Tom Scott

Kolbeinsey is the most northern part of Iceland, a tiny island that, according to Wikipedia, is due to disappear due to wave erosion “probably around the year 2020”. Which raised an obvious question: is it still there? THANKS TO: This video was inspired by some tweets from author Sam Hughes. You can follow him on

Yes, it’s only micrograms of difference, but it’s still really weird: until 2018, the kilogram is defined as “the weight of this physical object”. So what happens when that object changes? Thank you to everyone at the National Physical Laboratory! You can visit them at http://npl.co.uk I’m at https://tomscott.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook

The answer is, of course, a bit more complicated than you might think. • Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. Gretchen’s podcast has an episode all about this: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/154520059101/lingthusiasm-episode-1-speaking-a-single-language Gretchen’s book BECAUSE INTERNET, all about the evolution of internet language, is available: 🇺🇸 US: https://amzn.to/30tLpjT 🇨🇦 CA: https://amzn.to/2JsTYWH 🇬🇧 UK: https://amzn.to/31K8eRD (Those are affiliate

Welcome to the US National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, where there’s a giant freezer filled with 20km of ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic. Here’s why. Thanks to everyone at the US National Ice Core Laboratory! You can find out more about them here: http://icecores.org/ The Ice Core Laboratory is supported by

I’m visiting the University of Iowa’s National Advanced Driving Simulator, to answer a question: how unsafe is it for me to vlog while driving? Is vlogging while driving dangerous? The team at the simulator are the experts to ask. More about the National Advanced Driving Simulator: https://www.nads-sc.uiowa.edu/sim_nads1.php or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrivingSim Camera operator: Jasmine Putney

On the river Rhine in Switzerland, there are reaction ferries: boats with no engine, no paddles, no onboard motive power at all. Here’s how they work — and a question about what other simple ideas are out there. I’m at http://tomscott.com on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tomscott and on Snapchat and Instagram as

The Bay of Fundy has cheap, clean power: if you can harness it. ■ AD: 👨‍💻 NordVPN’s best deal is here: https://nordvpn.com/tomscott – with a 30-day money-back guarantee. I’m at https://tomscott.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at https://facebook.com/tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo

There’s a link from a 13th century legend, to a 16th century insult book, to a 19th century writer, to a 20th century comic book hero. And it starts in a small village near Nottingham, in the time of Robin Hood. Here’s why Batman comes from Gotham City. (I am reliably assured that the modern-people

In 1834, Parliament burned down, and the Standards of Measurement were melted or destroyed. So when there’s no agreed-upon standard for length: how do you fix it? Also: how you can still publicly check the length of your sandwich. Filmed safely: https://www.tomscott.com/safe/ There’s a correction to this video: the fraction on screen at 00:49 should

The Montreal Olympic Sports Centre has a 20m (65ft) diving board. That’s twice the Olympic height. Why would anyone need that? ◾ The Centre: https://parcolympique.qc.ca/centresportif/en/ ◾ Thanks to @Lysanne Richard Edited by Michelle Martin https://twitter.com/mrsmmartin I’m at https://tomscott.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at https://facebook.com/tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo

Surely water simulation can be done with computers now? Well, not quite. At the University of Sherbrooke, there’s an artificial research river, and I asked them to start it up. ▪ The University’s civil engineering department: https://www.usherbrooke.ca/gcivil/ Edited by Michelle Martin https://twitter.com/mrsmmartin With thanks to Sherbrooke team members Basem (who also flew the drone!) and

John Reber had a plan: to dam the San Francisco Bay. He convinced some politicians – and it took the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bay Model they built in Sausalito, to prove him not just wrong, but dangerously wrong. Thanks to all the team at the Bay Model! You can find out

No, it wasn’t called “hacking” back then: it was called “scientific hooliganism”. Let’s talk about Marconi, Nevil Maskelyne, and a demonstration that didn’t go as planned. And go check out the Royal Institution’s channel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFfRqoIdArM&index=3&list=PLbnrZHfNEDZyfUXqroIlSf2hOznnThqM0 I’m indebted to Sungook Hong’s wonderful book “Wireless”, which helped me track down some of the more obscure sources here

There’s a lot of articles written about how tap water in Warsaw is constantly tested by a small team of clams. It felt like a hoax to me: so I went to find out. ▪ Thanks to MPWiK Warsaw: https://www.mpwik.com.pl/ Producer: Marcin Krasnowolski https://polishfixer.com Camera: Michał Opala Editor: Michelle Martin https://twitter.com/mrsmmartin I’m at https://tomscott.com on

