The DIY Tornado Machine

in Science, Video - Science | August 18th, 2011

Bob Smer­beck, a senior mete­o­rol­o­gist for AccuWeather.com, has fig­ured it all out — how to let loose a tor­na­do in the com­fort of his own home. Using a hair dry­er, plas­tic tubes, and a light switch, Smer­beck can recre­ate the basic dynam­ics of super­cell thun­der­storms that pro­duce tor­na­does — except his tor­na­does are inch­es, not miles, wide.

As Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can explains it, tor­na­does take form when winds occur­ring at dif­fer­ent lev­els of the atmos­phere vary in direc­tion caus­ing thun­der­storms to rotate, and when the rota­tion with­in the thun­der­storm extends down to the ground. Smer­beck­’s DIY machine sim­u­lates these move­ments, and you can do the same. You will just need to fol­low a series of videos cre­at­ed by the Tor­na­do Project on YouTube. Start with Part 1 here, and then pro­ceed to Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. 

More fas­ci­nat­ing videos can be found in our new col­lec­tion: 125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

h/t  @sheerly

Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and we’ll deliv­er great cul­ture right to your vir­tu­al doorstep, day in, day out.

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50 Famous Scientists & Academics Speak About God: Part II

in Religion, Science, Video - Science | August 15th, 2011

Last month, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham cre­at­ed a mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics, includ­ing many Nobel prize win­ners, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. And boy did it gen­er­ate some debate. (Watch the video and read the com­ments here.) Now comes Part II, which fea­tures George Lakoff, Richard Dawkins, Simon Schaf­fer, Patri­cia Church­land, and Michio Kaku, among oth­ers. The full list appears below the jump. (Click “more.”) You can find this video, along with the first video in the series, in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

(more…)

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How the Egyptian Pyramids Were Built: A New Theory in 3D Animation

in History, Science | August 1st, 2011

Jean-Pierre Houdin spent a cou­ple of decades work­ing as an inde­pen­dent archi­tect around Paris. Then, his career took a big turn. Work­ing with his father, Houdin tried to crack an ancient mys­tery — how were the great pyra­mids of Egypt built?

Through­out the cen­turies, var­i­ous the­o­ries have been put forth. Herodotus, who vis­it­ed Egypt around 450 B.C., spec­u­lat­ed that some “machines” were involved. Oth­ers thought that mounds serv­ing as ramps played a cen­tral role in the con­struc­tion. And still oth­ers have guessed that extrater­res­tri­als were the real builders (seri­ous­ly).

Now Houdin enters into the debate with what Egyp­tol­o­gist Bob Brier calls a “rad­i­cal new the­o­ry.” Using state-of-the-art 3‑D soft­ware, Houdin has con­clud­ed that the bot­tom por­tion of the pyra­mids were built with an exter­nal ramp, and the upper por­tions with inter­nal ramps. Brier sum­ma­rizes the the­o­ry rather well in this short arti­cle.

Houd­in’s work has focused par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Great Pyra­mid of Giza, oth­er­wise known as the Pyra­mid of Khu­fu, built cir­ca 2500 B.C. (See image here). And he has gone so far as to cre­ate a 3D inter­ac­tive film that visu­al­ly doc­u­ments his hypoth­e­sis. We’ve embed­ded a good clip above. You can also head to Khu­fu Reborn to get the full inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence. (Note: You’ll need a PC, 3D glass­es and some down­load­able plu­g­ins to make it all work.)

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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50 Famous Academics & Scientists Talk About God

in Religion, Science, Video - Science | July 26th, 2011

Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham has pulled togeth­er a mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics, most­ly all sci­en­tists, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. The list includes includes 16 Nobel prize win­ners, and a bun­dle of rec­og­niz­able names, includ­ing Richard Feyn­man, Steven Pinker, Oliv­er Sacks, Bertrand Rus­sell, Stephen Hawk­ing, and Leonard Susskind. The full list appears below the jump. (Click “more.”) Click here to find anoth­er 50 Aca­d­e­mics Talk­ing About God and 30 renowned writ­ers doing the same.

(more…)

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The Machine: Top Prize Winner at the Robot Film Festival

in Film, Science | July 20th, 2011

 

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6974132[/vimeo]

Rob Shaw’s dark ani­mat­ed short The Machine was vot­ed Best Film at last week’s Robot Film Fes­ti­val in New York City.  The movie starts on what looks like a stan­dard boy-makes-machine, machine-runs-amok, boy-kills-machine tra­jec­to­ry, but veers nice­ly off-course and ends on a note much more Sartre than Ter­mi­na­tor. (Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca fans will see the twist com­ing from a mile away).

The Machine seems like a good fit for the new fes­ti­val, which founder and Carnegie Mel­lon roboti­cist Heather Knight hopes will fuel inno­va­tion and help improve robots’ image in a post-Cylon world. For more back­sto­ry, check out edi­tor and RFF judge Celeste Biev­er’s fas­ci­nat­ing wrap-up at the New Sci­en­tist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blinky™: A Touch­ing Short Film About A Killer Robot

Robot Con­ducts The Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Metropolis II: Chris Burden’s Amazing, Frenetic Mini-City

in Animation, Science, Technology | July 20th, 2011

In his 2007 New York­er essay on per­for­mance artist Chris Bur­den, the crit­ic Peter Schjel­dahl wrote that most of Bur­den’s oeu­vre con­sist­ed of “pow­er­ful works that deal inge­nious­ly with aes­thet­ics and ethics of pow­er.”

