A Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption, invention, device or apparatus that is deliberately over-engineered or overdone to perform a very simple task in a very complicated fashion, usually including a chain reaction. The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg (1883–1970). [source] In this creative spot by Japanese firm au…
Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart / The more you eat, the more you fart / The more you fart, the better you feel / So let’s eat beans with every meal 🙂
This isn’t science fiction, this is happening as we speak. CGP Grey discusses the inevitability of automation and why we, as humans, need to start thinking about a world where the majority of jobs, across all sectors, can be performed better by a robot.
Destin of SmarterEveryDay meets with toxinologist Dr. Seymour to investigate how jellyfish stings work using microscopic, slow motion video footage.
Using an ultraviolet camera, people on the street were shown how the sun sees them. Under UV light your skin may look more different than you think. Video by Thomas Leveritt Music: ‘Summer in the City – Starcadian remix’ by Freedom Fry
This could be a game changer. Engineers at Microsoft recently unveiled a method for converting first-person videos into hyperlapse videos (time-lapse videos with a smoothly moving camera). As the team explains on their research page: At high speed-up rates, simple frame sub-sampling coupled with existing video stabilization methods does not work, because the erratic…
Using a high-speed camera, scientists at MIT have been able to passively recover audio by analyzing minute vibrations, effectively turning everyday objects into ‘Visual Microphones’. You can read more about this fascinating work by Abe Davis, Michael Rubinstein, Neal Wadhwa, Gautham J. Mysore, Fredo Durand and William T. Freeman at the MIT project page.…
The earliest recorded tattoo was found on a Peruvian mummy in 6,000 BC. And considering humans lose roughly 40,000 skin cells per hour, how do these markings last? Claudia Aguirre details the different methods, machines and macrophages that go into making tattoos stand the test of time. Lesson by Claudia Aguirre, animation by TOGETHER.…
When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What’s going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians’ brains when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive…
It was the change that no-one saw coming: the idea that we could take a book, a painting or a song and send it through cables and wires and even thin air to the other end of the world – and it would be identical on the other side. But this idea underpins everything…
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