“Measuring the Universe” is a fascinating animation that explains some of the ingenious ways scientists measure the universe. It is part of the ongoing exhibition Measuring the Universe: from the transit of Venus to the edge of the cosmos, on display at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the UK. The exhibition ends September 2, 2012.

via Geeks are Sexy

Videographer Mark Day created this short video showing the beautiful crescent-shaped partial shadows that were created during the annular solar eclipse of May 20, 2012.

Information Systems graduate student Nobuhiro Takahashi at Tokyo’s University of Electro-Communications has been working on SHIRI, a “humanoid buttocks robot” that is primed to express “various emotions with organic movement of the artificial muscles.” In the video, this butt robot is shown reacting to being spanked, slapped, caressed and stroked. The giver feels SHIRI brace (at the 2:32 mark) and express a “happiness” response (at the 2:47 mark).

via Gizmodo Japan and Kotaku

Former math teacher turned stay-at-home dad Nathan Shields moved to Saipan with his family recently and started making creatively sculpted pancakes. He calls them Saipancakes and he’s mastered all kinds of designs including sealife, Star Wars characters, fractals, mythical beasts and lots more. His artful pancake designs have been making the rounds lately and for good reason, they’re awesome!

via Huffington Post, The Kitchn and Wired GeekDad

Paul Celentano of Etsy shop Celentano Woodworks handcrafts his maple-wood Atom Ukuleles. Each one of these beauties features the atomic symbol, are custom made-to-order by Celentano and available to purchase on Etsy.

via Boing Boing

The 94 Elements Project is a documentary film series about humanity’s relationship with different chemical elements (trailer). Ninety-four naturally occurring elements will each be the subject of a short film. Directors include experienced award winners and new filmmakers. For an example, see Oxygen: The Old Man And His Bed directed by Marc Isaacs. Project director Mike Patterson is raising funds for the project on Indiegogo.

There are 94 naturally occurring elements, from Hydrogen to Plutonium. Together they make up everything in the world. The stories of the elements are intimately connected to the stories of our own lives. Everything we use and create is made from them. Our own bodies are mostly made from just 6 of the elements. They affect our lives in countless ways, and their stories reveal our relationship with our resources and the patterns of our economies.

While aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Don Pettit recently demonstrated the curious properties of the antibubble, a droplet of liquid surrounded by a thin film of gas (essentially, the opposite of your average gas bubble). The demonstration is part of an ongoing series of physics demos by Pettit, in collaboration with Physics Central.

via Neatorama & The Huffington Post

Art. Lebedev Studio designed the Chemicus as a tea service set for “Russian chemists/patriots.” This ceramic set was inspired by chemistry kits but is decorated in the traditional blue and white Russian Gzhel pattern. At this time, it is a prototype and not available for sale. You may remember they also designed the Thermosaurus, a radiator concept that looks like a dinosaur.

via Yanko Design

The Google Earth team recently announced they are incorporating aerial imagery from an unusual source—the balloon- and kite-borne cameras of volunteer mappers from The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. The Public Laboratory is a grassroots science community that is developing DIY tools for scientific measuring, monitoring, and exploration. The DIY aerial mapping systems cost 100 to 200 dollars to assemble (plus the price of an inexpensive digital camera), and can be used by non-experts.

image of Stanford University campus by Jeffrey Warren and Stewart Long

In this scientific demonstration of simple harmonic and periodic motion, fifteen swinging pendulums of differing lengths create beautiful waves, beats, and other patterns. Here’s the science:

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync—their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

via Neatorama

video via Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations

Director Joe Sabia gave a group of kids an opportunity to narrate BBC America’s natural history series Planet Earth. There’s a lot of cute stuff here, especially their off-the-cuff comments. Also, hang out to the end to hear them try and pronounce the last name of the show’s adult narrator, Sir David Attenborough.

via Boing Boing

Hot Water Beach in New Zealand is a place where visitors can dig their own geothermal pool in the sand. There are underground volcanic reservoirs that reach the surface during low tide. In 2001, I spent a month traveling New Zealand and visited this very popular beach on our tour of the Coromandel Peninsula. While spades (shovels) are available to rent, it’s better to bring your own.

via Oddity Central

photos by Charlie Brewer, frischifresh and Rusty Blazenhoff

“Perpetual Ocean” is a beautiful animated visualization of ocean surface currents by the NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio.

via Boing Boing

The Galápagos catshark (Bythaelurus giddingsi) is a new known deepwater shark species found first in 1995 from the Galápagos Islands by John McCosker. The specimen was brought to the California Academy of Sciences where Douglas Long recognized it as a new shark species. He and Carole Baldwin, along with McCosker, first formally recorded and described this new species in the March 2012 edition of Zootaxa (pdf). The shark is named after the prolific underwater photographer, Al Giddings. California Academy of Sciences has the full story. Some of you may recall The Tentacle Sessions that Douglas Long led in June 2001.

