I'm Brian Haidet - PhD in Materials Science, but I'd also describe myself as artist, maker, and Hawaiian shirt enthusiast. On this channel, You'll find my side projects and favorite physics demos - I hope you enjoy!
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25:13412K views · 1mo ago · 25:13
More backyard slomo critters that have nerd-sniped me! Today we're looking at tree frogs on glass - how they stick, when they don't, when they catch moths, and... when they don't. Turns out these frogs are not graceful hunters when slowed down 50x, but they're still awesome. The physics behind their phenomenal adhesion is very unique, and the biology of their prey-tracking behavior is very unexpected.
37:511M views · 4mo ago · 37:51
Today we're talking about shockwaves! Shockwaves and sound waves, and machines that create an arc that dumps enough energy into a bit of gas it can create shockwaves that travel tens of kilometers per second, make the air molecules split apart, react with each other, and glow! It's pretty amazing!
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27:39617K views · 9mo ago · 27:39
Today we're talking about gravity! From classical Newtonian gravity to General Relativity, I want to explain a key bit of physics called the equivalence principle: Why gravitational mass and inertial mass have the same value, or said differently, why heavy things are hard to push. The primary trick here is that general relativity allows us to predict "where to put the camera" to define an inertial reference frame.
📖 Mentioned book: INERTA
29:226M views · 1y ago · 29:22
I've upgraded! It took almost a year, but today I finally get to show off a TWO billion frame per second camera! I really want to record refraction, interference, and other awesome stuff with this camera, but today I'm looking into a really strange quirk of the speed of light. In a way, understanding this weird phenomenon is kind of a prerequisite for everything else I want to do with this camera - I hope you find it as interesting as I have!
Topics: Bouncing light is actually complicated! · The mirror · The optics train · The sensor · The cables? · Seeing the past
35:291.3M views · 1y ago · 35:29
Theoretically, it should be possible to measure the weight of a flying object from far below that object - by measuring the air that object displaced when it pushes on the ground. I HAD to know if this was realistically possible, so I set about building a very large scale to measure paper airplanes and flying playing cards. After getting successful measurements, I decided to go full scale with real airplanes.
Topics: A "large scale" experiment · Load cells · Poor man's orthogrid · Wait... Something's wrong · Pressure shadow · Curved flights and playing cards
22:45231K views · 1y ago · 22:45
Today I get to show off the results of my most recent high-speed filming obsession. I wanted to understand the airflow around a flying playing card - when you flick or throw a card across a room like a frisbee. Now in glorious 1500-7500ish fps video, we get wingtip effects, oscillatory vortex shedding, and gyroscopic effects. I hope you enjoy, cause I certainly had fun filming it!
Topics: Wingtip vortices · Conservation of momentum · Trailing instabilities · Turbulence · Gyroscopic precession · oops
29:081.5M views · 1y ago · 29:08
So apparently buying a high speed camera wasn't enough, because after two videos with it I decided to build my own, but 5 orders of magnitude faster... In this video I'm filming the motion of light as it flies across my garage at... well, the speed of light! It's fast.
Topics: Watch light move · Forming an image from many observations · Time-of-flight delay · The light has to turn on fast · The sensor has to turn on fast · Photomultiplier tubes
▶️ Mentioned videos: Electricity waves · Electricity waves (experimental details) · Replicating the original speed of light measurement · Video on youtube.com
28:00553K views · 2y ago · 28:00
I finally rebuilt a project from 13 years ago... except this time I have a high speed camera! Today we're exploring waves, and how VERY careful timing of those waves can build into resonance. I've got a bunch of fun high-speed demos of waves on strings, many of which certainly fell into the "man I really just wanted to see this work, but now that I have it, it will be a great video" category :D
Topics: Building resonance with a DIY wave machine · Resonance is sensitive · MULTIPLE waves on a string? · Standing wave hero shot · Tesla's Earthquake Machine · Exponential decay
36:34653K views · 2y ago · 36:34
Welcome back, and I hope you enjoy this mess of a three-year project... It turns out backing up in a cellular automaton can be an insanely difficult problem. This started as a "play button" project, but turned into an obsession. I recently came to the conclusion that there's no long-term winning this game (it has been shown to be NP hard, so I don't feel that bad) but AGH it should be easier than it is!
Topics: Conway's Game of Life · Playing GoL in reverse is hard · How to think in more dimensions · Drawing maps (both real and configurational) · The failure of gradient ascent · SAT solvers (dark CS magic)
16:52551K views · 2y ago · 16:52
Join me in pursuit of one of the coolest critters anywhere (but I seem to have an abundance of them here in NC) - Dragonflies! In this video I'm breaking down dragonfly flight with a high-speed camera. Dragonflies are some pretty incredible insects, and the way they fly (or more accurately - the multiple ways they fly!) are fascinating. I hope you enjoy this journey to film, then understand, dragonfly flight in my backyard.
