explanation

A clip from the 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine in which Richard Feynman explains heat as the jiggling of atoms and how we perceive it as hot and cold.

Veritasium tells the story of the Fast Fourier Transform, from its use in detecting nuclear tests to Cold War politics, and how it could have changed the arms race. It includes a short, intuitive explanation of what the Fourier transform does.

A Medlife Crisis video by cardiologist Rohin Francis on overdiagnosis and over-screening. It explains how detecting more disease does not necessarily mean saving more lives, and covers harms such as unnecessary treatment.

Mick West explains the three Navy UFO videos (FLIR, GIMBAL and GOFAST) released in 2020, giving mundane explanations such as a distant plane and camera artifacts. He notes the videos were not new and had been circulating since 2017.

A short clip from Carl Sagan's Cosmos in which he explains how Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth using shadows in two Egyptian cities. It is a clear, visual account of an ancient scientific feat.

Veritasium explains that the Higgs boson accounts for only a small fraction of everyday mass. Most of a proton's mass comes from the energy of the gluon field binding its quarks.

Veritasium visits NIST to explain Standard Reference Materials, the carefully characterized items such as peanut butter used to calibrate instruments and keep measurements consistent. It covers why they exist and why they are expensive.

Veritasium asks people where a tree's mass comes from, then explains that most of a dry tree's mass originates from carbon dioxide in the air. It combines street interviews with a short explanation of photosynthesis.

A PBS Space Time episode explaining the Fermilab Muon g-2 results and why a discrepancy with the Standard Model prediction could point to new physics.

Hans Rosling uses augmented-reality animation to show 200 countries over 200 years in four minutes, built from 120,000 data points. It tracks life expectancy and income to show the world's development.

Veritasium examines the role of luck in success, with simulations and examples showing how small advantages and chance can compound. It argues that top outcomes are disproportionately luck-driven while still crediting effort.

Veritasium explains why a large share of published research findings may be false, covering p-values, p-hacking, publication bias and low replication rates. It draws on John Ioannidis's well-known paper and describes reforms such as preregistration.

A short infographic video on the distribution of wealth in America, contrasting what people believe, what they consider ideal, and the actual numbers. It highlights how top-heavy US wealth is.

Tom Scott investigates the claim that the microwave was invented to heat hamsters, and interviews James Lovelock about freezing and microwave-thawing hamsters in the 1950s. It traces early magnetron uses beyond radar.

Roy Beck's short gumball presentation using World Bank and Census data to argue that letting people immigrate to the US cannot solve world poverty because the numbers are so large. It is made by NumbersUSA, an immigration-restriction advocacy group.

Technology Connections explains how LED traffic lights, which do not melt snow, drew complaints and were blamed for accidents. He uses it to illustrate the 'but sometimes' fallacy against new technology.

Veritasium debunks the idea of learning styles, such as being a visual learner, with an interview with Daniel Willingham and a memory experiment. It argues that a multimodal approach helps everyone.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy explains how medieval engineers designed stone cathedrals using rules of thumb, with no science, mathematics or literacy. He uses it to define the engineering method.

3Blue1Brown builds toy SIR models to simulate how an epidemic spreads and tests scenarios like social distancing, travel restrictions, central gathering places and quarantine. It was made during the early COVID-19 outbreak.

Veritasium explains why analog computing may suit AI workloads, covering old analog computers, The Analog Thing and Mythic's analog chips that use flash memory for neural network inference. It argues digital hardware is hitting limits.

A visual scale comparison of stars and cosmic objects, from planets up to some of the largest known stars, set to music. It is meant to convey the vastness of the universe.

An animated simulation comparing single-winner voting methods such as plurality, instant runoff and STAR. Colored regions show which candidate wins as a randomized electorate shifts across a two-dimensional political space, building on Ka-Ping Yee's earlier diagrams.

Physicist Angela Collier argues that dark matter is not a theory but a set of observations, covering rotation curves, the CMB and why modified gravity struggles to explain them.

A Kurzgesagt explainer on why the human population exploded and why growth is slowing, drawing on Our World in Data. It argues that birth rates fall as countries develop, easing overpopulation fears.

Guitarist Jim Lill methodically tests what in an electric guitar affects its tone, swapping parts on a partscaster and even trying a 2x4 body. He finds that wood and construction matter far less than people assume.

A cardiologist runs a detailed, skeptical review of the Wim Hof Method, covering the research on cold exposure and breathing techniques. It also teaches how to read scientific statistics critically.

Science journalist potholer54 examines the claim that SARS-CoV-2 came from a Wuhan lab, tracing the sources behind it and the weaknesses in the evidence.

Veritasium debunks common climate change myths in under seven minutes, with references to NASA and published research. Topics include CO2 sources, sea ice and 1970s predictions of cooling.

Kurzgesagt explains the Holocene or Human Era calendar, which adds 10,000 years to the current year to anchor dates to the start of human civilization. It argues this gives a more sensible frame for human history.

Veritasium explores why energy is not conserved in general relativity, using Emmy Noether's theorem linking symmetries to conservation laws. Physicists interviewed explain energy loss in an expanding universe.

Veritasium tells how Kodak film was fogged by radioactive fallout from the first atomic tests, letting the company detect nuclear testing before anyone announced it. The video also covers the deal to keep it quiet and how fallout contaminated packaging.

Veritasium explains why many real-world systems follow power laws rather than normal distributions. It covers self-organized criticality, with simulations of sandpiles, magnetism and forest fires.

2swap explains how he solved the Klotski sliding-block puzzle by mapping its full state space as a graph and visualizing it. The video includes footage of the Guinness world-record solve and links to an interactive graph.

A Veritasium video that runs the 2-4-8 rule-guessing puzzle on people to show how they test only examples that confirm their hypothesis. It uses this to illustrate confirmation bias and falsification.

Veritasium examines research suggesting science explainer videos like Khan Academy's make students feel they understand while tests show they have not learned, because misconceptions go unaddressed. It suggests how to partly fix this.

Geoff Cumming uses a simulation to show how wildly the p value varies from one replication to the next because of sampling variability. He argues for estimation and confidence intervals over null hypothesis significance testing.

Veritasium takes an IQ test and examines what IQ measures, its history including military use and eugenics, its controversies, and how it correlates with life outcomes. Experts including Cecil Reynolds and Stuart Ritchie contribute.

Astronomer David Kipping of Cool Worlds talks with Mick West to break down the three declassified Pentagon UFO videos. They explain the footage through camera artifacts, glare, and perspective effects.

David Spiegelhalter, Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, uses statistics to weigh everyday risks such as bacon sandwiches and cycling. The six-minute piece introduces micromorts as a way to compare the risk of dying.

A short video built around an animation of the roughly 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, placed at their measured redshift distances. It gives a brief history of deep field images and ends with a 3D fly-through.