TED-Ed
Why don’t we get our drinking water from the ocean? | Manish Kumar
Humans have been transforming seawater into potable freshwater for millennia. Today, billions of people can’t access clean drinking water, and 87 different countries are projected to be “water-scarce” by 2050. So, how can we use seawater...
TED-Ed
The dark history of arsenic | Neil Bradbury
No substance has been as constant an ally to insidious scheming as arsenic, the so-called “king of poisons.” In its chemically pure form, it isn’t much of a threat because our bodies don’t absorb it well; it’s when arsenic combines with...
TED-Ed
The history of the world according to rats | Max G. Levy
Today, rats are often regarded as the most successful invasive species in the world. The most common species of rat scurried onto the scene roughly 1 to 3 million years ago in Asia. There, they craftily survived Earth’s most recent ice...
TED-Ed
What actually causes high cholesterol? | Hei Man Chan
In 1968, the American Heart Association made an announcement that would influence people’s diets for decades: they recommended that people avoid eating more than three eggs a week. Their reasoning was that the cholesterol packed into egg...
TED-Ed
How are microchips made? | George Zaidan and Sajan Saini
Globally, we produce more than a trillion computer chips every year. Which means about 20 trillion transistors are built every second— and this process is done in fewer than 500 fabrication plants. How do we build so many tiny,...
TED-Ed
This is the most common way to get head lice | Nazzy Pakpour
For as long as humans have had lice, we’ve fought hard to get rid of them. Nit combs, the fine-tooth brushes used to remove lice and their sticky eggs, have been found among the ancient remains of cultures across the globe. Today it’s...
TED-Ed
Yes, tiny mites live on your face — but is that a bad thing? | M. Alejandra Perotti
Two species of Demodex mites specifically inhabit human follicles. And not just some people’s— nearly everyone is thought to host mites. One person’s face might harbor hundreds or even thousands of individual mites. On any given day,...
TED-Ed
The century-old technology that could change the world | Rachel Yang
Industrial manufacturers spend a huge amount of energy generating heat to make everyday materials and objects, like cement, steel, and paper. And since most companies use fossil fuels to reach these high temperatures, industrial heat...
TED-Ed
What would happen if the Amazon Rainforest disappeared? | Anna Rothschild
As of 2022, humans have deforested 17% of the Amazon, and scientists warn that we may be approaching a tipping point. It’s like removing bricks from a house: take a few and the house remains standing; remove too many and the whole thing...
TED-Ed
Rocks could save the world (Yes, rocks) | Elise Cutts
Mount Teide is one of the world’s largest active volcanoes, and there may be a way to use the basalt rock inside it to save humanity. Obviously, destroying an ancient volcano would cause catastrophic and unpredictable ecological fallout....
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why animals help each other | Ashley Ward
Charles Darwin introduced the notion of “survival of the fittest,” where the fittest animals are those who can survive long enough to produce healthy offspring. The fittest animal can also be the most stealthy, resourceful, or even the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How scientists are creating real-life invisibility cloaks | Max G. Levy
A spy presses a button on their suit and blinks out of sight. A wizard wraps himself in a cloak and disappears. A star pilot flicks a switch, and their ship vanishes into space. Invisibility is one of the most tantalizing powers in...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: This mushroom will kill you before you know what’s happening | Michael Beug
Humans have known about the toxicity of death cap mushrooms for millennia. Yet they continue to pose a significant threat to unsuspecting foragers and mushroom hunters throughout the world. Today, death caps are responsible for more than...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Are there any places on Earth with no bugs? | Charles Wallace
Insects are the world’s most numerous and diverse animals. Even where you’d least expect them in some of Earth’s most extreme environments, there they are. From a scalding volcano, parched desert, to a frigid glacier, insects are living...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What are those colors you see when you rub your eyes? | Paul CJ Taylor
In the 1600s, Isaac Newton conducted a series of experiments to better understand the lights and colors that sometimes appear when your eyes are closed. If you’ve ever sat around an evening campfire or unintentionally glanced at the Sun,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The world’s longest-burning fires | Emma Bryce
In 1997, a fire began in Indonesia that would rage for almost a year. Despite being one of the largest fires in recorded history, for months at a time it burned without a flame. This might sound like a uniquely freaky fire, but it’s...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do heat waves affect your body? | Carolyn Beans
In many parts of the world heat waves are happening more often with greater intensity and for longer durations. By 2050, Earth’s mid-latitudes could be experiencing extreme heat between 90 and 180 days a year, with tropical regions...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The tech that seems to break the laws of physics | Anna Rothschild
Typically, with any piece of technology, you pump one unit of energy in and you get about one out. That’s just the first law of thermodynamics: energy has to be conserved. But there’s a piece of technology called a heat pump, where for...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Can you solve the basketball robot riddle? | Dan Katz
You’ve spent months creating a basketball-playing robot, the Dunk-O-Matic, and you’re excited to demonstrate its capabilities. Until you read an advertisement: “See the Dunk-O-Matic face human players and automatically adjust its skill...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Scientists are obsessed with this lake | Nicola Storelli and Daniele Zanzi
In the millions of years since oxygen began saturating Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, most organisms have evolved to rely on this gas. However, there are some places where oxygen-averse microorganisms like those from Earth’s earliest...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: If you're an adult mayfly you'll probably die before the end of this video | Luke M. Jacobus
For most of the world’s 4,000 mayfly species, adulthood lasts roughly one day. And for some species, it’s only a matter of minutes. This isn’t because they’re all eaten up by predators. Rather, this abridged adulthood is a natural part...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do gas masks actually work? | George Zaidan
You might think of gas masks as clunky military-looking devices. But in the near future, we may need to rely on these filters as part of our everyday lives. In addition to emerging diseases, wildfire frequency has more than tripled, and...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Does math have a major flaw? | Jacqueline Doan and Alex Kazachek
A mathematician with a knife and ball begins slicing and distributing the ball into an infinite number of boxes. She then recombines the parts into five precise sections. Moving and rotating these sections around, she recombines them to...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Could we build a miniature sun on Earth? | George Zaidan
Stars have cores hot and dense enough to force atomic nuclei together, forming larger, heavier nuclei in a process known as fusion. In this process, the mass of the end products is slightly less than the mass of the initial atoms. But...