Have science, will travel
Home to the finest science shows this side of the Big Bang performed by the two best science guys in this (or any other) universe. Have science, will travel.
Back from hiatus! "Hiatus" is Latin for "Being busy and lazy," right? Cause that's where Aaron and I have been. I mean, I have work, and shows, and I'm making 4 different costumes for Gen Con and trying to play I Am Setsuna...Lots of stuff to do.
Ahem. Anyway.
I done made a video! It's about evolution! I hope you like it! Click through to watch it!
Read MoreI was prepping for a birthday show over the weekend (remember, in addition to the awesome giant two-man shows we'll do on any stage you want, we also do smaller shows for our local markets in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest) and I decided to get some of it on video. What you're about to see is a hydrogen balloon test, almost from front to back.
Remember, folks, don't try this at home! I am a trained professional with years of experience doing this kind of stuff. Also, aren't I handsome in my Vault 111 hoodie?
Anyway, click through to see something explode!
Read MoreAaron's back with another episode of Constant Science! Today he explains just how and why flames can come in different colors and he uses an old friend of ours: the Fire Tornado.
With his help you will be forever safe from The Goblin King. Click through to watch!
Read MoreIt seems like everywhere we look these days we see robots. Robots have infested pop culture since the early days of cinema with Gort and Tobor. Robots have, for decades, made the manufacturing industry increasingly efficient. We have robots exploring Mars, robots that fight each other, really big robots that fight each other, and robots that vacuum floors while cats ride them wearing silly costumes.
Robots are everywhere, yo.
Read MoreI get asked a lot of questions. “What does Don smell like? Did you mean to set that on fire? Why are the townsfolk outside with pitchforks and torches AGAIN?” For legal and moral reasons I can’t always answer those questions, but sometimes the fates are kind and I am happy to share my wisdom with Explosions Inc.’s loyal fans. This week I’ll open up the mailbag and serve up some hot steamy knowledge in our first installment of:
with Aaron
Read MoreLast week, researchers from Caltech announced they had found evidence suggesting an as-yet undiscovered ninth planet may be lurking in the hinterlands of our solar system. We at Explosions Inc. have taken it upon ourselves to answer some of the most common questions that have arisen in the wake of this announcement. You can add your voice to the chorus of confusion below in the comments.
Read MoreThere are lots of members of class Aves out there. Birds range in size from the tiniest of hummingbirds to those big, mean, dumb ostriches. They come in all of the colors of the rainbow, sometimes at the same time. They can be as dumb as an emu or as smart as an African Gray. Their songs run the gamut from simple tweets and chirps to complex, multi-part songs to the near-perfect mimicry of the lyrebird.
Side note: I've always wanted to sneak up on a male lyrebird during mating season and play some Metallica just to see what it would sound like coming back out of the bird. Anyway.
Birds are fascinating, but, when I think of them, I keep coming back, time and again, to one singular bird mystery, one unique feathered conundrum that nobody else ever seems to ask, much less answer.
Why does Big Bird have hands?
Read MoreAaron is back! This week on Constant Science, Aaron demonstrates one of the more creative ways to break a bottle: with the powerful physics of cavitation.
Read MoreWoo Hoo! Some of you may have seen it on our Instagram, our Twitter, or our Facebook page, but for anyone who missed it, some friends helped me build a pair of beds of nails over the weekend for an upcoming physics show. Let me tell you: that is some tedious work. I need to make friends with someone with a drill press.
To celebrate this momentous achievement (and the fact that I'm super busy this week) I've decided to share our Bed of Nails episode of Constant Science again, one of our very first videos. If you're wondering why a bed of nails is a useful tool for the popularization of science, look no further. The video is a segment from a show, but I give a brief intro at the top. Enjoy!
Read MoreLeprosy has been in the news a lot lately, like this CNN article titled "Armadillos cause spike in leprosy cases in Florida" (of course it's Florida). Most people have heard of leprosy. For one thing, it comes up in both the Old and New Testaments all the time. It's been with humanity for millennia and most cultures have some sort of relationship with the disease. But what is Leprosy, really? And what's going on in Florida? And what to armadillos have to do with anything? In this week's Constant Science I answer those questions and more. As we'll discover, the news media--once again--isn't giving you the whole story when it comes to an outbreak of a disease. Click on through for the video!
