Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Every wrench sitting in a toolbox wants to grow up to become a tomahawk. That’s because the locked jaw of a wrench actually makes for a pretty perfect axehead after it gets heated and treated and, well, hammered into shape. The key is to flatten out the U-shape of the wrench into a straight line…
There’s nothing quite like using the scientific method to figure out what’s happening in a silly party trick that we’ve seen way too many times (if you’ve been to bad parties, at least): the ol’ smack the top of a glass bottle and watch the bottom burst out in shards gag. The always intrepid Mark…
The greatest Super Mario game of all time (you’re simply wrong if you think otherwise) finally gets the domino tribute it deserves. YouTube’s TheDominoKing spent an entire month setting up 81,032 dominoes to display scenes from Super Mario World as they topple. Like with any falling dominoes display, an insane amount of work went into…
You obviously need to strap down the luggage you put on the roof of your car, but as this crash test footage from Switzerland’s Dynamic Test Center shows, you might also want to strap down the bags in the back of your station wagon. In an impact, pieces of luggage becomes flying missiles targeted at…
I’ve been impressed with the films of director Denis Villeneuve and enjoyed a good amount of Sicario so it’s pretty fun to share this CineFix analysis of a ridiculously tense sequence in the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, you can still probably enjoy the exhaustive breakdown of the scene but if you have…
Have you ever wondered if those miracle sprays that promise to protect the liner of your pickup truck from damage actually work? Here’s proof they do. The amateur scientists at YouTube’s How Ridiculous covered a watermelon in Line-X spray and dropped it off a 150-feet tall tower. Not only did the watermelon survive the fall,…
Mickey Mouse is obviously more well-known than Bugs Bunny. But there’s a kitschy globalization aspect to Mickey that Bugs has somehow managed to avoid ,even though they both served as mascots for their companies (Disney and Warner Bros., respectively). How did Bugs do it? Kaptain Kristian breaks down the difference between Mickey and Bugs as…
A strong enough laser can burn things, clean things, pop things, and most impressively, move things. Yep. Watch this powerful laser shining into a piece of aluminum foil suspended in a vacuum and you’ll see the foil starting to sway back and forth from the ultra light beam. Cody’s Lab says “the light imparts momentum(P=E/C)”…
Gulp. Just look at how ridiculous this thing looks. It’s a giant black sea slug known as a sea hare and it’s freaking monstrous. You don’t really hold it in your hand as much as the sea hare, which can grow up to over 3 feet long and weigh over 30 pounds, just swallows your…
These days all you need to recreate Hollywood-caliber visual effects is a fast PC and some expensive 3D software. But if you want to try your hand at recreating old-school special effects, find yourself a 3D printer, make a miniature version of Ghostbusters’ Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and go to town with a blowtorch. Watching…
The next time you’re staring down a tough cleaning job—be it removing paint, rust, or lasagna off of a baking dish—don’t waste your time with harsh chemicals, sand paper, or scrubbers. Get yourself a 1,000-watt laser and blast away that filth and grime in just seconds. Judging by this video, the first company to make…
People in prison are so damn resourceful that they can turn a pen, a Walkman, a couple of paper clips, a few rubber bands, and a set of batteries into a fully functional tattoo gun. The motor, battery pack, and switch come from a Walkman that’s torn apart, the ink obviously comes from the pen,…
Call me a coward, but getting bashed in the face by a scary Russian dude with a massive shield is not my idea of a good sporting time. Sure, being covered by armor would appear to make professional knight fighting “safer” or at least “less likely to result in an immediate fatality.” But because your…
It’s called the Schlieren effect and it means that you can see stuff that’s invisible to the human eye, like changes in air density. So when you turn on a hair dryer, you can see the blast of air it shoots out. When you open a can of Coke, you can see what’s escaping into…
I totally expected a supercut of touching in movies to be a bit on the creepy side but this compilation actually handles it with a surprising amount of grace. It includes some meaningful touchy scenes like Finn holding a light saber for the first time in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, fingers grazing the ring…
Wasting beer is usually indefensible—unless you plan on blowing up whole kegs with dynamite. Obviously the guy from the Swedish dynamite channel is having an absolute field day with this. My question is: if you stand in the middle of that beer cloud and take a few deep breaths, will you catch a buzz?
This mirror being smashed into a million pieces by a hammer at a 120,000 frames-per-second is a true sight to see. The Slow Mo Guys are back at it, showing us some more insanely delayed close ups of shattered glass. This time around, a hammer appears to fly through a mirror instantaneously, as the camera…
Does it feel like the box art for every video game these days is the protagonist… just kind of standing there with, I dunno, a gun or a sword, probably scowling? You are not alone. Jacob Christensen noticed too. Yup: video game box art these days absolutely sucks. And the reasons why are complicated. For…
You’re already accepting some level of risk when you climb aboard any carnival ride, from the Ferris Wheel to the bumper cars, and for little payoff. So if you’re going endanger yourself for some cheap thrills, why not go big aboard a merry-go-round powered by real jet engines rocketing you around in circles. Built by…
What is art? According to Plato, art is an imitation of an imitation, a mere illusion twice removed from the reality of the eternal Forms. According to me, art is something I like looking at. One thing I apparently like looking at is an industrial robot twirling around Serbian artist Dragan Iliclike a parade baton,…
