The secret to animating hair? Physics. Kelly Ward, senior software engineer for Walt Disney Animation Studios, was responsible for bringing Rapunzel's locks to life in Disney's Tangled. The hair had to look realistic, but not too real -- otherwise Rapunzel would be dragging 80 pounds behind her.

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How do you turn apples into a delicious hard cider? Just ask Alejandro del Peral, a cidermaker from upstate New York. It takes blending suitable apples, adding the right yeast, and experimenting with sourness to get the cider exactly right. As he puts it, the process is "about 50 percent chemistry, and the other 50 percent is art."

Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Special Thanks to Chau Tu and Nine Pin Cider

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Like many spice junkies, Dr. Marco Tizzano once believed he could develop a tolerance to the burning, painful sensations generated by eating chilis. But as a chef and researcher in chemosensory sensations, he now knows better. Dr. Tizzano explains how capsaicin creates a chemical cascade inside your body and why emotions might make chili lovers think they can handle the heat.

Tour the unique artifacts, including a yeti scalp and 4-tusked elephant, collected by Explorers Club members during research expeditions over the last century. Executive Director Will Roseman reveals the remarkable science and stories of the collection at the Club Headquarters in New York City.

Thought to the be inspiration of "sea serpent" stories, the monstrously-long Oarfish provokes wonder in nearly all that witness it. Yet despite our fascination, little is known about this fish, its lifecycle and how it navigates its deep-sea environment. With help of a frozen specimen, CalState Assistant Professor Misty Paig-Tran provides us with a biomechanist insights into this real-life "sea monster's" unusual physiology.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Christian Baker, Luke Groskin, CalState - Fullerton Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills and Video by UnCruise Adventures, Mark Benfield NOAA, and Juan, Pablo Maturana, Corrine Bourbellion, Thomas Kohler

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Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? Try making your own winter wonderland. Ken Libbrecht, Caltech physicist and author of The Secret Life of a Snowflake, devised an experiment to grow a snow crystal in an old plastic bottle. Dry ice required. Or maybe you'd rather go on a Snowflake Safari?

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This video is part of Science Friday's #CephalopodWeek 2015! Join the cephaloparty starting Friday, June 19th. http://cephalopodweek.tumblr.com

Crawling, swimming, squeezing, jetting—the range of movement available to an octopus is impressive. Yet some species occasionally choose to stand up on two arms and "run" backwards. Chrissy Huffard, a Senior Researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, explains the pros and cons of this seemingly silly behavior and why an octopus might find looking foolish useful.

There are lots of wild things in Brooklyn, NY, but did you know about the wild parrots? Several communities of Quaker Parrots (Myiopsitta monachus), believed to hail from the mountains of South America, are nesting in the New York area. So we asked Steve Baldwin, the creator of http://BrooklynParrots.com, to point out the parrots. He gives free group tours about once a month, if you're in the area....

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As the most common genetic disorder worldwide, colorblindness affects roughly 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women, the overwhelming majority of whom have trouble perceiving red and green. While this may be a minor inconvenience to some, being severely colorblind can taint seemingly ordinary experiences such as a enjoying a vivid sunset or picking out fresh produce. Colorblindness can even prevent some people from pursuing jobs where color vision is critical. With these grievances in mind, visionary researchers Maureen and Jay Neitz have spent over a decade researching and developing a cure. Using a virus-based gene therapy and a group of highly trained monkeys, the Neitzes may have finally created a cure for the colorblindness blues.

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By looking at a face for less than a second, we can judge someone’s age, gender, race, emotional state and even their trustworthiness. High-speed scanning and perception experiments by social neurologist Dr. Jon Freeman have revealed our brain’s ability to generate character assessments in less than blink of an eye. These first impressions can linger in our brains and influence our real-world interactions.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
MRI Stand-in by Sarah Lewin
Footage ands Stills Provided by Dr. Jon Freeman, Shutterstock, Warren Goldswain, Glasgow Unfamiliar Face Database, Bruce Gionet (C.C. 3.0), Nina Paley (C.C. 3.0), Kim Cramer (C.C. 3.0), “Brain Optic Nerve Impulses,” Produced by Purdue University Calumet senior engineering students supervised by Professors Bin Chen, Ph.D, and Ge Jin Ph.D, with support of the university’s Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation. Full video is available at: http://webs.purduecal.edu/civs/brain-visualization

What high-tech materials are required to make a robotic hand that can pick up almost anything? Coffee grounds and a latex balloon. The design comes from a team of researchers including Heinrich Jaeger of The University of Chicago and John Amend, who is now trying to sell these grippers through Empire Robotics. But you can make your own version at home with some simple materials. The only tricky-to-find object you'll need is a vacuum pump (I got mine from here: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10398, where you can also find an excellent instructional video).