28:15798K views · 2y ago · 28:15
This is a sequel to my last "ink tube" video, but this time I explain the title of the project, "the entropy of mixing". Entropy is a super weird topic, so I hope this makes sense, and I hope you enjoy! birdiesnbritts John Sosa Trustham Vladimir Shklovsky Aloysius Sparglepartz Jason Whatley Lohann Paterno Coutinho Ferreira Jeffrey Mckishen nothings Eugene Pakhomov Glenn Willen R520 Nick F Mirko Rener Chris Connett Tyler Filla Miles Freeman Benjamin Manns
Topics: The second law of thermodynamics · Flipping coins · Marble tracking analysis · Osmosis · Microstates, multiplicity, and entropy · REVERSE osmosis
22:26246K views · 2y ago · 22:26
This project has been kicking around in my head for years and I finally got around to building it! (Freshly inspired to make ordering/stochastic art after someone sent me a video of Ivan Miranda's awesome marble clock.) This machine separates ink from water with a reverse osmosis membrane, then mixes the ink and water back together again. It sounds circular and useless, and it is, but it's also really cool!
Topics: What does it do? · Water is clear · Turbulent flow · Laminar flow · Fluid motion tracking · Project origin
26:293M views · 2y ago · 26:29
In this video, I measure a wave of electricity traveling down a wire, and answer the question - how does electricity know where to go? How does "electricity" "decide" where electrons should be moving in wires, and how long does that process take? Spoiler alert - very fast!
Topics: a hypothetical question · Measurement difficulties · Individual oscilloscope traces · Electricity moves through Y circuit · The single wire experiment – how electrons move · Electrons hitting a dead end
▶️ Mentioned videos: Slomoguys clip used with permission. Thanks Gav!
39:282.3M views · 3y ago · 39:28
In this video, I try to explain electricity Ohm's Law... using a LOT of different demonstrations and analogies. I've been working on this script for like a year and a half now - this took SO long to assemble because electricity is an absolute pain to learn and to explain. I crammed every analogy to describe electricity I could think of into this video (which is why it's... oof... 40 minutes... who's going to watch this?).
Topics: Current · Resistance · Voltage · The water Channel Model · Power and Energy · Clarifications
15:30132K views · 3y ago · 15:30
My last video about 3D printed mirrors A completely different method for obtaining 3D printed mirrors via electroplating that I didn't talk about here but is very cool The cool video I referenced about splines - relevant G2 continuity bit at 27:49 (but watch the whole thing!)
▶️ Mentioned videos: Video on youtube.com · Video on youtube.com · Video on youtube.com · Video on youtube.com
22:451.8M views · 3y ago · 22:45
Ever wonder how electrons know where they are going? Electricity is a pretty mystifying topic, because electricity seems to be able to do impossible things, or at least things that don't make sense at a normal "human" scale. In this video I use a thermal camera to show electric current through a maze made of aluminum foil. The electric current very efficiently solves the maze, which is awesome, and heats up the "solution" so we can see it!
▶️ Mentioned videos: Video on youtube.com · Video on youtube.com · Video on youtube.com
6:4986K views · 3y ago · 6:49
I needed better home internet, so I used a plastic bag and a long string. Please DON'T try this at home. It works here, but there are a lot of ways you can screw up your house doing this. Music in this video I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (
27:40437K views · 3y ago · 27:40
Do you ever wonder how lasers work? What makes them different from other sources of light? The answer "stimulated emission" is frequently given, but even more important is achieving "population inversion". In this video I try to explain both, starting from ground level (no pun intended). Specifically, I describe the functionality of my cnc CO2 laser cutter.
24:26889K views · 4y ago · 24:26
The electrons are back! This is the first of three videos discussing electricity - what is it, how does it work, how do we use it? This first installment talks about the speed of electricity and electrical signals in wires.
54:35387K views · 4y ago · 54:35
I've had piles and piles of questions about the research that I did in gradschool, so here it is! Be careful what you wish for... About a year ago I defended my dissertation from UCSB in Materials, exploring, among other things, growth of a semiconductor called lead selenide, a narrow-gap material with a bright (ba-dum-tss) future in the realm of infrared optoelectronics. I hope you enjoy!
23:406.2M views · 4y ago · 23:40
Today's video is about my favorite microscope ever. I did a lot of work in gradschool on this STEM, or Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope, and today I get to share how it works! Extra thanks to the Materials Department at UCSB for letting me film in the lab!
19:5094K views · 4y ago · 19:50
Hey everyone! it's been nearly a month since the eclipse and I'm FINALLY ready to publish my timelapse - you'll see why it took so long in this video... I set up two cameras and did an extremely crude high dynamic range stack that is able to resolve some detail on the sunlit moon, and some detail on the shadowed moon, simultaneously.
5:28176K views · 4y ago · 5:28
I built a Turboencabulator! Inspiration from Bud Haggert, who I first saw explain this fantastic machine while I was on a robotics team in high school Music in this video I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license ( Arcadia - Wonders by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license ( Source: Artist
▶️ Mentioned videos: Video on youtube.com
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