • 620 views • 1:43

YouTube description: What do you do if you're lost in Central Park? How to always find your way out with the secret code in New York City 1800s street lights. (via laughingsquid)... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 5 years 10 months 3 weeks ago • 1,860 views • 2:20

Between 1950 and 1970 the number of deaths on Sweden's roads more than doubled. Today though, it has one of the world’s lowest rates of traffic fatalities. This is the story of how the Swedish Government... continue reading

posted by b4rringt0n 5 years 11 months ago • 1,871 views • 3:31

"... Every once in a while, all the oaks or spruces or other plants in a region suddenly produce a tremendous bounty of seeds – up to 100 times more than usual. But why do they do it, and how do they... continue reading

posted by ant 5 years 11 months 2 weeks ago • 187 views • 2:57

YouTube description: Let's find out how they put 3D images into glass objects. Known as a 'Bubblegram', vitrography or sub-surface laser engraving, this technology has been around for a very long time... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 6 years 1 week ago • 308 views • 6:28

US Car Number 1, the Ferdinand Magellan, sits in the Gold Coast Railway Museum in Miami. It's 120 tonnes of bulletproof, armoured railcar: a train carriage designed to move the President of the United... continue reading

posted by b4rringt0n 6 years 3 weeks ago • 398 views • 4:59

YouTube description: For decades, one of the most abundant kinds of fossils on Earth, numbering in the millions of specimens, was a mystery to paleontologists. But geologists discovered that these mysterious... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 6 years 4 weeks ago • 615 views • 7:00

Learn Colors and Numbers with Colorful Candy

posted by hoankhiem87 6 years 1 month ago • 31 views • 2:10

YT: I built an A frame hut as a large work space for projects. First I made a celt hatchet to cut timber for the hut. The axe head was made of amphibolite and the handle was made of a species of wattle.... continue reading

posted by nanrod 6 years 3 months ago • 524 views • 9:05

At the headquarters of Cloudflare, in San Francisco, there's a wall of lava lamps: the Entropy Wall. They're used to generate random numbers and keep a good bit of the internet secure: here's how.

posted by Mordhaus 6 years 5 months 2 weeks ago • 769 views • 3:59

YouTube description: With Dr Holly Krieger from Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. More Numberphile videos with Dr Krieger: http://bit.ly/HollyKrieger Her Twitter: https://twitter.com/hollykrieger ... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 6 years 6 months 3 weeks ago • 243 views

"During a hurricane you usually hear meteorologists refer to its intensity by categories. If you don't know the difference between a category 1 and a category 5 hurricane, The Weather Channel meteorologist... continue reading

posted by ant 6 years 7 months 2 weeks ago • 70 views • 1:51

YouTube description: We’ve all met a crazy cat lady or maybe a neighbor with an insane collection of pet turtles. Now, let us introduce you to Ramón Medina Archundia: the iguana guy. Archundia loves... continue reading

posted by Aard Vark (oritteropo) 6 years 9 months ago • 234 views • 2:29

Humans emit roughly 30 to 40 billion tons of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere each year. If we keep it up, Earth will continue to heat up and ultimately devastate our way of life. ... continue reading

posted by newtboy 6 years 10 months 3 weeks ago • 107 views • 2:18

The Lahti L-39 is a Finnish 20 mm anti-tank rifle used during the Second World War. It had excellent accuracy, penetration and range, but its size made transportation difficult. It was nicknamed "Norsupyssy"... continue reading

posted by Mordhaus 6 years 11 months 1 week ago • 134 views • 10:14

South Park is home to a surprising number of tempting foodstuffs. Granted, they're all subtly gross in one way or another, but that doesn't make Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls sound any less appealing. Especially... continue reading

posted by Mordhaus 7 years ago • 258 views • 9:33

YouTube: I came across these four physics puzzles over the years in discussions with Neil deGrasse Tyson (riddle 4: which part(s) of a moving train are going backwards with respect to the ground?), Simon... continue reading

posted by PlayhousePals 7 years 1 week ago • 1,232 views • 4:24