Over on the RAF Starrship channel, I’m talking about the history of radar: https://youtu.be/VDC_RCh0ws8 – but over here, we’re testing a 90-year-old piece of technology that was meant to be part of Britain’s air defence. The Sound Mirrors, on Romney Marsh, were built in the late 1920s as a way to amplify the sound from

At the Swiss Military Museum in Full, there’s the last remaining example of a 1970s tank-driving simulator. But there’s no virtual worlds here: it’s connected to a real camera and a real miniature model. ■ More about the museum: https://www.festungsmuseum.ch/ Camera: Tobias Buchmann Producer: Sebastian Capeda at Viven https://viven.ch Editor: https://www.davestevenson.co.uk/ Audio mix: Dan Pugsley

The Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland is 57km long: and I think its greatest piece of safety equipment is nowhere near the tunnel itself. ■ Thanks to Swiss Federal Railways https://www.sbb.ch/ – drone filming near the tracks was specially approved with railway staff. ■ For tours into the Gotthard Tunnel and to the visitors’ window,

In the URL of each YouTube video is the 11-character video ID, unique for each video. Can they ever run out? Just how many videos can YouTube handle? To work it out, we need to talk about counting systems, and about something called Base 64. Want to know how the single camera shot was done?

http://tomscott.com – http://makerfaireuk.com The Maker Faire: “a weekend of cool robots, garden-shed inventions, knitted wonders, and the occasional fireball”. This is the 2011 Faire, held in the Newcastle Centre for Life from March 12-13, condensed into thirty seconds of shouted excitement.

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – The Falkirk Wheel sits between Edinburgh and Glasgow, in the southern parts of Scotland, and it’s the world’s only rotating boat lift. There’s some very clever design going on here — and some physics that goes all the way back to Ancient Greece.

The Doppelmayr Garaventa Monorack is a decades-old product. I’ve no idea how I missed it before. But for the third video in the Monorail Trilogy, this isn’t an advert: I’m just happy to be proved wrong. ▪ More about the Monorack: https://www.doppelmayr.com/products/monorack/ Previously, Wuppertal in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4KZLcvMQWg (I’m not proud of this video — the

The treadwheel crane, or treadmill crane, sounds like something from Astérix or the Flintstones. But at Guédelon in France, not only do they have one: they’re using it to help build their brand new castle. ▪ More about Guédelon: https://www.guedelon.fr/ Camera: Simon Gillouin Editor: Michelle Martin https://twitter.com/mrsmmartin Producer: Axel Zeiliger https://block8production.com I’m at https://tomscott.com on

It’s about synchronisation, right? Well, not exactly… I’m at https://tomscott.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at https://facebook.com/tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo

http://tomscott.com – @tomscott – We’ll hopefully never know what’s written in the letters of last resort: top secret, handwritten notes from the British Prime Minister to be opened by submarine captains in the event of nuclear war. This video contains an error: I say “Trident-class”, but that’s the name of the missiles. It should be

Mount Taranaki, on the North Island of New Zealand, is a large-scale circle that’s visible from space: a stratovolcano with six miles of forest around it. But that didn’t happen naturally. Oh, and there’s a good chance that, in the next fifty years or so, it might explode. GOOD VIDEOS ON NATURAL PERSONHOOD: Law professor

http://tomscott.com – @tomscott – Out in the countryside near Canterbury, on the London to Ramsgate line, there’s a strange level crossing – one that requires human effort. It’s strange what railway history leaves us with. (Thanks to @quixoticgeek on camera duty!)

The “T-Rex” is the University of Texas’ large mobile shaker, and I got to see it in action. ■ More about the shakers: https://utexas.designsafe-ci.org/ I’m at https://tomscott.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at https://facebook.com/tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo

The @Royal Albert Hall is 150 years old; the roof is 600 tonnes of glass and steel. And it turns out that there’s a terrifying technicians’ trampoline, acoustic-dampening mushrooms, and a complete lack of connections. Thanks to everyone at the Royal Albert Hall: https://www.royalalberthall.com/ Camera by Jamie MacLeod https://www.jamiemacleod.co.uk/ Aerial operations by Phil Conrad and

The town of Staufen, in the south-west of Germany, has a problem: a drilling operation in 2007 that went very wrong. Half a metre of movement might not sound like much, but in this town, that’s enough for the buildings to crack and fall apart. Thanks to Constantijn Crijnen for both suggesting the video and

In Sanlúcar de Guadiana, in Spain, there’s a zip line called Límite Zero: the only cross-border zip wire in the world, landing in Alcoutim, Portugal. You land about an hour before you set off. It seemed like a good time to talk about programming. Thanks to all the team at Limite Zero! Tickets and info: