Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
John Edmark, a sculptor, inventor, and Stanford professor, loves spirals. When making his mesmerizing “blooms” Edmark wants people to say “wow, how’s that possible?” In this lovely little clip, he explains how it all works. Edmark has some big, profound explanations about why he likes spirals so much—that’s just what happens when you spend all…
We’ve all seen footage of giant factory robots hoisting and placing heavy parts with perfect precision, so it should come as no surprise that a robot arm can adeptly play the knife game without lopping off someone’s finger. But even with that in mind, you’ll still be stressed watching this stabby robot in action. Attaching…
Joerg Sprave, the internet’s most famous slingshot-loving amateur super villain, has found ways to weaponize everything from foam Nerf darts, to those tiny Ikea pencils. His latest troubling achievement is a custom elastic-powered blaster that can turn Lego bricks into tiny projectiles. Anyone with kids already knows that Lego bricks, with their pointy corners, can…
If you thought the funky tie-dye Easter egg designs you created last weekend raised the bar, you’ve got about a year to try and top what Jiri Zemanek of the University of Prague came up with. His Easter eggs feature looped animated designs that look like a Spirograph has come to life. To create the…
So far, 360° videos have mostly worked as novelty items that are rarely impressive. But I have to say this motion graphics exercise that starts in a sort of Max Headroom-ish outer space blasts through a deconstructed Tokyo and finally turns into a Space Odyssey-style head trip is one of the finest examples of the…
Why are so many iconic animated characters yellow? The answer lies in random personal choices, scientific and marketing theory, as well as the color of the sky. Minions are yellow because the animators thought their shape resembled Kinder eggs. Winnie the Pooh was based on a World War 1 veterans real pet bear and author…
How often have you pulled a rarely needed book off your shelf and needed to blow a layer of dust off of it? Now imagine what libraries have to deal with, given the tens of thousands of tomes in their collections. But it turns out someone’s already invented a machine that cleans books like a…
Michelangelo’s David is undoubtedly a masterpiece, but would the artist have been as adept with a chisel were he working on a tiny copper penny instead of a giant slab of marble? Using a magnifying scope, artist Shaun Hughes managed to skillfully turn Lincoln’s head into a remarkably detailed skull. Hughes has an entire YouTube channel…
Most of us know The Silence of the Lambs as that seemingly family-friendly film about an FBI agent trying to make a name for herself that our parents mistakenly let us watch when we were way to young to learn about cannibalism. But did you ever wonder what the horror movie would look like as…
Most Rube Goldberg machines are designed to complicate a very simple task, but a Japanese TV show called Pitagora Suitchi—which translates to Pythagoras Switch—created an endlessly complex contraption to tell the story of two colored balls who have to rescue their trapped brother. Biisuke Ball’s Big Adventure is actually a sequel to an earlier Rube…
Climate change threatens to affect everything from the food we eat, to straight-up making the planet inhabitable for humanity. But our self-wrought apocalypse isn’t all bad. As the ice caps keep crumbling, they’re creating lots of icebergs we can use for badass kitesurfing stunts. Geza Sholtz headed to Greenland to capture these amazing shots of…
As everyone from Texas already knows, bigger is always better, be it a giant steak or a remote control pickup truck that’s six and a half-feet long, making it roughly a third the size of the real thing. At $5,250, the Mammuth Works’ Rewarron doesn’t come cheap, but you can thrash it around a track…
Despite only giving you about a second of excitement at launch, model rockets are still a fun way for us (non-billionaires) to live out our dreams of space travel. But have you ever wondered what’s happening inside a model rocket engine while you’re standing a safe distance away from ignition? YouTube’s Warped Perception channel cut…
As a kid, you probably came up with a lot of terrible ideas your parents wisely stopped you from carrying out; that’s why you’re alive today. But once grownup, you’re free to try anything that pops into your mind, like upgrading a toddler-sized tricycle so that it’s powered by an old chainsaw. YouTube channel ThisDustIn…
It’s a story that stretches back 11 million years, cats have had a long journey from being worshiped by ancient civilizations to being worshiped by the memelords. It’s believed that the earliest ancestors of modern cats started out in Asia and they covered a lot of ground in their hunt for the necessities of life.…
Impressed by late-night infomercial ads for blenders that can hack and slash through ice, nuts, and rocks? They might as well be primitive neanderthal tools compared to NightHawkInLight’s latest creation, which can turn potatoes into slivers and cabbage into coleslaw in the blink of an eye. You also don’t need to worry about easy monthly…
Instead of propping up a camera on a tripod for an entire year to capture a timelapse of the seasons changing, Will Strathmann piloted his drone over some amazingly scenic landscapes in the spring, summer, fall, and winter, recreating the same flight path as closely as possible each time. Filming at the Pennsylvania farm started…
After too many years on the internet,I thought nothing could surprise me any more. And then I saw this face-melting Cassius music video. My face actually melted into a beautiful puddle of tears and teeth. Yours will, too. Just watch.
Filmmaking is a long and arduous process, sometimes requiring days of shooting just to get a single shot. Even a nine-minute short film can usually take weeks to film—and that’s the easy way. Director Paul Trillo, however, wanted to do something else, so he filmed his latest short film, At The End Of The Cul-de-Sac,…
General is a very good dog who just wanted to get out of the animal hospital. He plotted his escape and when the time was right, he put his plan into action. You can just feel that sweet taste of freedom hit him as he saunters off into the unknown. The ten-year-old Great Pyrenees was…
