Educational YouTube Channels: Periodic Videos

Periodic Videos is all about chemistry. Produced by Brady Haran, he interviews and films researchers, usually at the University of Nottingham, while discussing elements and chemistry in general. Sir Martyn Poliakoff, who was knighted in part for his work with the channel, features prominently in the videos. What is interesting about the channel is they generally show raw footage of their chemical experiments. They film many of their videos in the labs at the University of Nottingham, so you get to see what a real lab looks like, as opposed to a studio setting seen in many science shows. Some of their more interesting videos include putting a cheeseburger in hydrochloric acid, and explaining how to use flour to blow up a piano.

Some of their videos are the "Let's see this blow up" type, but they also have videos on each element, and others where they discuss certain reactions and compounds that are interesting, and not explosive.

Young children will not be interested in these videos, but starting about middle school or high school kids may find these videos interesting.

Comparing Joseph Smith and Emanuel Swedenborg

A while ago I was in a discussion with someone and they were trying to downplay the importance of Joseph Smith, and the movement he started, in history. To back up their claim they gave the example of Emanuel Swedenborg and stated that Swedenborg has had just as much impact as Joseph Smith.

At the time I thought this was an odd claim. This person then continued to argue that there were many other restorationist movements in the 1800's, and that the movement started by Joseph Smith just happened to be one of many. I was familiar with Swedenborg and the other restorationist movements, but what I found odd was his assertion that Mormonism had had very little impact in history, especially compared to the other restorationist movements.

I was unable to really conclude the discussion (it happened online somewhere), but it sort of always stuck with me. Sometime later I was in the main library at UNC looking for a book when I noticed something interesting. Below is a picture of the "Mormon" section of UNC's library. Everything from top to bottom, to the end of the stack is about Joseph Smith and movement that he started.

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Here is one more picture of LDS topic books that didn't fit in the previous shot. This is just off to the right of the picture above.

Directly below that I noticed this, it is all the books that the library has on Swedenborg. But, I should point out that half of the top shelf is actually books about Brigham Young.

When I saw both sets of books dramatically juxtaposed in the library like that, I recalled my discussion where someone insisted that Swedenborg was just as influential as Joseph Smith. Comparing the two sets of books it is plain to see that Joseph Smith has had a much greater impact on the world than Emanuel Swedenborg by several orders of magnitude. Keep in mind that this is the library at UNC, which has a strong religious studies program, hence the large collection of books, but it has no particular tie to either Joseph Smith or Emanuel Swedenborg.

If we take a look at Google's Ngram viewer we see a similar trend, with Joseph Smith and Mormon being orders of magnitude more common than Emanuel Swedenborg.

I'm sure you can find a library somewhere where there are more books about Swedenborg than Joseph Smith, but it is also the case that the influence of the movement started by Joseph Smith will continue to grow until it has filled the whole earth.

So, to the random commenter out there, we were never able to finish our discussion, but in answer to your statements: No, Joseph Smith, and the movement he started, was not a common run of the mill restorationist movement, and Emanuel Swedenborg has not been, and will never be, just as influential as Joseph Smith.

Educational YouTube Channels: Crash Course

Crash Course is a YouTube channel run by Hank and John Green. John Green is a famous author, most well known for his novel The Fault in Our Stars. I began watching Crash Course almost since the very beginning with their first series on world history. The first video I watched was Mesopotamia: Crash Course World History #3. Since then they have covered topics such as Biology, Chemistry, U.S. History, and Literature. They have also branched out with more presenters to cover topics such as Astronomy, Economics, and Physics.

The topics are presented at about the high school level, and in some cases roughly correspond to the associated AP classes. I do not watch all the shows, there are some topics that I enjoy more than others (history), and some that I can't watch because, well, I teach it (physics) and I go, "Oh, yeah that. Skip!". But for people who are just learning it, they present a good introduction, while also being engaging and interesting.

There is some high school level humor in some of the shows, but that should be expected. I recommend this for high schoolers or for anyone who wants a good introduction to a particular topic.

Educational YouTube Channels: Extra Credits

Much like my last post, this YouTube channel recommendation may make you go, "Really? But it's all about computer games."

Extra Credits is a channel devoted to computer games. And that may make some people automatically assume that there can be no educational value to the shows, but this is a channel with surprising depth. The topics they cover are all related to computer games, but they touch on psychology, graphics design, economics, education, and history. Here are just two examples of shows that may surprise you.

They approach the topic of games in such a way that their shows are interesting, even for those who do not play computer games at all. When they cover topics such as game mechanics, they also cover things such as writing and good story telling, and those shows have made me reconsider how I write and sometimes how I interact with my students. Some of the shows have changed how I approach teaching, so while they are all nominally about games, the applications go far beyond computer games.

