Sploid: Where awesome, wild, and breathtaking tech moments burst into view.
There’s a wonderful irony to the fact that every single snowflake is a unique masterpiece, but they’re too small for the human eye to enjoy. Thankfully they can also be grown in a lab, by scientists like Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, the “Snowflake Consultant” for Disney’s Frozen, who also films his microscopic creations so they can…
Kurzgesagt ponders the question of whether space elevators can be built and answers it as only they can. It’s fascinating to learn about the (obvious) benefits of having a space elevator—sending things to space becomes much, much cheaper!—but even if it’ll take forever and a half to build this mythical 22,370-mile structure (which we can’t…
And we thought carbon freezing looked painful… Jeweler and all-around maker of things JerryRigEverything took a LEGO mini-fig of everyone’s favorite scoundrel smuggler and turned him into solid gold. First Han gets coated in plaster and then heated until he vaporizes. The resulting hole is filled with molten gold and then polished to a high…
Man, this is just so fun to watch. The beautiful alien world that is Iceland is always so picturesque but it’s even better when seen from up close, like from the perspective of Klemen Premrl and his crew of climbers ice picking their way up to the top of an ice structure. The crystal glow…
Cooped up in a city or squandered in a suburb, it’s easy to forget how damn wonderful nature can be. Here are some truly stunning views of the Drakensberg Escarpment in South Africa. I love how the shadows and light shutter over the mountains throughout the day. Drakensberg is derived from the Afrikaans word Drakensberge…
I get it now! That’s why soccer doesn’t let players use their hands. Just in case they decide to start playing with a fireball. Watch Joltter, Andrew Henderson, and Melody Donchet do tricks with a ball that’s on fire and also hit a free kick too.
Aaron’s Inc., an Atlanta-based furniture company, held its annual meeting of managers in Maryland and did what is hopefully the last team-building exercise these salesmen will ever have to engage in. All 1,200 participants stood in front of mattresses (ones Aaron’s Inc. will later sell to customers, one assumes) and fell backward into each other,…
Oh my, to be able to live in a time where the silliness of dropping a tank of gas from a 100-feet in the air onto a torch on the ground is totally normal. And to be alive when you first drop it and nothing explodes that you drop it a second time to ensure…
It’s wonderful to be able to see nature like this, with animals in a habitat that has largely been left untouched. I’ve watched this video multiple times, first to see the animals—elk, pronghorn, etc.—migrate and then again to just appreciate the beauty of Yellowstone. Joe Riis made this video for National Geographic. SPLOID is delicious…
Here’s something for you to think about when you’ve run out of things to think about. If scissors became sentient, would they still want to be scissors? I mean, they’ve been forced to be executioners and act as mobile guillotines! Here’s a short film from David Sandell showing a scissor escaping the life of being…
When it’s cold outside, I don’t even want to go out. But there is beauty in the winter stillness and there are people who can brave the cold and enjoy it. Here is a portrait of Karol Garrison paddleboarding Lake Michigan while ice surrounds him. It’s so peaceful out there. But so damn cold. SPLOID…
YouTube scientist Mark Rober and molten metal obsessive BackyardScientist teamed up to answer a simple question: is a grenade deadlier on land or under water? But in order to answer that, we need to understand exactly what a grenade does. The metal casing of a grenade is designed to fracture at specific points so that,…
Non-Newtonian fluids are liquids that are also sort of solid but also sort of neither but also sort of both? They’re very thick liquids or very giving solids, depending on what you want to call it. That’s why they’re so fun to do science experiments with. The Backyard Scientist went and filled up balloons with…
Instead of rebuilding cities like New York, Boston, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. like a CG dinosaur, Alexey Zakharov used a technique where he sliced up antique photos and then carefully animated the various elements, like people, cars, and buildings, to give the appearance of actual moving footage. There’s still a dash of CG here and…
As a sequel to his bike tour around New York City, Nigel Sylvester teleports us all around Los Angeles with the help of his bike and masterful editing in his short, “Go! 2″. It’s great because one minute you’re at a skate park and the next you’re inside a pool and it’s all seamlessly stitched…
There really should be more flying boats flying around these days. They’re comically large and equipped with so many engines and their ability to take off and land on water is just so cool, from floating around to flying in no time. Here’s a collection of the biggest flying boats ever made, some of these…
We stamped out nature in New York City with people and the grid, leaving behild only tiny patches and bits of green. But eventually, and especially after the zombie apocalypse hits, Mother Nature and her wild plants will take New York back from us. This animated short, Wrapped by Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, shows a glimpse of…
They’re one of the most terrifying and destructive weapons of war, but through the lens of a high-speed camera, a flamethrower looks like it’s actually releasing a magical flying dragon made of fire. As with almost anything filmed in slow motion, it’s surprisingly beautiful to watch. SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook,…
Meet the Gameboy Zero. It’s a classic Gameboy shell with a Raspberry Pi’s heart. But the mod isn’t purely cosmetic. Using Emulation Station, this Pi board is able to play games from NES, SNES, and the Gameboy’s many iterations all up to and including Advanced. That’s where things start getting tricky, since the Gameboy had…
How is it even possible to have this much control over an ordinary piece of string? Once again, Kuma Films have taken an unusual interest and captured it in stunning detail—in this case, some of Taiwan’s finest traditional spinning top enthusiasts. Watch as they land their tops on objects of every size or height with…
