Veritasium

142 Cards across 11 Sources·Added to Korva by @ruthkellan, @mayaellery, @mirabaines and others

The World's Most Important Machine20 Cards

EUV mirrors needed bumps no thicker than 2.3 silicon atoms, versus roughly 4,000 silicon atoms on a household mirror.

@ruthkellan added

Scaled to Earth’s size, the largest bump on the lithography machine’s mirrors would be no thicker than a playing card.

@ruthkellan added

The Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering18 Cards

The Smith Chart compresses the entire infinite impedance range into one finite circle.

@mirabaines added

A dangling cable connected to nothing can match a line’s impedance simply by trimming its length.

@mirabaines added

Is spider web really stronger than steel?15 Cards

A one-square-centimeter spider-silk rope could support 60,000 newtons, roughly the weight of a fully grown African elephant.

@mirabaines added

In 1709, Francois Xavier Bon collected hundreds of spider egg sacs, boiled and combed them, then spun them into stockings.

@mirabaines added

We've Been Using The Wrong Science In Court For 50 years15 Cards

Paramedics accidentally transferred a homeless man’s DNA from their equipment to a murder victim. He was charged and held five months while hospitalized.

@mirabaines added

In 268 FBI cases from the 1970s through 1999, DNA review found 96% of hair-analysis conclusions were false.

@mirabaines added

The Expert Myth13 Cards

Doctors with 20 years of experience can be worse at diagnosing rare heart and lung diseases than recent graduates.

@tessanorland added

Across 82,361 predictions over two decades, political and economic pundits performed worse than assigning equal probabilities to every outcome.

@tessanorland added

The Biggest Myth In Education12 Cards

In a randomized electronics study, visualizers and verbalizers performed no better when instruction matched their assessed preference.

@tessanorland added

VARK began as an observational idea. No study showed students naturally clustered into four distinct learning-style groups.

@tessanorland added

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity12 Cards

Albert Einstein’s happiest thought was realizing free fall feels identical to weightlessness deep in space.

@mirabaines added

Light bends downward in an accelerating rocket because the rocket moves during the beam’s crossing.

@mirabaines added

Why Being Delusional is a Superpower12 Cards

Multi-author papers reveal a bizarre math problem: authors’ contribution estimates add up to about 140%.

@mayaellery added

A NASA astronaut simulation weighted skill 95% and luck 5%, yet selected astronauts averaged a luck score of 94.7.

@mayaellery added

The Illusion of Truth11 Cards

In syllogism tests, 90% made at least one error with clear print. Harder-to-read questions cut errors to 35%.

@leahormond added

Lawyers with easily pronounced surnames are overrepresented higher in law firms. Pronounceable stock abbreviations outperform unpronounceable tags.

@leahormond added

How Does a Transistor Work?10 Cards

Roughly 300 qubits can represent 2^300 classical bits, comparable to the number of particles in the universe.

@ruthkellan added

A silicon hole acts like a positive charge, even though it is really an empty place where an electron should be.

@ruthkellan added

AD - Why do I get this spark when I unplug my hair dryer?4 Cards

Unplugging a coil-powered appliance abruptly interrupts current, and its collapsing magnetic field induces voltage high enough to ionize air and create a spark.

@mirabaines added

A 1-centimeter spark needs roughly 10,000 volts to cross air, far above the 120–240 volts mains electricity supplies.

@mirabaines added

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