Schjeld­hal added that “you needn’t like them to be impressed,” and then described some of Bur­den’s more infa­mous pieces:

He spent five days in a small lock­er, with a bot­tle of water above and a bot­tle for urine below; slith­ered, near­ly naked and with his hands held behind him, across fifty feet of bro­ken glass in a park­ing lot; had his hands nailed to the roof of a Volk­swa­gen; was kicked down a flight of stairs; and, on dif­fer­ent occa­sions, incurred appar­ent risks of burn­ing, drown­ing, and elec­tro­cu­tion.

Bur­den’s more recent â€śMetrop­o­lis II,” which might seem tame by com­par­i­son, fea­tures over 1,100 mini­cars careen­ing through a maze of inter­con­nect­ed free­ways. It’s still pret­ty chal­leng­ing, even in dilut­ed video form:  The noise and con­stant motion seem cal­cu­lat­ed to wreck your nerves, and accord­ing to this brief seg­ment on the piece, at least one car spins off the tracks every hour. The city may be sur­re­al, but the stress feels as famil­iar as your last bad rush hour.

You can find a fas­ci­nat­ing on-stage inter­view with the artist in LAC­MA’s Direc­tor’s Series, as well as a wealth of infor­ma­tion about Bur­den’s life and work on the muse­um’s web­site.

H/T Fast­CoDe­sign

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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125 Science Videos: Our Greatest Hits

in Science, Video - Science | July 13th, 2011

We reached deep into our archives and pulled out a list of our great­est hits — our favorite sci­ence videos from the past five years. 125 videos in total, and the list will grow from here. Right now, it cov­ers every­thing from Astron­o­my and Space Trav­el, to Physics and Biol­o­gy, and then Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science. Our rec­om­men­da­tion? Just jump right in here. But if you want a lit­tle pre­view, then let’s start you off with ten slam-dunk videos from the col­lec­tion:

(Note: In the future, you can access this col­lec­tion by click­ing the “Great Sci­ence Videos” link under “Essen­tials.” Top of the cen­ter col­umn.)

  • Earth­rise in HD – Video — In Novem­ber 2007, Japan’s Kaguya space­craft orbit­ed the moon and cap­tured the first HD footage of an “earth­rise” and “earth­set.”
  • Tour­ing the Earth from Space (in HD) – Video — Give NASA 7 min­utes, and they’ll show you the Earth’s most impres­sive land­scapes — as seen from space.
  • “First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight - Video — 99-minute doc­u­men­tary recre­ates the Sovi­et cos­mo­naut’s his­toric launch into space on April 12, 1961.
  • Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Col­ors of Infin­i­ty – Video – The futur­ist brings us inside Mandelbrot’s world of frac­tal geom­e­try.
  • Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics – Video – Fas­ci­nat­ing pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark Peter­son, physics pro­fes­sor at Mount Holyoke Col­lege.
  • Lawrence Krauss: Every Atom in Your Body Comes From a Star- Video – The­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist talks about his work at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos.
  • What It Feels Like To Have a Stroke - Video — Har­vard neu­roanatomist Jill Bolte Tay­lor recounts her expe­ri­ence hav­ing a stroke. One of the most pop­u­lar TED Talks of all time.
  • Nature by Num­bers - Video — Well-known geo­met­ri­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las (The Fibonac­ci Series and Spi­ral, The Gold­en and Angle Ratios, The Delauney Tri­an­gu­la­tion and Voronoi Tes­sel­la­tions) present them­selves in nature.
  • Tsuna­mi Rip­ples Across Globe: Ani­mat­ed Video — Video — The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion shows Japan­ese tsuna­mi rip­pling across the Pacif­ic.
  • Daniel Pink: The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us - Video — Research reveals what real­ly, tru­ly moti­vates us. And it’s all shown with ani­ma­tion.

Find the full list of Sci­ence Videos here…

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Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evolution

in Music, Science, TED Talks | July 7th, 2011

Cana­di­an “geek rap­per” Baba Brinkman first gar­nered pop­u­lar atten­tion with a well-received, well-reviewed rap adap­ta­tion of Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales at the Edin­burgh Fringe Fes­ti­val. (To get a sense of the project, check out this brief scene from “The Par­don­er’s Tale.”) And we also pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his bril­liant work on Macmil­lan’s What’s Your Eng­lish? cam­paign.

Brinkman has brought his fol­low-up show, a fas­ci­nat­ing homage to Charles Dar­win called “The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion,” to New York City, where it’s get­ting rave reviews. In the video above, he explains how he went about putting the project togeth­er, and how evo­lu­tion­ary sci­ence enriched his under­stand­ing of the vio­lence and anger so preva­lent in the music he loves. The whole talk is great, but if you want to start off with a taste of the rap itself, skip for­ward to minute 9:03.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayak vs. Keynes Rap

The Cli­mate Sci­en­tist Rap (Warn­ing: Offen­sive Lan­guage)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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