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Just as humans utilize roads and freeways to move cars and resources around our cities, fungus utilize fluid networks to move nutrients and nuclei through their cells. Dr. Marcus Roper of UCLA explains how these networks function with remarkable efficiency and prevent microscopic traffic jams.
Produced by Christian Baker
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage Courtesy of Marcus Roper and UCLA

For most people, getting stuck in a traffic jam on the New Jersey Turnpike is a grueling lesson in futility. But if you're Simon Garnier of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, you often view it as an opportunity to examine our collective behavior and ponder how we became so inefficient compared to other species. Having studied the expansive food trails of army ants and the seemingly mindless exploration of slime mold, Garnier hopes to model the systems of their behavior in order to understand how and why relatively simple organisms organize themselves so dynamically.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills and Video Provided by:
Sean McCann, Matthew Lutz, Simon Garnier, Aladin Casino (C.C. 3.0), Phy Chip (C.C. 2.0), Un Poco Del Choco (C.C. 3.0),
Jeff Gerber PD (C.C. 3.0), Vimeo User Implicate Order (C.C. 3.0), Murray Gans (C.C. 3.0)
S.P Sullivan (C.C. 3.0)

So you want to jam like a rock star, but you don't want to shell out for an electric guitar? Make one yourself. Sound artist Ranjit Bhatnagar explains the art of a DIY instrument he calls a "junk guitar." You can piece one together using little more than a plank of wood, some wire, a magnet and a guitar string. Forget the air guitar solos. Plug in. Rock out.

75% of Southern California's water supply comes from the snowpack that adorns the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Keeping track of how much water is contained within the snowpack is a monumental task. Thankfully, NASA has developed the Airborne Snow Observatory, a relatively new program that uses specialized instrumentation to carefully measure the water content.
Produced by Christian Baker
Additional Footage by NASA/JPL-Caltech
Color Correction by Luke Cahill
Music by Audio Network

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Medieval stained glass reveals a lot about life in the Middle Ages, but keeping these artistic works from falling apart is a detailed process. Hanne Roemich from New York University's Conservation Center and Brooklyn-based conservator Mary Clerkin Higgins discuss the science behind glass conservation, and how these centuries-old relics are protected from the natural elements so we can enjoy them for years to come!
Produced by Katie Free and Neel V. Patel
Music by Kevin Macloed via incompetech.com

Composer and instrument builder Paul Rudolph makes music from garbage. He combs recycling centers and scrap yards for what he calls "found object instruments"--propane tanks, film reels, artillery shells and other items that he likes the sound of. Rudolph sometimes modifies the objects and then uses the newly-minted percussive instruments in his music performance group GLANK, which has appeared at the Eagle Rock Music Festival in Los Angeles and Maker Faire in New York City. John Powell, physicist and author of How Music Works, chimes in on the physics of making music.

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For writer Michael Pollan, the contents of his refrigerator is often on the forefront of his mind: "I do think about food a lot, and if I'm distracted it's with thoughts of what's in the fridge." In the latest installment of our Desktop Diaries video series, we'll take you into the home office (and garden) of the famous food and nature author to see how edible ornamentations can sometimes provide inspiration.  
Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Christian Baker
Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Christian Baker
Music by Claude Debussey as performed by Teppei Yamada-Scriba

Our skin is teeming with microbes. Visit a lab to find out what's living on you.

Learn more and find out how you can take part at wnyc.org/streets.
Find out about this National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Study here :
Avoiding belligerent bus drivers or unwitting tourists popping out of taxis are just a few of the more obvious risks of riding a bike through city streets.Yet there could be another inconspicuous and nearly unavoidable danger that could take a toll on your health: air pollution. Identifying how hazardous exercise can be in an urban environment filled with noxious particles in the air is the goal of a new study by Columbia University researchers Steven Chillrud and Darby Jack. Using biometric sensors, a wearable pollution monitor, and GPS, the study will detail participants' exposure to toxins as they cycle through city streets.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Stills and Video Provided by Zev Ross Spatial Analysis, Jen Connor, Recios Media Crew (C.C. 3.0), NACTO (C.C. 3.0), Vimeo User GCM (C.C. 3.0) , WNYC , Michael Phillips (C.C. 3.0), Darby Jack, Brewbooks EPA, Edison-Hannigan Lab