Read MoreThis new website of ours is pretty sweet, but it took a while to get it all put together. During that time, Aaron and I missed a bunch of important science stories, stuff we might have talked about on Constant Science. Well, this week I aim to rectify that by talking briefly about a handful of scientific goings-on that we didn't have a chance to cover when it actually happened. Astronomy, paleontology, sociology, entymology...It's all there, folks, just click down below for the video!
Read MoreThis week I once again take to the internet to talk science. Specifically, I talk about the science of cuteness with the help of a handful of cute little animals! Check it out below!
Read MoreIsaac Newton is, quite justifiably, one of the most famous scientists in history. He was a scientist before scientists were even scientists, back when they were called “natural philosophers” and you pretty much had to be a rich white male to even think about joining their ranks. Back before regular experimental protocols had been developed. The Enlightenment was a turbulent time for our understanding of the universe, and Newton was one of the people sitting right in the center of it.
And Isaac Newton was really kind of weird.
But let’s start with the science.
Read MoreThe final episode of my epic Chemical Reaction Trilogy! Perhaps it's not quite Peter Jacksonesque in scope (maybe more Terry Gilliamesque) but it's a good primer. This time I discuss where the energy that is released in a chemical reaction ends up and this video is in no way yet another excuse for me to set myself on fire. Nope, not at all. Not one little bit. Nuh-uh...Really.
Read MoreI did not set out to make a post with a rhyming title but it looks like I ended up there anyway. We do a lot of media here at Explosions, Inc., but it's mostly of the video variety. Today I've put together some pictures packed full of sweet, sweet science tidbits that are perfect for posting to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Imgur, what have you. They're all here in this post and I'll be tossing them out one at a time on our own Twitter and Instagram feeds over the course of the next week or two. If you don't follow us on any social media, what the heck are you waiting for?
Is this a common thing to do these days? Yes. Are we sell-outs for hopping on the train? Maybe, but that train is going places, baby! Share the crap out of these, if you would. Aaron and I really tried to make these serious and seriously interesting instead of fluff pieces and we think people will dig them. We want to see these all over social media! Click through for the pictures!
Read MoreHappy Monday, fans of science! As promised in last week's Dive Science video, I am returning to my possibly futile quest to dedicate one minute to every single element in the periodic table. This week: carbon through neon.
Read MoreHey, hey, hey! I'm back from my travels (you know, the travels that led Aaron to write about my super-cool doppelganger Ron Diefler) with a video that combines some sweet underwater footage my wife and I got while scuba diving in the Caribbean with a whole bunch of science. I talk about water pressure, dive medicine, optics, and, of course, marine biology. Click through to check it out!
Read MoreWe got a new camera! An honest-to-goodness, shooting stuff, all the bells and whistles, type camera......And I'm completely terrified of it. Like a suspicious peasant who won't go near the creepy old castle without muttering and making cryptic signs to ward off the evil eye. But I put on my big boy pants, burned some sage to discourage the negative humors, sacrificed a fatted calf to any deities who may be around (okay, so it was a slim jim) and I made a brief video to check it out. And it worked! Kinda.
Read MoreI was reading through science news, like you do, when I came across this article about some chemists at UC Irvine who have developed a way to un-boil hard-boiled eggs. The process wasn't developed specifically to turn back the clock on boiled eggs, though, but to "reset" proteins that have been tangled and misfolded through some sort of chemical process so they can be recycled or reused. Medicine, biotech, and food production rely on the steady production of proteins but sometimes the manufacturing goes awry. Currently the only way to reuse the misfolded proteins requires an expensive and time-consuming process. This new one cuts the time and the cost to a small fraction of what it used to be.
And it doesn't really unboil the whole egg, either. It just resets one of the proteins in the egg what to what it was before the heat screwed it all up and solidified the albumen. The protein is lysozyme, which makes up only a few percent of the albumen. The egg isn't completely reset; heck, the egg white isn't even mostly reset, but it's still a really cool proof of concept.
This got me thinking about two things: first, if we're now one step closer to reversing the Maillard reaction and fixing overcooked steaks (probably not) and second, entropy.
Read MoreA few weeks back Don wrote an article on the spectrum of scientific inquiry where he talked about the loss of respect some of the "softer" sciences suffer due to the lack of hard evidence, explosions, and the stereotypical trappings of the scientific endeavor. In that subtle love poem written to his wayward mistress of Anthropology I saw myself mirrored and this week I'd like to make reparations and start by apologizing personally to Biology, Biologists, and a girlfriend I had long ago at whom I sarcastically rolled my eyes when she made the same points.
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