Posts filed under 'Awesome Science Videos'
Here’s a video you shouldn’t watch too soon after breakfast: the PEAK Wound Healing revolution. If you’re tired of a razor scalpel (so primitive!) or a cauterising scalpel (it’s just a soldering iron!), PEAK have developed the highly kick-ass “plasmablade”. Although it looks like a coffee stirrer, be warned - this little tyke will slice through skin and sub-dermal fat like a hot knife through skin and sub-dermal fat. But better. Gruesome-yet-awesome video via the link below.
May 21st, 2008
While I’m taking pot shots at the God Squad, please enjoy this cracking Brass Eye-style piece from the Chaser NoN-stop News Network, an Australian parody of the American news format.
May 18th, 2008
Leaping shampoo, otherwise known as the Kaye Effect, puzzled scientists for quite some time before a group of scientists in the Netherlands produced this cracking video.
April 21st, 2008
Sometimes, writing something in 36-point Impact font just doesn’t convey they the seriousness of your correspondence. Wills, ancient curses, break-up letters - these things are best written in blood. Your own blood, specifically. And if you the kind of person to do that, you probably wouldn’t question why you need an absurdly complicated mechanical quill to write your letter. Sure, you could just drain a few drops into an inkpot, but isn’t needless suffering kind of the point with these things?
The Blood Pen was designed by Bob Partington of the Keystone Design Union. See here for details.
April 16th, 2008
Here’s a neat video of an attack helicopter that appears to have some top-secret anti-gravity technology - watch as it floats through the air with the blades motionless.
Is it a trick? A model? No - the camera operator has synced the frames-per-second of their camera to the rotational speed of the helicopter blades. The result is that every time the video camera captures a single frame, the blades are in the same position as the last frame. The effect is that the blades appear motionless.
Via The Cipher: Blog
April 14th, 2008
Seriously, do you need more of a description than the title?
April 7th, 2008
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time - one dead whale needing disposal, several kilos of high explosive gathering dust in a sheriff’s office somewhere… And everyone knows, blowing something up - even a large whale - results in its instant vaporisation, right? Wrong.
March 31st, 2008
This video isn’t particularly new, but even those who’ve seen it will benefit from a rerun. The animation was carried about by the people at XVIVO for Harvard University’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. In contrast to this short piece, the full length animation is 8 minutes long and includes descriptions of the processes.
March 24th, 2008
Some pretty neat footage of what happens in a petrol station if someone hits ‘the red button’. Instant Christmas effect!
March 21st, 2008
As if soldiers in Afghanistan didn’t have enough worries from hostile weather, enemy troops and camel spiders, this video shows another peril - giant terrorist hornets, who appear to have blocked a mountain path then ambushed the soldiers when they tried to clear it.
March 19th, 2008
In another example that Mother Nature has a pretty messed up personality, here’s a skin-crawling video of a Surinam Toad giving birth. Well, of course, it’s an amphibian, so it doesn’t give birth as such… Over to Wikipipedia to explain things:
Surinam toads are most well-known for their remarkable reproductive habits. The partners rise off of the floor while in amplexus and flip through the water in arcs. During each arc, the female releases 3-10 eggs, which get embedded in the skin on her back by the male’s movements. After implantation the eggs sink into the skin and form pockets over a period of several days, eventually taking on the appearance of an irregular honeycomb. The larvae develop through the tadpole stage inside these pockets, eventually emerging from the mother’s back as fully developed toads
Freaky!
March 16th, 2008
The next item I’d like to add to my cabinet of scientific curiosities (currently housing a formicarium, solar mill and model skeleton) is definitely a few Dutch Tears - also known as Prince Rupert’s Drops. Allegedly introduced to the court of Charles I by their namesake, these are small tear-drop shaped lumps of glass with incredible properties. Produced by dripping molten glass into cold water, the drops are incredibly strong at the round end - strong enough to withstand being hit with a hammer. However, the slightest damage to the long tail will make the entire glass drop explode. What’s the secret? These drops are an example of tempered glass - the rapid cooling produces an outer layer under great tension, and an inner layer under great compression. One small crack is all it takes to release the energy.
The same principal allows you to shatter a car window with a tiny fragment of porcelain.
March 3rd, 2008
When I read the blurb that Dean Kamen (who invented the Segway) had been inspired by Star Wars to produce a robotic limb for amputees, I thought ‘yeah, right, it probably weighs 50lbs and is little more than a glorified claw’. Oh, how wrong I was. Kamen’s team have created a bionic limb that is lightweight, modular, and highly dexterous - controlled by pressure pads or even by muscle impulses, his limb is far and beyond anything I thought I’d see in my lifetime. The video is mind-blowing.
February 20th, 2008
Pushing us forward into the awesome robotic future that Hollywood has been promising us, RISE is a small six-legged robot that can climb a variety of surfaces using sticky pads, claws, or “micro-claws”. It’s not slow either - the little guy can shift its 2kg body upwards at 0.3m/s. The question is - what’s it trying to get to?
February 18th, 2008
Ratcheting up the freaky-meter is this video of a giant centipede, which as well as being highly poisonous and strong as a small snake, can catch and kill bats, straight out of the air.
February 11th, 2008
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