The YouTube VT Round

Sometimes I cringe when I think about all the time that I’ve wasted on YouTube watching the sneezing panda video. But, YouTube has a lot of physics videos too. The only problem is, it also has a lot of crap physics videos. With a little bit of exploring, you can uncover the really good ones. Here’s some of the best ones that you can watch in less than 5 minutes.

MinutePhysics

By searching physics, the MinutePhysics channel actually does have a high chance of coming in the top 10 results. It’s not surprising really, as it’s easily the best channel that explicitly states physics in the name. The videos are just a hand drawing simplistic cartoon pictures, whilst a voice narrates you through. A nice aspect of this style is that the voice feels right, in a way that a voice like Extreme Makeover host, Ty Pennington, simply wouldn’t. Neil Turok has done the voice on at least one of the videos (he’s the director of the Perimeter Institute). Without going into heavy descriptions, MinutePhysics is able to explain some hardcore topics. Take parallel universes for example:

Smarter Every Day

The Alabama man behind SED is called Destin. His mantra is “I try to get Smarter Every Day, and make fun science videos sharing my progress”. He spends a lot of time on his videos, and you can really tell. His friends and family once had intervention with the theme “Bro’s before YouTube”. I know this because he recorded it, and put it on YouTube. Regardless of the intervention, there’s some diamond VT on his channel, this was the first one that I ever watched:

Others

Often I've come across some VT that's looked ridgy didge, but has gone straight onto the junk pile. In particular, the 100 second videos by Physics World - so so boring. Here's some other good videos of interest: Veritasium, Fermilab and, if you feel brave enough for the Glasgow accent, Glesga Physics.