What introduced me to this channel actually wasn't the shows on computer games, but their shows about history. A couple of years ago a computer game company, wanting to promote one of their games, decided to fund a few episodes entirely about the history of Rome. Since then Extra Credits have done a number of history episodes about a variety of topics, including the story of John Snow, the father of epidemiology, a history of the Zulu empire, the South Sea investment bubble, and a brief history of the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1500's. One of their more interesting series was a short biography of Mary Seacole. If you have heard of Florence Nightingale, but have never heard of Mary Seacole, then you need to learn about Mary, and this is a very good introduction.

This channel is another unexpected gem. It may be all about computer games, but if you watch it you will realize just how much educational material goes into developing and producing games. Even if you do not watch any of the shows about computer games, at least watch their shows about history, you will definitely learn something.

Educational YouTube Channels: Forgotten Weapons

This is one that will surprise many people, but the YouTube channel Forgotten Weapons, run by Ian McCollum, is perhaps one of the underappreciated gems of YouTube. Yes, the channel is all about guns, but he manages to pack in an incredible amount of history, engineering and weapon design into each video. I started watching because he had some interesting videos demonstrating some cool historical weapons, but I stuck around because of the incredible history behind the guns. For example, did you know that that Norway developed a combined knife-pistol for their mailmen in the mid 1800's? I didn't.

Or take this early Browning harmonica rifle (which sold at auction for $120,000).

This gun channel is not like others which emphasize the "macho" aspect of guns. Ian is more like the Bob Ross of guns. He keeps it calm, informative, and well researched. If you watch this channel for a while you will learn more about guns than you ever though possible (for example, ever wonder if a gun with a curved barrel would actually work? Well you can watch a video and find out.).

This is one of those channels where some parents may be concerned because it is all about guns, but there is an incredible amount of firearm history and gun engineering, presented in a non-sensational way, that I highly recommend it. You will also learn how different guns work and along the way learn about some of the most innovated solutions to mechanical problems in history. The thing that really blows me away (haha) about this channel is learning about how guns have evolved over time, and seeing all the failed designs. Watching a lot of these videos you really get a sense that the development and progression of gun technology was not direct and straight forward, but had a lot of false starts and incredible solutions to problems you never knew existed.

This channel can also serve as a kind of nerd sniping. If you are concerned that a certain loved one may secretly have the knack, try showing them this channel and if you come back and find them watching all the videos, then you know that they will be an engineer.

Note: A very small number of his videos have incidental swearing, usually when he demonstrating the most powerful guns.

Some interesting videos:
Firing a German anti-tank gun.
4-Bore Stopping Rifle in slow motion. (he nearly gets his shoulder dislocated)

Educational YouTube Channels: SmarterEveryDay

A while back I wrote about web comics that I like, and since then I wanted to do something similar about YouTube channels that I like. So, because it is easier to write about educational YouTube channels than it is to write about things like the Late Bronze Age Collapse, or Hamlet's Mill, I will write brief reviews of educational YouTube channels. You may already know about some of these, but there will definitely be a few you have never heard of, and there will be some that will surprise you.

Several years ago I came across a channel run by Destin Sandlin called SmarterEveryDay. That was back in the day when YouTube was mostly cats and dumb videos, so it was a breath of fresh air to find an interesting channel. I think SmarterEveryDay was the first channel I ever subscribed to back in 2011. The first video I remember watching was #15, which was about lightening. Since then he has put out videos about acoustic levitation, tattooing in slow motion, the direction of toilet swirls in the northern and southern hemispheres, and has even interviewed President Obama.

Destin's videos are educational, but he also brings in much more than just "education" into his videos. I appreciate that he shows his family and shows that he loves them in his videos. He also ends each video with a Bible reference.

Perhaps the most interesting video he ever did was about learning, and unlearning, how to ride a bike.

This video, and the insights he gives, are incredibly deep. You will be surprised how insightful learning how to ride a bike can be.

This is perhaps my favorite YouTube channel, and I highly recommend it to everyone of all ages. If parents are looking for good quality educational videos for their children to watch, this is the best place to start.

My Blog is not Dead

I know I have not been posting on my blog a lot lately, but this is because I have spent so much of my writing time on my research, writing papers, and my dissertation. That has been occupying my time, and when I get home after spending 8+ hours reading, writing and computing, the last thing I feel like doing is writing a blog post, and I am not into writing fluff.

When I write something for my blog I try to research it fully to make sure I know what I am talking about. This means that many of my posts never make it to a final product. I have 30+ drafts from the last year alone that never made it past the initial research stage, several of which I am planning on finishing. But my first major research paper, my dissertation, and now a second major research paper are taking up all my time and writing effort. Sometime in the next few weeks I may have more time to write, after I get my second paper submitted. Stay tuned.

A sample of posts I am working on:

• Philosophical Fallacies in the Wild: They do exist!
• Actual Legal Controversies Involving Religion
• Chiasmus in Moses 2
• Side-by-side comparison of Moses and Genesis
• The Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Exodus
• The Hypostasis of Faith
• Returning to Hamlet's Mill
• The Fallacy of the Incomprehensibility of God
• Why Troy?
• God as a Gardener