TED-Ed
TED-ED: The language of lying - Noah Zandan
We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day. And although we've spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect these lies by tracking physiological changes in their tellers, these methods have proved unreliable. Is there a more...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: If superpowers were real: Body mass - Joy Lin
What if manipulating body mass wasn't just the stuff of epic comic book stories? Is it scientifically possible to manipulate your body mass? In this series, Joy Lin tackles six superpowers and reveals just how scientifically realistic...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: What was so special about Viking ships? - Jan Bill
As the Roman Empire flourished, Scandinavians had small settlements and no central government. Yet by the 11th century, they had spread far from Scandinavia, gaining control of trade routes throughout Europe, conquering kingdoms as far...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why should you read Dante's "Divine Comedy"? | Sheila Marie Orfano
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here... Inscribed above the Gate of Hell, this prophecy sets into motion an epic journey for salvation. Written over 10 years, Dante Alighieri's three-part narrative poem "Divine Comedy" is both an...
TED-Ed
The world's biggest battery looks nothing like a battery | TED-Ed
As of 2020, the world's biggest lithium-ion battery is hooked up to the Southern California power grid and can provide enough power for about 250,000 homes. But it's actually not the biggest battery in the world: a pair of lakes are. How...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How do we know what color dinosaurs were? - Len Bloch
The microraptor was a four-winged carnivorous dinosaur with iridescent black feathers. But if our information about this dinosaur comes from fossils, how can we be certain about its color? Len Bloch shows how making sense of the evidence...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why is this painting so captivating? - James Earle and Christina Bozsik
On first glance, the painting Las Meninasc (The Maids of Honorc) might not seem terribly special, but it's actually one of the most analyzed pieces in the history of art. Why is this painting by Diego Velazquez so captivating? James...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Who is Alexander von Humboldt? - George Mehler
Have you heard of Alexander von Humboldt? Not likely. The geologist turned South American explorer was a bit of an 18th century super scientist, traveling over 24,000 miles to understand the relationship between nature and habitat....
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The great brain debate - Ted Altschuler
Throughout history, scientists have proposed conflicting ideas on how the brain carries out functions like perception, memory, and movement. Is each of these tasks carried out by a specific area of the brain? Or do multiple areas work...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The Gauntlet | Think Like A Coder, Ep 8 | Alex Rosenthal
This is episode 8 of our animated series "Think Like A Coder." This 10-episode narrative follows a girl, Ethic, and her robot companion, Hedge, as they attempt to save the world. The two embark on a quest to collect three artifacts and...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The world's slimiest animal | Noah R. Bressman and Douglas Fudge
In 2017, a truck screeched to a halt. One of its containers slid off, hit a car, and spilled its contents— thousands of kilograms of hagfish. The result of this accident was an absolute mess: the highway was coated in a thick slime that...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why the Sun could crash your internet | Fabio Pacucci
In September 1859, miners following the Colorado gold rush woke up to another sunny day. Or so they thought. To their surprise, they soon discovered it was actually 1am and the sky wasn't lit by the sun, but rather by brilliant drapes of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What causes yeast infections, and how do you get rid of them? | Liesbeth Demuyser
The vagina harbors hundreds of different kinds of microorganisms. Candida yeasts are usually present in small quantities and most of the time, these fungi are harmless. But, under certain conditions, Candida yeasts can cause infections....
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: A brief history of dumplings | Miranda Brown
As archaeologists pored over ancient tombs in western China, they discovered some surprisingly well-preserved and familiar relics. Though hardened over 1,000 years, there sat little crescent-shaped dumplings. So who invented these plump...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The Nutritionist by Andrea Gibson
An animated interpretation of Andrea Gibson's poem "The Nutritionist"
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why is Aristophanes called "The Father of Comedy"? - Mark Robinson
Aristophanes, often referred to as the Father of Comedy, wrote the world's earliest surviving comic dramas. They're stuffed full of parodies, songs, sexual jokes and surreal fantasy -- and they've shaped how comedy's been written and...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Einstein's brilliant mistake: Entangled states - Chad Orzel
When you think about Einstein and physics, E=mc^2 is probably the first thing that comes to mind. But one of his greatest contributions to the field actually came in the form of an odd philosophical footnote in a 1935 paper he co-wrote...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What is the biggest single-celled organism? - Murry Gans
The elephant is a creature of epic proportions -- and yet, it owes its enormity to more than 1,000 trillion microscopic cells. And on the epically small end of things, there are likely millions of unicellular species, yet there are very...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The exceptional life of Benjamin Banneker - Rose-Margaret Ekeng-Itua
Born in 1731 to freed slaves on a farm in Baltimore, Benjamin Banneker was obsessed with math and science. And his appetite for knowledge only grew as he taught himself astronomy, mathematics, engineering, and the study of the natural...
TED-Ed
Why didn't this 2,000 year old body decompose? | Carolyn Marshall
It may not appear very lively six feet underground, but a single teaspoon of soil contains more organisms than there are human beings on the planet. From bacteria and algae to fungi and protozoa, soils are home to one quarter of Earth's...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why should you read Shakespeare's "The Tempest"? - Iseult Gillespie
Explore William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest”, a story of shipwreck, magic and a fight for power. -- Claps of thunder and flashes of lightning illuminate a swelling sea, as a ship buckles beneath the waves. It is no ordinary storm,...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How the world's first subway system was built - Christian Wolmar
It was the dawn of 1863, and London's not-yet-opened subway system - the first of its kind in the world - had the city in an uproar. Most people thought the project, which cost more than 100 million dollars in today's money, would never...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What happened to antimatter? - Rolf Landua
Particles come in pairs, which is why there should be an equal amount of matter and antimatter in the universe. Yet, scientists have not been able to detect any in the visible universe. Where is this missing antimatter? CERN scientist...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why are there so many insects? - Murry Gans
If insects suddenly morphed into large beings and decided to wage war on us, there's no doubt that humans would lose. There are an estimated 10 quintillion individual insects on earth, outnumbering humans by more than a billion to one....