image via California Academy of Sciences

Water droplets appear to be frozen in mid-drip in this video by mrbibio. The illusion caused by the stroboscopic effect.

via Viral Viral Videos

In the short film “Micro Empire” by Austrian filmmaker Clemens Wirth, tiny organisms are revealed through microscopic photography. The film is set to music by Radium Audio.

as an enthusiast for little things, I wanted to go deeper than the macro universe, so I found myself hanging on the eyepiece of a microscope. The real challenge was definitely the small depth of field in microscopy. It’s really fascinating how detailed this tiny world is, and unbelievable how much is going on in only one little water drop.

via Kuriositas

Science enthusiast WorldScott placed a small firecracker inside an inflated balloon and ignited it with a laser to find out what happens when a firecracker explodes inside a balloon.

via Geekologie

“Animals Inside Out” is an exhibition of animal corpses that have been perfectly preserved with plastic polymers in a process called “plastination” (video). The exhibition is by plastination inventor Dr. Gunther von Hagen. Von Hagen is best known for his Body Worlds exhibitions of plastinated human cadavers. “Animals Inside Out” is on display at the Natural History Museum in London through September 16, 2012. To see more photos of the exhibition, see this gallery by The Guardian.

via The Daily What

photos 1 and 3 by Oli Scarff/Getty Images, photo 2 via Gunther von Hagens/Institute for Plastination/NHM

video via ITN News

The premiere episode of Unchained Reaction — entitled (and themed) Heavy vs. Light — featured not only Jamie and Adam as judges, but Adrian Hightower, assistant professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd College, as well.

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters have a new six-part science and engineering reality game show series titled Unchained Reaction. The first episode, Heavy vs. Light, premieres March 18, 2012 at 10 PM EST on Discovery Channel.

Erin McCarthy of Popular Mechanics recently interviewed Savage about the new show. Here’s what he had to say about where the idea came from:

Discovery approached us with a very broad mandate: Would you guys be interested in creating a show for us based on chain reaction machines? We came back with the caveat that we don’t like competition shoes, and in general we don’t like chain reaction machines for their own sake. We’ve done them, but we tend to find them somewhat limiting. So then Jamie and I started to talk about what would solve these problems for us. What would it take for us to be interested in being on this show?

I don’t like competitions as much as I really like the idea of two different people trying to solve the same problem. And I like the idea of that problem being either incredibly specific or really broad. So instead of your typical chain reaction machine where something trivial must happen at the end of it, or it’s a little nonsensical, we knew that what we wanted was the broadest [ground rules]. The theme of the [first episode] is heavy versus light. That’s the only axiom they had to follow. We gave them some other parameters, like it’s gotta have a certain number of steps and stuff like that, except that we also point out, you can break those rules. Just break them for a really good reason

Wanting to use human interaction in their machine, Team Blecha Brothers decided to have their machine motivate the team members to do something that would trigger the next next link.

images via Discovery Channel

This short video by NOVA shows how to extract your DNA at home using common household items. The video is a promo for the upcoming PBS NOVA program “Cracking Your Genetic Code,” which airs March 28.

“Science Nation Army” is a cover of The White Stripes song “Seven Nation Army” that is composed of sounds from the Blast Lab at the Imperial College in London. The cover was created in 2011 by Imperial College students for The Student Blog.

via Best Week Ever

“Keck in Motion” by Andrew Cooper is a fascinating behind the scenes video of the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii.

via Geekosystem & Universe Today

“The Scale of the Universe 2″ is an interactive visualization that shows the relative size of different things, from quantum foam (very small) to the observable universe (very large). The visualization was created by Cary and Michael Huang. We previously wrote about the original version of the visualization back in 2010.

via Dangerous Minds

At the White House Science Fair, 8th grader Joey demonstrated his homebuilt air cannon for President Obama by launching a marshmallow across the State Dining Room. As the student pumped air into the cannon, the president joked “the Secret Service isn’t happy about this.” Then the president took a turn pumping air into the cannon.

via Gizmodo

photo via Reuters

The non-profit educational sanctuary in Tampa, Florida, Big Cat Rescue, has put together Do Big Cats Purr?, a video that answers questions about how cats of all sizes communicate. They are also behind Do Big Cats Like Catnip? and Do Big Cats Like To Chase Laser Pointers? that we have previously posted.

Also check out the video on their community of “weird, strange and rare” big small cats: