veritasium

NEW VIDEO: Non-invasive brain surgery!

When scientists talk about turning on and off specific regions of the brain without doing any surgery it sounds like science fiction (and kinda scary). But the reality is it's an incredible new technology that promise to improve the lives of many many people who suffer from neurological disorders. It's research that takes place ...

NEW VIDEO: Five Firsts for Mars InSight

InSight has landed successfully! Now it can get down to the business of sciencing.

If you want to find out about the five firsts the mission aims to accomplish, check out the video. 

NEW VIDEO! The kg is finally being redefined!

I feel like I've been waiting for this moment for six years or so. As of tomorrow (assuming a vote goes to plan) the kg will no longer be the mass of a metal cylinder.

Along with the kg, the kelvin, mole, and ampere will all get tweaks to tie them to fundamental constants.

NEW VIDEO [Unpaid Post] Hacking garage doors with toys

In this video, I worked with my friend Samy Kamkar to understand how garage doors open and how a simple messaging toy could be used to create the same signal and open almost any garage door in seconds. I learned a lot through making this video about common types of codes and security features and also how they can be tricked. I ...

NEW VIDEO! How Does UV Light Cause Cancer and Photoaging?

Ever since I was working on radioactivity I wondered how non-ionizing radiation like UV light could cause cancer and damage to our cells. What I found out is that even though UV is not technically ionizing, it does have effects similar to ionizing radiation.

NEW VIDEO: Is Food Becoming Less Nutritious?

This video is a companion piece to the Vitamania documentary, looking into the declines observed in nutrients in plant foods and what might be causing it. From the comments, it looks like a controversial topic - many good points are raised. I had to focus, in this 7-minute video on only a few things so there is definitely a lot ...

Vitamania - My new documentary

As you may be aware, I've recently launched a feature-length (90 min) documentary all about the sense and nonsense of vitamins. Not only was I the presenter, I was also an executive producer (for the first time ever on a big production!)

The purpose of this post is to give you access to the deluxe edition of the film for free....

NEW VIDEO: The World in UV

Sorry for the delay in posting here, but I am recovering from jet lag having braved the 14 hour flight to Sydney with two kids who are two and under.

This video has been in the works for over a year. I got the impetus to finish it when Physics Girl casually mentioned she had shot some footage with a UV camera. So I crammed up ...

NEW VIDEO: The Spinning Sphere of Molten Sodium

This experiment in Washington DC aims to recreate the conditions in Earth's outer core (to a degree) and attempt to create a self-sustaining magnetic field in the lab.

I also spoke to another scientist about Earth's magnetic fields and have his explanation in a 2veritasium video if you can't get enough of Earth's magnetic fiel...

This one is for you.

Almost certainly the most personal video I will ever make. I thought about calling it "Video My Life" after the "Draw My Life" craze some years back but I wasn't sure anyone would get it.

Anyway, there are not enough ways to say thank you for all your support so this video is my best attempt to do just that. I hope you enjoy a...

NEW VIDEO: How Neutrons Changed Everything

Hello! So I have been quiet of late when it comes to videos because a lot of other things have been going on... This is why I use patreon on a per video basis, rather than per month so you don't have to support when I don't make videos.

This is a video I've been thinking about making for years, ever since I made the Uranium do...

New Video: The Particle That Breaks Time Symmetry

Most people point to the second law of thermodynamics as the only law of physics that doesn't work the same way forwards and backwards in time. But in this video I explore how a single particle can break time reversal symmetry. I worked on the script and animations for this video for months with my friend Jorge Cham, the creator...

NEW VIDEO: Amazing Molecular Machines

Way back in 2010, before Veritasium even existed, I attended my first TEDx event in Sydney. There I saw a great talk by a super talented animator, Drew Berry. He had animated the inner workings of our cells and I couldn't believe what I was seeing was real. Years later I finally got the chance to interview him about his work and...

New Video: Neutron Star Merger!

The big science news of the day is the detection of a neutron star merger 130 million light years away using gravitational waves and all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is one of the things I (and a lot of other people) have been waiting for LIGO to detect and announce.

I haven't talked to Prof. Rana Adhikari yet b...

NEW VIDEO: Schlieren imaging in color!

