Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Can you really split a bullet with a sword? The Slow Mo Guys tested the logistics of such a feat, but using a safer approach that involved a giant super-sharp knife and a pellet gun firing tiny projectiles to minimize any undesired results—like one of them getting hit, or their incredibly expensive slo-mo camera getting…
Thermite, a mixture of powdered iron oxides and aluminum, can be burned to produce temperatures it would be hard to argue are truly safe outside of a meticulously controlled environment (over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit / 2,200 degrees Celsius). It’s used for a variety of purposes, from metal cutting and welding to military incendiaries. It can…
During a recent business trip to China, the folks at Big Screen Video, an Australian company that makes giant digital signage, found a brilliant little gadget that appears to replicate the 3D floating holograms Tony Stark uses in his laboratory. What you’re actually seeing is a 3D animation being played back on a handheld fan…
If you don’t feel like spending $150+ on a steering wheel controller after already dropping $80 on a video game, you can always improvise like YouTuber chobiglass did. Using a pair of salad tongs, a computer mouse, and a spinning bar stool, they hacked together a pretty serviceable steering wheel accessory for the game, Euro…
Remember the mindless doodles you made in your notebooks as classes felt like they’d drag on forever in high school? Jake Fried uses similar materials, ink and Liquid Paper white-out, to bring a complex cut-and-paste collage to life in his short film, Paper Trail. You’ll want to watch it several times to catch every last…
When you work as a filmmaker, watching one of your cameras get destroyed is like watching part of your livelihood disappear. But it’s hard to be upset when the perpetrators dismantling your expensive equipment are a actually a pack of curious arctic fox pups—or kits, as they’re more accurately called. This adorable footage is now…
Of all the giant machines you’ll find on a construction site, the steamroller seems like it has the best potential for realizing your destructive childhood fantasies. There’s an endless list of objects you could stick under its rolling steel drum, but obliterating a giant gummy bear somehow stands out as one of the most satisfying.…
Forget the uncanny valley and not-quite-perfect CG humans freaking you out, this title sequence for London’s recent OFFF digital arts festival will make you so uncomfortable you’ll want to burn your laptop. But at the same time the animation is so beautiful you might find yourself watching it two or three times instead. The sequence…
Modern materials engineering allows us to build what looks like precarious glass skywalks perched thousands of feet off the ground. They’re completely safe, but knowing that doesn’t make them any less terrifying to traverse—especially when the glass skywalk you’re on uses transparent LCD screens to make it look like it’s about to shatter and collapse.…
Those towering wind turbines that are slowly starting to cover countrysides around the world don’t just show up overnight—and they’re definitely not dropped in place by a helicopter. They arrive on trucks in pieces—staggeringly massive pieces—that test the skills of drivers navigating roads not designed to accommodate 200-foot long trailers. Even with the ability to…
We’re all guilty of performing stupid stunts as kids, but most of us tend to avoid risking life and limb as we grow older. YouTube’s Giaco Whatever has done just the opposite. Using his machining skills, he attached a bunch of razor blades to a high performance yo-yo, creating a toy that’s possibly even more…
Have you ever felt like you deserved the Nobel Prize in trigonometry after successfully parallel parking your compact car? Sadly, your skills can’t hold a candle to this truck-driving Jedi who squeezes a full tractor trailer into an impossibly narrow spot without a scratch. The drone’s eye view of the maneuver makes the driver’s skills…
By mounting a small camera looking out the sound hole of his guitar, musician Alan Gogoll was able to capture the oscillating wave patterns as each string was plucked. The result is a performance that’s as captivating to watch as it is to hear. Cramming a camera inside a musical instrument will almost certainly reduce…
According to the folks who made this video of a melting VHS tape, it took 160 hours in an acetone vapor bath to liquify the relic of the Blockbuster age. 20,000 photos later, we have a visual record of the process. And while it starts out a little slow, the footage eventually hit all of…
Take it from a wise 20-something: you will, at some point, require medical attention for something entirely avoidable and at least somewhat embarrassing. Just how embarrassing it is may vary, but it’s OK. It happens to the best of us. Case in point: Per the New Zealand Herald, an eight-year-old patient recently showed up to…
What do you do when you move into a house without a lawn and no longer have any need for your electric mower? That’s easy, you strip it down and use its spinning blade to build an over-sized blender that can slice and dice much more than just chunks of ice. https://gizmodo.com/dont-get-hit-by-a-nerf-dart-traveling-at-twice-the-spee-1793601843 Giaco Whatever’s latest…
With thousands of cars passing through every day, blasting the walls with dirty exhaust, it only makes sense that every once in a while a tunnel needs to be cleaned. But I had no idea there are trucks built specifically for the task, with giant scrubbers attached to robotic arms that can reach every last…
It’s easier to mindlessly blast away a room full of video game baddies when they look at you with dead eyes and zombie-like facial expressions. It’s a completely different challenge when they appear to be expressing actual emotions and pain, made all the more believable with this new advanced facial animation tool for the Unreal…
By simply vertically mirroring footage from a commuter train ride through Tokyo, YouTube channel afridimensional made Japan’s capital look like the backdrop for a futuristic sci-fi film in this chill short film, Neo Tokyo Metro. Buildings become abstract floating structures, subway trains appear to fly through the air, and it’s often impossible to tell which…
It’s been 16 years since the original Blue Planet debuted and crowned BBC Earth as the king of the nature documentary. In the meantime, David Attenborough and company have focused on a number of other documentaries, but now they’re circling back with a sequel to the beloved series that told the story of our world’s…
