hey recording yeah you did it
this is my friend diana you probably
know her from physics girl
how's it going i needed to show you
something because i'm not a physicist
i don't know physics like you do okay
that's what i'm here for
i'm about to show her one of the fastest
animals in nature
you might be picturing something like
this or this
or even this but you'd be wrong the
actual
fastest animals on earth can accelerate
from zero to
200 miles per hour 5 000 times faster
than the blink of an
eye they can pull enough g's to turn
your body into
jello and they could hang out on your
fingertips
oh my god what is it even doing
oh my gosh you silly bug these tiny
animals can store and release energy in
some
mind-blowing ways even better than some
of our most advanced
inventions and today using some super
slow-motion
macro video and a little physics we're
going to answer
this question how fast are the fastest
animals and how do they do it
hey smart people joe here so humans have
reached some pretty impressive speeds
of course there are different ways to go
fast one option is you can speed up very
slowly for a long time
like nasa's dawn spacecraft its ion
thrusters put out less force than it
takes to push a single key on a keyboard
but it accelerated to over 11 kilometers
per second
by firing that tiny engine for nearly
six years
but the real challenge is getting going
fast quickly
and that's where teeny tiny bugs leave
us humans in the dust
along with pretty much every other large
animal on earth
this awesome footage was captured by
adrian smith
a biologist who developed a bit of an
obsession with studying nature's tiny
speed freaks
and thanks to his youtube channel so
have i
but before we go any farther let's get
back to our friend diana so she can
explain the unique
physics problem that these tiny little
insects have solved
so we're talking about little bugs
jumping fast
velocity is just like how fast you're
going in what direction
acceleration is changing your speed or
the direction that you're going
and that's where you got to put in
effort i have to put in some energy
in order to change my velocity now
imagine you wanted to change the speed
really fast the thing is things just
want to stay
going the way they're going in the same
speed or they want to stay
not moving if they're not moving things
resist changes in motion
they have inertia as you may
the last piece of analyzing a change in
speed is to think about
mass and to think about the fact that if
i want to push something up to speed
like
pushing a real big human up to a certain
speed takes a lot of effort but pushing
a
small little human up to speed doesn't
take nearly as much effort
pushing a tiny a tiny little being up to
speed
i would just have to flick it so you
want to flick tiny tiny beings
for science don't flick tiny tiny beings
[Music]
so there's an equation that describes
the relationship diana's talking about
the equation for kinetic energy energy
is on the left
and on the right side we have an m in
there for mass which means that if we
have a bigger mass
then the energy we have to put in to
move increases at the same rate
it's a linear relationship and that
means if we have a smaller mass
then it takes less energy to move and
having a tiny tiny mass
is what lets those bugs that we saw
accelerate faster than
just about any other animals on earth
but studying how they do that
isn't easy because well first you've got
to catch them
or adrienne does anyway so recently i
was surprised when a bunch of really
cool bugs showed up right outside my
door
these are springtails on the lid of my
trash can
springtails are tiny soil arthropods
that launch themselves into the air to
avoid predators
or in this case my finger springtail
jumping hasn't been studied much so i
collected those and brought them back
here to the lab
to film them with this high-speed camera
filming them is a challenge
these springtails are tiny so the best
way to handle them is to push them
around with a tiny paintbrush
then the challenge is to follow them
around with the camera and hope they
jump while you've got them both in frame
and in focus
when i did manage to catch them on film
what i saw was astounding
these springtails go really fast really
quickly
clocking an upwards acceleration of 700
meters per second squared
in a fraction of a second which is
almost 20 times the acceleration of a
top fuel dragster
and about hundred times quicker than an
accelerating cheetah
fastest animal on earth i don't think so
kitty
to do what these bugs do even with their
tiny mass
they have to store and release a ton of
energy all at once
enough energy to send a springtail
spinning at 374 flips per second
that's almost 40 times faster than a
spinning helicopter rotor
but when scientists crunched the numbers
they uncovered a mystery
because muscles alone are incapable of
producing that much energy in such a
short amount of time
what they're doing seems beyond the
physical limitations of biology itself
muscle tissue can only contract so fast
which means it can only provide a finite
amount of energy to
accelerate that's why humans can't throw
a thousand mile per hour fastball
these bugs must be releasing that energy
using
something other than muscle power alone
the answer
well it's right in the name they use
springs
what is a spring so a spring is this
mechanical device that stores some
energy to be released
later usually very quickly because the
idea of springs is that you usually
put in energy over a longer amount of
time like you incrementally
compress it or stretch it and then it
snaps back
really fast the wound tight coil of wire
get down into the microscopic level and
you've got bonds between
all of these atoms and molecules and
you're stretching those apart
so when you release the spring those
molecules and atoms all snap back into
place
and you get this release of energy and
typically you push or you pull something
really
fast so actually a spring is often made
of little
mini springs like all the atoms and
molecules act like springs themselves
so the main idea with a spring is you
can slowly store energy using a small
amount of force over a longer time
and then release that energy very
quickly to do a lot of work
only instead of atoms in a metal being
stretched like in a traditional spring
