
Epic Vault
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Wild numbers, interesting stories, and observations worth talking about.
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That's a ship riding up and over a tsunami off the coast of Japan. On 11 March 2011 a magnitude 9.0 to 9.1 earthquake struck off Tohoku. In deep water a tsunami may be only about a metre high, passing under ships unnoticed at over 800 km/h. Near shore it slows and its height grows enormously, possibly reaching up to 40.5 m at Miyako. I can't picture the nerve it took to steer straight into that.
Epic Vault1,577,390 görüntüleme • 9 gün önce

Months of winter in a barn, then the doors finally open onto fresh grass. In Denmark organic dairies hold an open day each spring so crowds can watch the herds bolt into the fields. Dairy cows in the Netherlands and the UK have been filmed dancing too, and a cattle expert told NPR that cows get lively whenever something new or unexpected happens. Most relatable animal on the internet.
Epic Vault235,526 görüntüleme • 7 gün önce

“Hard practice is nothing compared to guidance from the right teacher”
Epic Vault2,571,755 görüntüleme • 5 ay önce
1:58
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France's last public execution, and the crowd is a big reason it was the last. Eugen Weidmann, convicted of six murders, was guillotined outside Saint-Pierre Prison in Versailles on 17 June 1939. It ran late into daylight, so photographers got clear images and someone filmed it. Papers described a disgusting, unruly crowd, and President Albert Lebrun immediately banned public executions. I'm convinced the camera did more to end the practice than any speech could.
Epic Vault205,777 görüntüleme • 20 gün önce

This foam can hit about 75 °C with concentrated peroxide. Not a bare hands demo. Hydrogen peroxide slowly breaks down into water and oxygen. A catalyst like potassium iodide speeds that up enormously, and soap traps the oxygen as foam. Every kids' science fair should have it, goggles and gloves on.
Epic Vault258,354 görüntüleme • 28 gün önce

The dog thought he was being returned to the shelter but he was actually going to...
Epic Vault1,592,255 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce

Pulling the pin doesn't set off a grenade. The pin only frees the lever. Once it's thrown, the lever releases a striker that hits a primer, lighting a delay fuze that burns down to the detonator. The layout goes back to the Mills bomb, patented in 1915. Its delay was cut from seven seconds to four after a long fuse gave defenders time to throw it back. A First World War design is still the standard, and that never stops amazing me.
Epic Vault96,888 görüntüleme • 18 gün önce

Irish coffee started as a chef's improvisation at a flying boat terminal in Ireland. Joe Sheridan, head chef at Foynes, added whiskey to arriving passengers' coffee in 1942 or 1943. Travel writer Stanton Delaplane tasted it at Shannon Airport and got the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco serving it on November 10, 1952. If the cream sinks, I don't count it as Irish coffee.
Epic Vault158,114 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

A copper saw can't cut granite on its own. The metal is far softer than the stone. The trick is that the blade was never really doing the cutting. Stonemason Roger Hopkins tried copper chisels on granite for NOVA and found he was losing a lot of metal while very little stone came off. Tool specialist Denys Stocks, who spent about two decades recreating Egyptian tools, came at it differently. Pour sand into the groove, set a copper blade on top, and drag it back and forth. Quartz sand is about as hard as granite, so the grains grind the groove deeper with every stroke. It works, slowly. In Stocks' tests, wetting the sand didn't make it cut any faster, it just made the saw harder to pull. Rough quarrying was even blunter. At the Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan, archaeologists believe quarrymen pounded trenches with lumps of dolerite and hauled the dust out in baskets. Before seeing this, what did you assume the Egyptians used to cut granite?
Epic Vault81,823 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce
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Husband does a demo to explain why men can’t aim straight at the toilet 🚽
Epic Vault109,220 görüntüleme • 6 ay önce

A Stirling engine burns no fuel inside itself. It runs on nothing but a difference in temperature. The same sealed gas stays inside forever. Heat one end and it expands and pushes a piston, then it gets shuffled to the cool side, contracts and pulls back. Scottish minister Robert Stirling patented the idea in 1816, and small versions can run on the warmth of a hand. I'm surprised these aren't on every desk.
Epic Vault15,530 görüntüleme • 22 gün önce
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