RF Woodwelder - Scott & Sargeant Woodworking Machinery

It's not exactly Harpo Marx's finest performance, but here we get a wordless demonstration of a wood 'welding' machine that sends radio frequencies into a wood/glue bond setting the glue in seconds rather than hours.

How Ductile Iron Pipes Made

I promise that the title is as I've typed it above. The lack of a helping verb or a contraction bothers me, but that's how the video is titled.

Here we follow the production of ductile iron pipes from the sourcing (primarily recycled iron/steel), smelting, mixing, casting, and finishing the pipe. The spinning mold is particularly fascinating.

NASA: Blacker Than Black

This video gives us a look at how NASA uses carbon nanotubes to produce a surface that reflects an absolute minimum of lightwaves for their optical instruments in space. The video looks at the structure of the nanotubes as well as some of the durability tests that they have conducted to make the nantube coatings more durable.

What is graphene

Graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon - along with diamond and buckminsterfullerenes (buckyballs). Graphite exists as a series of hexagonal-based carbon layers, a single layer of which is known as graphene, the exploration of which lead to the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In this video the structure and electrical properties of graphene are explained in very simple, udnerstandable language.

The science behind roller coasters: Top Thrill Dragster

The Top Thrill Dragster in Sundusky, Ohio's Cedar Point is a marvel of engineering - and was especially so when it was introduced in 2003. The force and materials required to accelerate the train at the speeds needed to peak the tower required some pretty impressive materials. That aspect shows up at about 3:10 into the above video.

Silk - If spiders and worms can do it, why can't we?

Biomimetics is a fascinating field in which scientists take inspiration from the natural world to improve out technologies. Here a video from the National Science Foundation looks at one of the major struggles that scientists are trying to overcome in making artificial spider silk - particularly at the difficulty in storing liquid spider silk until it is solidified after it comes through the spinnerets.

Brainiac Alkali Metals

The BBC show Brainiac produced some outstandingly entertaining and sensational experiments involving vaguely science topics. They tended toward explosions and chucklesome comments along the way.

Sadly, however, at least some of their experiments - including the one above - were exaggerated with conventional explosives to make things a little more exciting than they would be in real life. You can check out more details and the stories reporting their fraudulent  behavior over on my other blog. I still show this video in class, however, because I enjoy reminding students that just because they see it on tv or on YouTube doesn't necessarily make the explanation right or real.

I also follow the video up with this one which is - as far as I can tell - real.



It is, however, a little less spectacular.