A few months back I asked for your suggestions of what to put in front of my Schlieren setup. I have now tried a few, even lighting a ping-pong ball on fire. I adjusted the setup so it is now a color schlieren (although in a budget sort of way because I used cellophane). I am still keen to image the Leidenfrost effect in Schlier...

NEW VIDEO! Total eclipse of the sun

This video would not have been possible without you. Literally.

It involved buying solar filters, sky-trackers, a return flight between Boston (where I'm currently shooting a documentary) and Portland, rental car, exorbitant Air BnB, food, batteries etc. Without your support there is no way I could do this.

It was a once...

The new kg is finally here

Scientists have just published their best numbers for Planck's constant and Avogadro's number. The requirement to redefine the kilogram was three measurements with under 50 parts per billion uncertainty and one measurement under 20 parts per billion uncertainty. What has been published is in fact three measurements under 20ppb w...

My thoughts on Youtube's quality v. quantity

This is a post on the second channel about my perception of how the YouTube algorithm is changing. It seems to me that it is now prioritizing more frequent, rather than better quality content...

New video: hydrodynamic levitation

I'm currently filming in London for Netflix but I found some time to edit this video, which I'm pretty excited about because it includes some beautiful slow-mo and a very cool fluid dynamics effect. I hope you enjoy it!

NEW VIDEO! Seeing the Invisible

Sorry for the clickbaity title but it's not really bait when the footage is this good. These are some of the most beautiful images I have ever shot of bubbles, matches, lighters, helium... with Schlieren imaging you can see what's invisible to the naked eye.

And this video wouldn't have been possible without you because that m...

New Video! Can you start a fire with a sandwich bag?

I teamed up with Grant Thompson who makes an amazing DIY hack channel called the King of Random to see if we could start a fire with a spheroid of water...

New Gravitational Wave Discovery!

I got an early heads up on this one. I went out to interview the scientists yesterday at Caltech to get the scoop on results they just released this morning!

NEW VIDEO! World's Heaviest Weight

Sure there may be larger things out there but this is the heaviest calibrated weight on Earth, creating a force ten times greater than the most powerful jet engine and a significant fraction of Saturn V rocket thrust.

When I went to National Institute of Standards and Technology I was expecting to meet a lot of type A personal...

NEW VIDEO [Unpaid Post] The Search for Life on Mars

I went to the Jet Propulsion Lab to learn about the Mars 2020 mission to search for evidence of past life on the Red Planet. The first 3:30 are from my field segment for the show Bill Nye Saves the World on Netflix...

NEW VIDEO! Is the US on the metric system?

A couple weeks ago in Washington DC I got to visit THE American kilogram - that is the object on which all measurements of weight have been based for the last 130 years. And that includes measurements made in pounds.

Did you know the Utah constitution included a requirement to teach the metric system in all schools? That requi...

NEW VIDEO! Filmed in a ZERO-G plane!

I've been wanting to share this video with you ever since I got off the plane. Being weightless was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had. And I managed to do some experiments with fire and a slinky (not at the same time). Thank you for making trips like this possible!

NEW VIDEO! [Unpaid Post] Are you a sun sneezer?

I have the photic sneeze reflex, which means I sneeze in bright light. Roughly one in four people are like me. In this video I try to figure out what makes it happen and whether it could be evolutionarily beneficial.

NEW VIDEO! [Unpaid Post] Solutions to 4 Revolutionary Riddles

This week I'm posting the solutions to the riddles from last week. Generally these questions were well answered. The bike question was the trickiest. Did you get all 4 correct?

Oh, and there's no charge for this video since it is just part II of the original riddle video.

NEW VIDEO! 4 Rotation-related riddles

This video includes a number of puzzles that have been proposed to me over the years including number 4 (Neil deGrasse Tyson) and number 3 (Simon Pampena). Check it out and let me know how many you get right!

NEW VIDEO! The Bayesian Trap

I didn't say it explicitly in the video, but in my view the Bayesian trap is interpreting events that happen repeatedly as events that happen inevitably. They may be inevitable OR they may simply be the outcome of a series of steps, which likely depend on our behaviour. Yet our expectation of a certain outcome often leads us to ...