Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
Math is basically magic. So it’s no surprise that a clever use of the Fibonacci numbers—a series of numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.) where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers—and a super-slick shuffling method can combine for a card trick that makes it impossibly easy to guess the number…
If you have some free time, watch this 20 minute dive into why Stanley Kubrick was such a master filmmaker. If you don’t have some free time, make some. Channel Criswell’s look into the cinematic experience of Stanley Kubrick is so well done and so well researched that it’s absolutely worth checking out. Kubrick paid…
There’s no reason I need to make charcoal—I don’t normally use it for anything, and if I did, bags of it are so easy to buy. But I find the whole process of exhausting wood sticks into little brittle black pieces so much fun that I’m going to start inventing reasons to use charcoal in…
Remember that annoying bastard of a dinosaur from Jurassic Park that sprayed his face open and spewed out poison at people? Yeah, that damn Dilophosaur terrified me as a kid. Actually, I’m still scared of it. So if I saw this frilled-neck lizard chasing me down like this, I’d totally lose it. This little lizard…
Here’s some chillingly beautiful shots showing what it’s like to cave dive the ‘El Toh’ cave in Yucatan, Mexico. It’s a completely different world down there. When you’re inside the cave with water all around you, it looks a lot like being in an underworld you’re not supposed to see. Some parts are haunting and…
Around 4am this morning, people near Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona were treated to a loud boom and flash of blinding light as some sort of space junk intersected with Earth’s atmosphere. The AP reported that the possible meteor or meteorites may have landed by the nearby town of Cibecue. The event is not believed to…
As anyone who has whistled through a blade of grass can tell you, a simple wind instrument can be made of just about anything. But Rulof Maker took “anything” to its logical conclusion by creating this bird whistle from the casing of a dried Italian sausage. In this simple project, the sausage casing and a…
In contrast to the fancy, expensive, and much-delayed VR headsets out there, Google Cardboard is refreshingly simple. So simple in fact, that the entire thing can be made from food with no loss of quality, as proven by Make. Technically cardboard is already edible. It just doesn’t taste very good. Instead Caleb Kraft built all…
The toughest thing about getting up in the morning (other than getting up in the morning) is realizing all the things you have to do to make yourself decent to society. I’m not talking about just brushing your teeth, shaving, or showering. I’m talking about having to open your eyes and walk around and move…
Watch as these diabolos get spun and twirled in the air like they’re being controlled by some sort of sorcery and not at the mercy of gravity. That’s how good ChihHan Chao, 2015 Red Bull PAO champion, is at using the hand sticks to juggle these crazy yo-yos. He’s making the discs dance and tossing…
I thought I was sick of all those hydraulic press videos, and then I saw the one with the silly string can. It’s suspenseful, and it’s satisfying. Watch it until the end! SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
It’s not like this is a big project or anything, right? All you have to do is chop a freeway in half, get rid of the mountain of dirt hidden underneath, slide a tunnel in, and then pave a new three-lane highway. All in one weekend. Here’s time lapse footage showing this 230-foot tunnel being…
It’s easy to be captivated by the medieval world of Westeros in Game of Thrones. I mean, everybody loves a good story about kings and queens, princes and princesses, swords and lords, and castles and banners. But have you ever wondered why Westeros is stuck in this never ending medieval age? They’ve lived like this…
Of all the objects you use on a daily basis, you’ve probably never stopped to wonder how plastic drinking straws came to be. But if you like complicated machines that are simultaneously extruding, cutting, and sorting, you’ll be more than satisfied with the high-speed process behind making two-toned plastic drinking straws. [YouTube] SPLOID is delicious…
It’s really fun to see the genius eye of Stanley Kubrick get translated into the world of The Simpsons. Instead of the psychopaths in A Clockwork Orange, we get Homer, Moe, and crew. Instead of the stillness of 2001: A Space Odyssey, we see the goofiness of Homer eating in zero gravity. Instead of the…
There are many ways to solve the standard 3×3 Rubik’s cube, each with its own advantages. Faster methods usually requiring more practice and algorithmic knowledge. But now, thanks to undergrad Martin Španěl and augmented reality, no memorization is required to master the cube in 20 moves or less. First, his software takes input from a…
It’s an age old question that we love to entertain because we’re all obsessed with our own mortality and the future of the world: what would happen to the world if humans disappeared? With enough time, the Earth would be able to reset itself and erase any trace of our existence. Mind Warehouse goes deep…
The drop doesn’t seem to end. And that’s because the jump is off a 3,228-foot cliff in Norway. At that high of an elevation, that free fall will feel like it’s going on forever. It’s probably long enough to make you question what the hell you just did over and over again. It’s probably long…
Budget airlines like JetBlue and Southwest in the United States, and Ryanair and Easy Jet in Europe, are often significantly cheaper to fly compared to legacy airlines like Delta and British Airways. How is this possible? Flying is expensive! The simple answer is that budget airlines simplify as many costs as possible. Sometimes it’s obvious…
The summer’s almost here, and what goes perfect with scorching heat and unbearable humidity? That’s right, fire and explosions. But skip the fireworks and BBQs this year, and instead make your own rainbow pyrotechnics show with materials you can probably find at the hardware store. Surprisingly, making blue, green, or red colored flames doesn’t require…
