Peeps owe their color, gelatinousness, and very existence to science. So, it only makes sense that they pay it back, by lending themselves to a scientific experiment.
Finding The Speed of Light with Peeps, by NPR’s Skunk Bear, is a very fun way to come up with how fast light travels. It’s actually quite simple, and a fun little project that you can do with the kids… if they don’t eat all the Peeps first. Science!!
[link, via Mental Floss]
If you’ve been wanting to create an awesome metal sculpture, and you have a watermelon and some molten aluminum laying around… here’s a fun video for you.
The Watermelon Metal Sculpture was created, unintentionally, by the Backyard Scientist. By pouring liquid metal into a watermelon, he was expecting to create an exploding watermelon video. The result instead, was a pretty cool piece of metal art.
Why did this happen? Don’t ask me… I’m no backyard scientist. Watch this video.
[link, via Laughing Squid]
The science of booze can be a confusing one. The alcohol to mixer ratio must be precise, or it could easily ruin your party.
The Erlenmeyer Vacuum Flask Shaker Set is here to help with your booze experiments. The beautifully-designed shaker and shot glasses are actually made from scientifically-tempered glass, so it’s the real deal. Just try not to blow the place up.
Check it out here.
[link, via Incredible Things]
You’ve probably used food coloring to make your icings more festive. But did you know that, besides their amazing coloring abilities, the liquids actually exhibit behavior?
Researchers at Stanford have been studying the science behind food coloring for years. What they’ve found is that the liquids tend to behave a certain way, e.g. chasing, dancing, or avoidance, depending on their color. This is made possible by something called artificial chemotaxis, which actually mimics the behavior of living cells.
Let’s hear from much smarter people to help explain this… Tom Abate of Stanford…
The critical fact was that food coloring is a two-component fluid. In such fluids, two different chemical compounds coexist while retaining separate molecular identities. The droplets in this experiment consisted of two molecular compounds found naturally in food coloring: water and propylene glycol. The researchers discovered how the dynamic interactions of these two molecular components enabled inanimate droplets to mimic some of the behaviors of living cells.
Manu Prakash…
The physical properties of these fluids give rise to this immense complexity of behavior. For example, chasing and sensing each other, and very much what we call artificial chemotaxis. Chemotaxis is the idea in biology that one single cell can sense where its enemy is, and it brings up all its machinery, and it chases that enemy to try to eat it.
No mention if they made colorful sciency cupcakes afterwards. Please watch this…
If you were ever hooked on the Kool-Aid, as most kids of the past thirty-years have been, then you’ve often wondered if Kool-Aid Man could actually break through a brick wall.
Now, thanks to VSauce3 and science, you needn’t wonder any more. The answer as to whether an anthropomorphic pitcher of sugar water could penetrate a brick wall is… perhaps.
I don’t know, science is hard. Please watch this…
[link, via The Awesomer]
