visualization

An animated visualization of basic quantum mechanics using a free particle, with simulations based on the actual equations. It covers waves, particles, and how measurement collapses the wavefunction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A short Globe and Mail animated explainer on why renting can leave you as well off as buying a home. It walks through a rent-versus-buy comparison using Toronto numbers and the opportunity cost of a down payment. The video notes it dates from 2015 and the housing market has changed since.

A short explainer from Nat and Friends on where Google Earth's 3D imagery comes from, how it is stitched together, and how often it is updated. It describes aircraft carrying camera rigs and photogrammetry that turns the photos into 3D models.

An animated map showing the borders and populations of European countries for every year since 400 BC. Vassal states and colonies are excluded from population counts.

3Blue1Brown visualizes high-dimensional spheres to explain a surprising puzzle about how a sphere fits in a box as dimensions grow. It builds geometric intuition for counterintuitive properties of high-dimensional space.

3Blue1Brown visualizes the Riemann zeta function and the analytic continuation that extends it beyond where its series converges, building toward the Riemann hypothesis.

A 21-minute animation showing how a sphere can be turned inside out without creases or tears, known as sphere eversion.

3Blue1Brown's first chapter on deep learning explains what neurons and layers are and the math underlying a basic neural network, using handwritten digit recognition with visual animations.

3Blue1Brown builds visual intuition for quaternions, showing how to think about this four-dimensional number system using stereographic projection and rotations in 3D space. It is part one of a two-part series with an interactive companion site.

3Blue1Brown introduces Fourier series, from the heat equation to drawing arbitrary shapes with rotating circles. It builds a visual intuition for decomposing functions into sine waves.

3Blue1Brown explains space-filling curves and the Hilbert curve, and how infinite mathematical constructions connect to finite, practical approximations. It touches on mapping between dimensions and sensory ideas.

A short 3Blue1Brown video explaining Euler's formula e^(i*pi) = -1 through dynamics, treating velocity as the thing that moves a point to a new position. It builds geometric intuition for why an exponent with i produces rotation.

ScienceClic explains why nothing can go faster than light by treating motion through space and time together, so everything moves at the speed of light through spacetime. It uses animated visuals to cover relativity basics in 12 minutes.

A short animation from the DNA Learning Center showing how mRNA carries a gene's message to the ribosome, where tRNA and codons are used to assemble amino acids into a protein.

Mark Handley of UCL looks at how SpaceX's November 2018 revisions to the Starlink constellation affect network behavior. The video visualizes the orbits and routing and estimates latencies, building on his earlier video and research paper.

Vox breaks down how great rappers build rhymes, from Kurtis Blow's simple bars to Biggie's smooth flow and Kendrick Lamar's dense, fast delivery. It uses on-screen visualizations of rhyme structure.

Mark Handley of UCL explains, with simulation visualizations, how early Starlink satellites without inter-satellite links could still give low-latency wide-area communication by hopping via ground relays. He shows it can beat fibre on many long paths.

Military History Visualized charts ship production by the United States and Japan from December 1941 to September 1945. The growing numbers show why Japan, despite a stronger starting navy, could not win a long war.

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 short Harvard Online animation, narrated by Professor Rob Lue, showing how ATP synthase works inside mitochondria. It comes from the HarvardX Cell Biology: Mitochondria course.