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Kick Off Geek Week With Ten Videos that Blow My Mind

In honor of YouTube's Geek Week, I present to you the top ten nerdy videos that have blown my mind in the last few months. Enjoy. Derek Muller at Veritasium first blew my mind with large scale-levitation: And then he showed me I have no idea what temperature things are: Science communicator extraordinaire Vsauce has [...]

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


In honor of YouTube’s Geek Week, I present to you the top ten nerdy videos that have blown my mind in the last few months. Enjoy.

Derek Muller at Veritasium first blew my mind with large scale-levitation:


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And then he showed me I have no idea what temperature things are:

Science communicator extraordinaire Vsauce has a way with words (I have no idea how he memorizes so many) that can inform you while chilling you to the core.

Joe Hanson at It’s Okay to Be Smart blew my mind when he showed me, commonsensically, just how big our solar system is:

Destin at Smarter Every Day has routinely captured the most amazing slo-mo shots I have ever seen in. my. life. This is one of them:

And he has also filmed the discovery of one of the most amazing spiders I have ever seen:

There are almost no words for this; something so amazing in something so mundane. Physics knows what is going on here, but first, you’ve got to see this:

Minute Physics is well-known for its snappy explanations of the most complex ideas in science, but in the video below, they enlist Neil deGrasse Tyson to cover one of the biggest questions ever:

AsapSCIENCE is also a big player in the science video game, and in the video below they got national treasure Bill Nye The Science Guy to blow my mind on LASER BEES:

Vi Hart is a mathemagician, and Origami has nothing on her folding magic:

Honorable mentions:

You can create your own Star Wars blaster noise, like right now, GO!

Who else can rant like this? Who doesn’t want to see this movie?

Science as a concept is amazing, but it is even more amazing when you can see it happen before your eyes. In the video below, the amazing shapes that appear are the product of well-understood equations, but it makes it no less incredible.

If it doesn’t blow your mind how much power an atomic bomb actually has, nothing will:

WAIT. WHAT? HOW DID I NEVER NOTICE THIS? MIND. BLOWN.

(He had a back injury, FYI)

Kyle Hill is a science communicator who specializes in finding the secret science in your favorite fandom. He has a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering and a master's degree in communication research (with a focus on science, health, and the environment) from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Aside from co-hosting Al Jazeera America's science show, TechKnow, Hill is also a freelancer who has contributed to Wired, Nature Education, Popular Science, Slate, io9, Nautilus, and is a columnist for Skeptical Inquirer. He manages Nature Education's Student Voices blog, is a research fellow with the James Randi Educational foundation. Email: sciencebasedlife@gmail.com

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