computational chemistry

Joscha Bach's 32C3 talk applies computational theories of mind to questions of meaning, emotion, and love, asking how computation can explain irrational-seeming human experience.

PBS Space Time considers whether life could be based on silicon instead of carbon, comparing the two elements' chemistry and why silicon is the most plausible alternative.

A Disney Research SIGGRAPH 2013 demo of an interactive system that lets non-experts design animated mechanical characters. The user sketches motion curves and the system generates optimized mechanisms and gear trains for 3D printing.

NileRed tries to make a ring from pure purple gold, a gold-aluminium intermetallic that is brittle and hard to work with. The 53-minute video follows the chemistry and many failed attempts before he produces a finished ring.

An 11-minute animated introduction to P vs. NP and the wider landscape of complexity classes, inspired by the Complexity Zoo wiki. It assumes no background in computer science.

NileRed makes radioactive uranium glass from scratch, showing the chemistry involved and the green fluorescence under a blacklight. The video includes warnings about handling radioactive material.

The first lecture in an 18-part series on digital photography from Marc Levoy's Stanford CS 178 course, recorded at Google in 2016. The series covers how digital cameras work and computational photography, with slides and assignments available on the course site.

Doug McGuff presents the biochemistry behind high-intensity strength training and the paleo diet, including how the body stores and burns fat. It is a roughly hour-and-a-half full-length lecture.

Joscha Bach's 31c3 talk argues that the mind should be understood as an information-processing system and that even the physical universe can be seen as computational. It tours the philosophy underlying artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

Periodic Videos visits a fluorine expert to show how reactive the element is in action. It also includes a discussion of fluoride and tooth enamel.

Christian Schafmeister's Google Tech Talk on Clasp and CANDO, a Common Lisp implementation on LLVM and C++ used to design molecules, including energy minimization and force-field calculations.

ACS Reactions investigates why Mexican Coke, supposedly cane sugar sweetened, tested as having glucose and fructose, explaining that sucrose breaks down in acidic soda.

Christian Schafmeister presents CANDO at the 2016 European Lisp Symposium. It is a compiled Lisp-based language for designing macromolecules and nanoscale materials, built on the Clasp implementation of Common Lisp.

The Explosions&Fire channel taste-tests the chloride salts of the alkali metals (lithium through cesium), plus some alkaline earth metals and ammonium. The presenter describes the flavors, and the results are more pleasant than expected.

Illumina's 3D animation of its sequencing-by-synthesis workflow, from sample preparation and cluster generation to sequencing on a flow cell and data analysis.

A 2017 GDC session in which Nintendo's Breath of the Wild team walks through how the game's convention-breaking systems were built. It covers the 'chemistry engine' of material interactions and shows the early 2D prototype footage.

Christian Schafmeister's Google Tech Talk on designing spiroligomer molecules and building Clasp, a Common Lisp on LLVM that interoperates with C++, to program molecular design. It covers the chemistry, automatic differentiation for force fields, and how the compiler is built.

Jack Szostak's lecture covers how cellular life could have arisen from chemistry on the early Earth, starting from the odds of life elsewhere in the galaxy. It is part of a series on protocells and the RNA world.

A long Lex Fridman interview with Stephen Wolfram on complexity, cellular automata, computational irreducibility and the Wolfram Physics Project.

Joscha Bach's 35C3 talk offers an AI perspective on the soul, covering perception, mental representation, agency, consciousness and selfhood as things that can arise in a computational system like the brain.

A SciShow episode in which Hank Green introduces five of the most dangerous chemicals, from lethal toxins to substances that explode on contact. It is an entertaining overview of extreme chemical hazards.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science shows how to make small batches of specialty glass with minimal equipment, including designing and making photochromic glass. He covers ingredients, melting and the challenges involved.

Professor Jeff Dahn lectures on why lithium-ion batteries die and how chemistry changes could make them last decades.

Biochemist Nick Lane gives a Royal Institution lecture arguing that the Krebs cycle is central to what makes cells alive, not just genetic information. He draws on the themes of his book Transformer to link metabolism to the origin of life, death, and aging.

NileRed attempts to make transparent wood, inspired by an AvE video, by removing lignin and infiltrating the wood with resin. It is a long, detailed walkthrough of the chemistry and the practical difficulties.

Cody's Lab collects a sample of dust from the side of a highway and refines it to recover platinum-group metals deposited by catalytic converters. The video walks through the chemistry of separating and assaying the precious metals.

A short Harvard Online animated lesson on how the mitochondrial electron transport chain works. It shows proton pumping and the machinery that drives ATP synthesis.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy introduces his series on Michael Faraday's lectures on The Chemical History of a Candle. He describes the free companion book and the commentary and caption features that help modern viewers.

NightHawkInLight shows how to make radiative sky cooling paint from grocery and hardware store materials, including a novel calcium carbonate microsphere synthesis. The paint can cool a surface below ambient air temperature in direct sunlight without electricity.

NightHawkInLight shows how to make ultra-white radiative paint that cools surfaces below ambient temperature without electricity. He walks through the research papers and the household-materials process.

The SIGGRAPH 2005 demo of dual photography from Stanford, which swaps the roles of projector and camera to render a scene from the light's point of view. It includes the reveal of a hidden playing card.

Tom Murphy's satirical SIGBOVIK 2007 presentation, delivered under a pseudonym, proving that generalized Super Mario Bros. is NP-complete. It is a short, deadpan take on a complexity theory result.

A Capella Science parody of Camila Cabello's Havana, retold as a song about molecular machines and nanotechnology. It features animations of rotaxanes, catenanes and molecular switches, and comes with footnotes.

Lex Fridman interviews University of Glasgow chemist Lee Cronin about the origin of life, aliens, complexity and consciousness. The conversation centers on Cronin's assembly theory.

Steve Mould explains homochirality: why biological molecules like sugars and amino acids come in only one handedness. He covers ideas about how this asymmetry might have arisen, touching on meteorite samples and RNA.

Synthetic organic chemist James Tour gives a lecture arguing that origin-of-life research is far from explaining how life began. The talk was published by the Discovery Institute and drew sharp criticism.

A roughly four-and-a-half-hour Lex Fridman podcast conversation with Stephen Wolfram about his Wolfram Physics Project and a fundamental theory of physics, computation, life and the universe.

A 1967 live film of Tom Lehrer performing his patter song "The Elements" in Copenhagen, reciting the chemical elements to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. It is a short, polished example of his satirical piano-and-voice style.

Thunderf00t presents high-speed camera footage of alkali metals such as sodium and NaK reacting with water. The footage shows that the explosion is not caused by hydrogen ignition, as the usual explanation says. It is a Coulomb explosion driven by electrons leaving the metal.

A Capella Science parody of Ed Sheeran's Shape of You, rewritten about molecular bonding and orbitals and sung a cappella.