Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Behold the majestic Banja Dam in Albania. It’s a huge hydroelectric project that hit a big milestone over the weekend—its reservoir reached over 550 meters above sea level. To release some of the excess water, dam operators opened the spillway for the very first time and filmed the event from the air. The dang thing…
These folks came to Quebec to see a whale, and everything went exactly to plan. The whale, it seems, also got to do some people-watching.
Let’s play a game. Can you find the orange tabby cat that’s supposedly taking a nap on this pile of wood without going crazy? I say supposedly because for a good few minutes as I was looking for the cute little guy, I swore that the cat didn’t exist or that the cat has transformed…
Though it may seem like you’re watching a time lapse that uses hundreds of photos of a scene to track the passing of time, you’re actually just looking at a single picture “moving” with the magic of software called Platograph Pro. It’s one still photograph that’s been moved digitally. How? PetaPixel says that Platograph Pro…
The standard power trio usually includes a drummer, a guitarist, and a bassist. In his latest YouTube video, mega virtuoso Rob Scallon decides to be all three at once. Adding an electric guitar, an electric bass, a 12-string acoustic guitar, an upright bass, and what looks like a whamola made from a used shovel, Scallon…
I don’t know what compels a person to run an electric current through a steel chain and then prance around with the glowing fire links of metal like it’s some sort of jump rope. But I’m glad such a person exists, because it’s pretty damn cool to see the steel chain transform into this fiery…
This live-action, stop-motion fight scene makes it look like the filmmakers at Corridor Digital found a way to change the direction of gravity to help make their short film feel all the more epic. But an anti-gravity machine wasn’t the secret to how this entertaining video was shot. If you haven’t figured it out already,…
It’s not as simple as just playing sad music over sad scenes. No, Pixar plays with our emotions through music, sending out contrasting messages through what we see and what we hear to tear at our feelings even more. Which means, mixing happy music over sad scenes is how Pixar really gets us. But to…
Remember balancing a broomstick on your finger when you were a kid? It turns out that skill doesn’t really have any real world benefits. The same can be said for this self-balancing stick that Mike Rouleau created. It’s a fun bit of engineering—but are there any practical uses for this creation? Is sticking a pair…
Want to make it in the double dutch big leagues? Better not skip leg day. Or arm day. Or anything day. Because everything about this sport looks immensely difficult. There’s something deeply unnerving about watching someone’s lower body move at an inhuman speed with metronomic regularity while their upper body remains almost totally motionless… Better…
The Earth isn’t particularly close to any black holes—the closest candidate, A0620-00, is around 2,800 light years away—so good on us for picking a nice cosmic neighborhood to live in. But besides the whole “nothing escapes from them” thing and the hugely destructive supernova preceding their birth, black holes are bad news. They could end…
Using a mix of computer graphics, remote control miniature models, and some truly impressive costumes, Lior Mocho and the crew at Chisel Pixel have created the live-action Transformers fan film we all hoped Michael Bay’s first effort would have been. Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures didn’t need to spend hundreds of millions on pricey special effects…
The Olympic torch’s one job is to stay lit no matter what. And honestly, I never gave much thought to how that was accomplished. Lots of tiki torch fluid? Very careful runners? Ghosts? Correct answer: pressurized gas and a chassis that could probably survive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. What’s Inside cut open one of the…
The story of mankind is one of doing as little work as possible. And that plays out most excellently as Christian Bale lookalike Primitive Technology seeks to build the most efficient “forge blower” he can with the bounty of the forest. He starts with something similar to a fan: two intersecting pieces of bark with…
I’m still not entirely sure we needed another Matt Damon Bourne movie after not having one for nearly a decade, but we’re getting one this weekend. It’s probably not going to be as good as the original trilogy. That’s why it’s nice to look back on the three Bourne flicks that were actually good. Specifically,…
In order to harden the edge of steel, swords are often heated until they’re impossibly hot and then quenched in liquid to rapidly cool down. This creates a much stronger grain structure in the steel which obviously leads to a much stronger sword. An interesting thing that happens during this quenching process is how the…
Chop a tree. Wait three years. And then you can make yourself a longbow. Well in order to make it, it still requires a hell of a lot work, because you still gotta axe the wood plank down to the proper shape. And then you gotta shave it in all the right places and then…
Humanity’s connection to fire dates back to when our earliest ancestors realized it could be used for warmth and survival. Why do you think staring into a campfire is so mesmerizing? It probably also explains why watching toothbrushes slowly melt and shrivel away is so utterly fascinating. That, or deep down you’re secretly harboring bad…
There are a lot of unpleasant experiences you can go through in life, but few might be as excruciating as the Lego Treadmill Challenge created by the brave souls at WheresMyChallenge. The idea is simple: see how long you can walk barefoot on a treadmill while random Lego pieces are poured on it. The hard…
At 238 feet and 3 inches long, Adam Winrich now officially holds the Guinness World Record for the longest whip crack in history. The massive whip he used, while completely impractical for taming lions and other large beasts, still makes Indiana Jones and Catwoman look like complete amateurs. And despite losing so much energy by…