these insects and other super fast
creatures with exoskeletons like the
mantis shrimp
well they store and release energy using
their exoskeletons
and those exoskeletons are made of
flexible and stiff materials mixed
together
that's called a composite material and
engineers use them
all the time a springtail's launching
appendage
is part of its exoskeleton and it stores
energy just like the spring on a mouse
trap
it stays locked and loaded until
what's crazy is springtails aren't even
close to the bug acceleration record
these are frog hoppers little insects
that you might find sucking juices out
of plants
and in addition to looking very weird
and cool they're among the fastest
jumping insects
ever recorded the fastest frog hoppers
can accelerate at 5400 meters per second
squared
that's just under g's frog hoppers and
their cousins the plant hoppers and leaf
hoppers
they do this using an incredibly cool
simple machine
that is built into their bodies they
draw up their hind jumping legs
they lock them in place with an actual
latch that sticks out of their belly
they flex a big muscle to bend their
exoskeleton
and then open that latch to release the
energy all at once
it's almost the same way that a crossbow
or a catapult works
only here they're using their flexible
but strong exoskeleton as the spring
now i'm not an engineer but the fact
that they have simple machines
latches and levers and springs built
into their bodies
that blows me away but they aren't the
fastest
either these are trap jaw ants
and it's not their whole bodies that
move fast they can snap their jaws
shut in less than a thousandth of a
second which
is an acceleration of around a hundred
thousand g's
that's more than the acceleration of a
bullet leaving a gun
and they do it by using their entire
head as a spring
so even though these ants are
accelerating their jaws really quickly
the force they're generated on impact is
tiny relative to us
that's because their jaws don't have
that much mass basically when this ant
snaps against the tip of my finger
i can barely feel it but organisms like
these ants have evolved to meet
challenges on their own physical scale
the jaws of this ant have evolved ultra
fast acceleration
to catch prey and the forces they
generate might not seem like much to us
but to the ant it's enough for them to
do incredible things like this one
using this jaw snap to escape from the
pit of an antlion
by timing those snaps perfectly trap jaw
ants can catapult themselves more than
40 centimeters away
which is like me flinging myself back by
like a hundred feet
that ant was the animal acceleration
record holder
until 2018 when it was dethroned by the
snap jaw or dracula ant
which snaps its jaws in 23 microseconds
that's millionths of a second 20 times
faster than the trap jaw ant
those mandibles go from zero to 200
miles per hour in point
zero zero zero zero one five seconds
and it's hard to believe but that snap
jaw was just knocked out of first place
by a termite that can snap its jaw three
times faster
if you're thinking this video looks a
little unimpressive that's because when
you're filming at a ridiculous 460
000 frames per second 128 by 128 pixels
is just the best modern technology can
offer what makes these tiny animals so
cool
is that developed simple machines
latches and springs
using nothing more than the power of
evolution and these
latches and springs are the key to their
record-setting speeds
if you've ever played paper football you
know it's a lot easier to launch by
flicking versus just swinging your
finger around
that's because you're using your fingers
like a spring and latch
storing energy in your tendons and
muscles and then
releasing it quickly much faster than
your muscles can move your finger alone
and when you snap well you're doing what
snap jaw ants do when they push and
slide their jaws past one another
but you do all of these things way
slower than the bugs do
because you're a whole lot bigger and
more massive thanks to the laws of
physics
humans can't handle anywhere close to
these accelerations
what is our limit well in 1954 to test
what pilots could endure after ejecting
at high speeds
air force physician john stapp shot to
623 miles per hour in five
seconds on a rocket sled and slammed to
a stop just one
second later he experienced a
record-breaking 46.2 g's and for just an
instant
his 168-pound body weighed over 7
700 pounds but remember that a frog
hopper can accelerate at 550 g's
and the mandibles of the snapjaw ants
pull over a hundred thousand g's
that's insane they're able to do that
because they're small
we're both subject to the same laws of
physics us large mammals and those tiny
little bugs
but in a way those laws apply to us very
differently
how we move through water how hard or
soft that we fall
and how fast our machines can carry us
you know it's a good reminder that
nature has figured out how to do things
that we can still only dream of stay
curious
hey guys real quick before you go on to
show you one more pair of super cool
super fast insect springs
that belong to my new friend hopper here
who i found
out in my yard so hopper and i we we
need your help
every year pbs digital studios and it's
okay to be smart we want to hear from
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vote on potential new shows which is
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survey might be over but we'll love it
if you just take a few minutes check out
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is your favorite show
isn't that right hopper yes that's right
we love
it's okay to be smart i want to say a
huge thank you to adrian smith
you have got to check out his channel
antlab there is a link
up there i'll put it at the end down in
the description amazing footage of these
bugs and more
it'll just blow your mind and i also
want to say a huge thank you to my
friend diana from physicsgirl
she just released a new series on her
channel that is like a
physics course an intro to physics
course taught by an actual physicist
that you love
on youtube check it out i've already
learned a lot and i'm sure that you will
too
your hair swoop looks excellent in this
uh
are my legs showing okay because where
i'm sitting it doesn't look like i'm
wearing pants