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.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Its Latin name translates as "the vampire squid from hell." And while its crimson skin and glowing eyes support its title, deep sea ecologists like Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have come to see the vampire squid as the antithesis of a bloodsucking predator. In fact, studies have shown that Vampyroteuthis infernalis is actually a gentle steward of the ocean's depths, gracefully foraging on marine detritus.

Produced by Christian Baker
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage Provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Reporting in the journal Nature Physics, William Irvine and Dustin Kleckner, physicists at the University of Chicago, describe the knotted fluid vortex they created in the lab -- a scientific first, they say. The knots resemble smoke rings -- except these are made of water, and they're shaped like pretzels, not donuts. Understanding knottiness has extra-large applications, including untangling dynamics of the sun.

More SciFri videos

Untangling the Hairy Physics of Rapunzel: http://www.sciencefriday.com/s....egment/04/20/2012/un
Dive Into the Physics of Splashing: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/02/06/2009/dive
Cracking the Egg Sprinkler Mystery: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/05/04/2012/crac

http://www.sciencefriday.com
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?

Coffee beans are filled with oils that emerge from coffee grounds under high pressure. These oils form the crema—the frothy stuff on top of an espresso. In the last installment of Science Friday's series on coffee, food-science writer Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, explains the chemistry of crema.

Video by Jenny Woodward

NOTE: This is a 360/VR video but you do not a VR viewer to experience the 360 viewpoint- just click around the video!
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2 to explore and document our solar system and the interstellar space beyond. The craft will drift for billions of years in the emptiness, each carrying a Golden Record inscribed with our message to any intelligent spacefaring civilization that discovers it.
Produced by Luke Groskin
VR/360 Direction by Jason Drakeford
Narrated by Annie Nero
Music by
Audio Network
Dark Was the Night – Blind Willie Johnson
Tchenhoukoumen – Charles Duvelle
Original Golden Record Images and Diagrams
F.D. Drake, Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, NASA, United Nations, Hale Observatory,
Wayne Miller/ Magnum Photos, David Harvey / Woodfin Camp Inc.,
1955 Life Magazine © Time Inc. 1947
The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum
The World Book Encyclopedia © Harper & Row Publishers Inc.
Ruby Mera / UNICEF, David Carroll, Stephen Dalton
F. D. Drake, Herman Eckelmann/ NAIC, Jon Lomberg
Gaston Rebuffat, Ray Manley/ Shostal Associates,
Isaac Newton, Lennart Nilsson, David Wickstrom
National Geographic Society Images
H. Edward Kim, William Albert Allard, Gordon W. Grahan,
James P. Blair, Thomas Nebbia, David Doubilet, Donna Grosvenor,
Joseph Scherschel, Goerge F. Mobley, Jodi Cobb

http://www.sciencefriday.com
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.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
In a basement laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, two roboticists have harnessed the innate sensing, swimming, and swarming abilities of bacteria to power microscopic robots. Even though their work sounds like the prologue to a dark science fiction film, Ph.D. students Elizabeth Beattie and Denise Wong hope these initial experiments with nano bio-robots will provide a platform for future medical and micro-engineering endeavors.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Footage ands Stills Provided by
Elizabeth Beattie
Denise Wong
Edward Steager
Prelinger Archives
Quentin Lindsey, Daniel Mellinger, and Vijay Kumar,
University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab

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

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.

http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions!
“If you're a cephalopod, you're super easy to eat,” says Sarah McAnulty, a squid biologist. “You're basically a swimming protein bar.” McAnulty studies a species of cephalopod called the Hawaiian bobtail squid. While most cephalopods have flashy adaptations to stay off predators’ dinner menus this particular squid relies on something that many other cephalopods don’t—its bacteria BFF.



Produced by Luke Groskin
Edited by Erika Sutter
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills Provided by Sarah McAnulty, Nyholm Lab, Pond5
Sacrificial Hemocyte Research Conducted by the Ruby-McFall-Ngai Lab

http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions!
Brett Grasse lovingly calls the Cephalopod Operations division at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) the “cephalopod empire.” The lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts houses roughly 2,000 to 3,000 cephalopods—likely the largest collection of cephalopods of any research laboratory. And it’s possible that one day, these creatures will be as ubiquitous in labs as mice or fruit flies.

Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills Provided by Bret Grasse and Taylor Sakmar

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Since the founding of colonial Jamestown, cockroaches have scuttled through the dark spaces of our homes and our nightmares. But just recently, a new roach has appeared on the New York scene; one with ability to tolerate the cold. What is this hearty roach and where did it come from? Join Rutgers University roach researchers as they unravel the clues to identify this intruder and what its emergence represents.
Produced by Emily Driscoll
Filmed by Stavros Basis
Lighting by Ben Effinger
Music by Audio Network
Narration by Travis
Additional video and Still courtesy of
Oswin Ambrice , Barcode of Life Data Systems , ELearningExamples.com, Joseph Evangelista, Shutterstock
Sydney King and National Park Service, Reto Stockli, NASA Earth Observatory, Peter Vransky, and Dusan Chorvat

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

Based outside of Seattle, Valid Cycles specializes in handcrafted bamboo bicycle frames. For bamboo to be bike-ready, it must be cooked in an oven, stripped, and sealed. But after that, the founders of Valid Cycles say the bikes last as long as metal ones. We stopped by their workshop -- a barn in Woodinville, Washington -- to see how the bikes are put together.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
For many of us, there are few creatures more nefarious and loathsome as leeches. But do these parasites deserve their bad reputation as mindless bloodsuckers? Dr. Mark Siddall a.k.a. "The Leech Guy," exposes our many misconceptions of these carnivorous worms and details his on-going research at the American Museum of Natural History into each species' unique cocktail of anti-clotting blood poisons.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage and Stills by Dr. Mark Siddall Shutterstock, Derek Morisson (C.C. 3.0), Alan Kuehner (C.C. 3.0), Rebecca VO (C.C. 3.0) Leo Kenney / Vernal Pool Association Steven Johnson, William Moser, Landcare Research – Manaaki Whenua

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Shots of Sandra Bullock floating through the Internation Space Station in "Gravity," inspired astronaut Don Pettit to share some of his own ISS footage.

Ira Flatow reads fan mail from Larkspur, Ca. He's in for a sweet surprise.

Reporting in Science, Gabriel Villar and colleagues say that tiny water droplets can be engineered to work together sort of like cells -- moving in concert, passing electrical signals. Villar built a machine that fabricates these pseudo-cellular networks while he was getting his Ph.D. in the departments of chemistry and physics at Oxford. He says that water droplet networks (with some major advancements) could be made into artificial tissues.

Study: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6128/48

More videos
Dive into the Physics of Splashing: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/02/06/2009/dive
Lab-Raised Heart: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/06/10/2011/lab-
March of the Immune Cells: http://www.sciencefriday.com/v....ideo/10/15/2010/marc