Happy New Year, Vsauce! Michael here. And in honor of 2013
let's discuss 13 things.
To begin, where to spend all that cash you picked up over the holidays?
Now, plenty of website sell cool stuff. United Nuclear sells
Aerogel, radioactive isotopes, jet engine schematic
and even marbles doped with uranium. Maths Gear sells these cool non transitive
dice I actually bought
yesterday, as does Grand Illusions. But they also carry for explosive magic
tricks,
optical illusion masks and a poster of
this image. What makes that
image so special? Well, it's an example
of the land effect. Even though it appears to contain
a bunch of different colors - oranges and yellows and greens,
the entire image is actually made out of nothing
but red. Seriously. I've linked the image down in the descriptions, so you can grab
it and investigated using
your favorite image editor. The yellows are actually
light reds or pinks. And the green is just dull grey
red. What's going on is called
color constancy. Your visual system, your eyes and brain
calculate the average illumination conditions of a scene
and then subtract those conditions, so that colors remain relatively constant.
This is why a blue object looks blue, whether you're viewing it
under the midday Sun or a dark red sunset or fluorescent light or
incandescent light.
It's a very brilliant system, but it can fool
us. Special images, like this one, appear to be illuminated with a lot of red
light,
so your brain actually subtracts the red and makes assumptions.
There are plenty of other examples of the land effect and other ways our visual
system lies to us.
But you know what else is a lie?
Raindrops. Well, at least
that depiction of raindrops. Raindrops are not shaped like
teardrops. Surface tension means that small drops are spherical,
but when they combine the air and get bigger, the pressure of the air below
them as they fall causes the bottom to
flatten, which means that raindrops are shaped less like
teardrops and more like hamburger buns.
But how many raindrops have fallen
on land ever? It's a fun question
and there are plenty of resources discussing how many raindrops fall
during a typical storm,
but throughout all of history? Let's go to mathforum.org for this one.
Doctor Ian calculated,
quite roughly but amusingly, that given the percentage of earth
usually covered in land and the amount of rain that
typically falls on earth and the volume of a raindrop,
the total number of raindrops that have fallen on land,
ever since earth began, is about 16 times
10 to the 28. So, earth
has had a lot of raindrops.
But you know what earth doesn't have a lot of? Nice big, old chunks of Moon rock.
Material from the Moon is incredibly rare.
We can only get pieces of the Moon in two ways. By
visiting it or by finding chunks of the Moon that were blown off
a long time ago and eventually fell to Earth.
Interestingly, you can buy paintings
containing traces of Moon dust made
by an astronaut. I discussed this with my friends over at emotistyle,
video link in the description. But the point is, you will not be owning
a big old Moon rock anytime soon. Interestingly,
a surprising number of the rocks we brought back from the Moon
have been stolen or just plain
lost. For instance, in 2002
interns Thad Roberts and Tiffany Fowler stole
101 grams of lunar material
from the Johnson Space Center. They celebrated by throwing the rocks onto a
bed,
and I guess the best way to explain what happened next would just be to point out
that the book based on this true story
is called "Sex on the Moon." Or, from a different angle,
fun. This was built using the Side View maker.
Type in a word or name and it will construct the word using
dots, which from another angle say something else. For instance, Vsauce
can be vacuum. If you prefer dots that represent people,
Brandon Martin-Anderson's got just what you need. The entire 2010 US Census
on a map with a dot for every single
person. The data is specific down to the size of an individual
block. It's really fun to play around with, as is
the searchable Calvin and Hobbes. I shared this on @tweetsauce a few weeks ago.
Type in a word and you can find every single Calvin and Hobbes comic strip
that used that word. Words or phrases that help you remember something are
called
mnemonics. For instance, if you wanna remember the exact
speed of light in meters per second in a vacuum, just count the number of letters
and each word of this sentence. "We
guarantee certainty, clearly referring to this light mnemonic."
Or if you're like me, your biggest struggle is spelling the word
diarrhoea. Well, don't worry. Just remember
diarrhoea is a really runny heap
of endless amounts. We've all seen illusions like this before.
Four circles with corners cut out of them. We perceive
an actual square resting on top of circles, even though no square
is there. Now interestingly, if you take this shape
and put it on top of text, the letters within the
fake square appear bigger than the rest of the letters.
This is because our brain assumes the letters are closer to us
than the rest of the text. After all, the letters are on top of a square
that's on top of circles on top of text.
Speaking of size, let's take a look at the scale
of our solar system. OMGspace.net
is a website containing images of the Sun and the planets
to scale. Not just in size, but also
distance. If you scroll long enough, you will eventually get to Mercury
and then Venus and then Earth and so on. Or, just click a planet's name
and have the site take you there right away. If that sort of thing makes you
feel
small and insignificant, rush on over and grab yourself
emergency compliment dot com.
The site will keep complimenting you until you feel better,
but if practicing patience is more your thing, check out
chickenonaraft.com. Geo sketch is a really fun way to draw.
You have this strange folding mechanism that
draws. You can individually control the rate of rotation for each
joint to see how it affects the image. But if you'd rather combine rotation
with our solar system,
check out gravity. Click and drag to place
objects of varying size in the space and watch how
they interact. So there you go
that was about 13 things.
I guess. I don't really know. But there's more.
I created a playlist of videos that you should totally see.
I host the playlist and you can start it by clicking the link at the top of this
video's description
or this annotation. I call it a lean back,
because you start the playlist and just lean back and let YouTube
do the work. So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and click
and I will see you over there.
And as always,
thanks for watching.