Evolution Made Us All

in Music, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

File under Every­thing is a Remix. Ben Hill­man offers a cre­ative lit­tle riff on “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful” (lis­ten here), an Angli­can hymn inspired by William Paley’s 1802 trea­tise, Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, which posi­tions God as the design­er of the nat­ur­al world … in an Enlight­en­ment kind of way. You can catch more Hill­man videos on Vimeo here.

via RichardDawkins.net

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First 360 Degree View of the Sun

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 13th, 2011

A new NASA break­through lets us see the sun in a 360 degree, panoram­ic view. The upshot? Bet­ter space weath­er reports com­ing our way. The video from NASA’s YouTube chan­nel has all the good details …

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Wunderkind Fun

in Literature, Music, Science | February 3rd, 2011

Only 2 years old, ‘lil Rose from Seat­tle aces her Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments game. Next up, a play date with 3 year old Jonathan who con­ducts the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th for laughs, and anoth­er pal, Samuel, who recites the poet­ry of Bil­ly Collins and Lord Alfred Ten­nyson. I’m feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter about our future…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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The World’s Fastest Solar Car

in Science, Video - Science | January 28th, 2011

Some con­grat­u­la­tions are in order for a team of stu­dents from The Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales. Ear­li­er this month, they set a world record for the fastest solar-pow­ered car. Their car, trav­el­ing 88km/h (or 54 miles per hour), broke the pre­vi­ous record of 79 km/h. We’re not talk­ing about NASCAR speeds, to be sure. But the research that went into mak­ing the UNSW car could mean big things for future gen­er­a­tions of green-pow­ered cars. Wired has more on the sto­ry, plus some pho­tos…

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Fractal Landscape

in Science, Video - Science | January 19th, 2011

An evolv­ing frac­tal land­scape, all cre­at­ed with a WebGL 3D frac­tal ren­der­er. If you join/log into Vimeo, you can down­load the video right here and watch “Sur­face Detail” in full detail…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Col­ors of Infin­i­ty

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The Impossible Motion Contraption

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | January 11th, 2011

Every year, The New Sci­en­tist spon­sors an illu­sion con­test, and, above, we have the win­ner of the 2010 edi­tion: A con­trap­tion cre­at­ed by Kou­kichi Sug­i­hara (Mei­ji Insti­tute for Advanced Study of Math­e­mat­i­cal Sci­ences, Japan) that appears to defy grav­i­ty, allow­ing wood­en balls to roll up slopes. But, in actu­al fact “the ori­en­ta­tions of the slopes are per­ceived oppo­site­ly, and hence the descend­ing motion is mis­in­ter­pret­ed as ascend­ing motion.” You can now make sub­mis­sions to the 2011 edi­tion.

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World’s Smallest Periodic Table on a Human Hair

in Science, Video - Science | January 10th, 2011

Fun with sci­ence. The world’s small­est peri­od­ic table etched onto a strand of hair belong­ing to chem­istry Pro­fes­sor Mar­tyn Poli­akoff (Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham). This clip comes from the Peri­od­ic Videos col­lec­tion and it comes rec­om­mend by the great @OliverSacks.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Shows How the Ele­ments Get Used in Mak­ing Every­day Things

A Peri­od­ic Table Visu­al­iz­ing the Year & Coun­try in Which Each Ele­ment Was Dis­cov­ered

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Pre­sent­ed as Inter­ac­tive Haikus

The Peri­od­ic Table of Endan­gered Ele­ments: Visu­al­iz­ing the Chem­i­cal Ele­ments That Could Van­ish Before You Know It

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Thomas Edison Recites “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in Early Voice Recording

in History, Science, Technology | January 3rd, 2011

In the late 1870s, Thomas Edi­son, Amer­i­ca’s pro­lif­ic inven­tor, per­fect­ed the phono­graph and cap­tured a very ear­ly record­ing of the human voice – his own voice recit­ing the still pop­u­lar nurs­ery rhyme, Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb. (Get mp3 here.) Lat­er, the Edi­son cylin­der also record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty Russ­ian com­pos­er Pyotr Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) talk­ing with oth­er musi­cians in a light moment.

The Edi­son cylin­der was actu­al­ly pre­ced­ed by anoth­er sound-record­ing device, the pho­nau­to­graph, invent­ed by Édouard-Léon Scott de Mar­t­inville in 1857. Not long ago, sci­en­tists from the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry extract­ed a record­ing not heard in 150 years, a voice singing the French folk song “Au Clair de la Lune.”

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909)

Bike Tricks Cour­tesy of Thomas Edi­son

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