The Impossible Motion Contraption

in Physics, Science, Video - Science | January 11th, 2011

Every year, The New Sci­en­tist spon­sors an illu­sion con­test, and, above, we have the win­ner of the 2010 edi­tion: A con­trap­tion cre­at­ed by Kou­kichi Sug­i­hara (Mei­ji Insti­tute for Advanced Study of Math­e­mat­i­cal Sci­ences, Japan) that appears to defy grav­i­ty, allow­ing wood­en balls to roll up slopes. But, in actu­al fact “the ori­en­ta­tions of the slopes are per­ceived oppo­site­ly, and hence the descend­ing motion is mis­in­ter­pret­ed as ascend­ing motion.” You can now make sub­mis­sions to the 2011 edi­tion.

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A Brief History of Product Placement in Movies

in Film | January 11th, 2011

Prod­uct place­ment — it became com­mon­place dur­ing the 1980s, but it has a much longer his­to­ry, one that goes right back to the begin­ning of film. Oliv­er Noble’s video light­ly (empha­sis on light­ly) traces the evo­lu­tion of con­spic­u­ous prod­uct place­ment in film. A lit­tle tale of the not-so-good, the bad and the ugly…

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Oxford English Dictionary Free

in e-books | January 10th, 2011

Def­i­nite­ly worth a quick men­tion. The Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, oth­er­wise known sim­ply as the OED, can be accessed for free until Feb­ru­ary 5. This gives you access to 600,000 words, 3 mil­lion quo­ta­tions, over 1000 years of Eng­lish. In brief, the author­i­ty on the Eng­lish lan­guage. To access the dic­tio­nary, sim­ply login with trynewoed as both the user­name and pass­word.

Note: Kaplan Pub­lish­ing has extend­ed its free ebook offer until Jan­u­ary 17. If you know any­one get­ting ready to take the SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc., then please send them to this page for more infor­ma­tion.

via Kot­tke

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World’s Smallest Periodic Table on a Human Hair

in Science, Video - Science | January 10th, 2011

Fun with sci­ence. The world’s small­est peri­od­ic table etched onto a strand of hair belong­ing to chem­istry Pro­fes­sor Mar­tyn Poli­akoff (Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham). This clip comes from the Peri­od­ic Videos col­lec­tion and it comes rec­om­mend by the great @OliverSacks.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Shows How the Ele­ments Get Used in Mak­ing Every­day Things

A Peri­od­ic Table Visu­al­iz­ing the Year & Coun­try in Which Each Ele­ment Was Dis­cov­ered

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Pre­sent­ed as Inter­ac­tive Haikus

The Peri­od­ic Table of Endan­gered Ele­ments: Visu­al­iz­ing the Chem­i­cal Ele­ments That Could Van­ish Before You Know It

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Arduino Documentary: Open Source Hardware is Here

in Film, Technology | January 10th, 2011

Open Source, it’s not just for soft­ware. It’s for hard­ware too. The new film, Arduino: The Doc­u­men­tary, revis­its a project launched in the Ital­ian town of Ivrea back in 2005. The chal­lenge? To devel­op cheap, easy-to-use elec­tron­ics com­po­nents for design stu­dents. (You can get into the tech­ni­cal side of things here.) The mes­sage? Geek.com sum­ma­rizes it well: “we are about to see an explo­sion of hard­ware devices that come from bed­room tin­ker­ers and stu­dent projects.” Note: A Span­ish ver­sion of the film is avail­able here, and they’re all released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.

Arduino: The Doc­u­men­tary will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Two Men: A Kafka Inspired Short Film

in Film, Literature | January 10th, 2011

Two Men, a short film direct­ed by Dominic Allen, takes an old philo­soph­i­cal sto­ry by Franz Kaf­ka, one set in Europe of course, and adapts it to a con­tem­po­rary Abo­rig­i­nal Aus­tralian con­text, using indige­nous “non actors.” In rework­ing Kafka’s tale (read the orig­i­nal text here), Allen hoped to “affirm an ele­ment of human­i­ty’s com­mon­al­i­ty” … and “rein­force Kafka’s point that it’s impos­si­ble to ever tru­ly know anoth­er’s moti­va­tions.” Made in 2009, the film has since been screened at film fes­ti­vals in New York, Prague, Lon­don, and Syd­ney, and the film earned Allen the “Emerg­ing Aus­tralian Film­mak­er Prize” at the Mel­bourne Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val last year.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kaf­ka: The Ani­mat­ed Short Film

Prague’s Franz Kaf­ka Inter­na­tion­al Named World’s Most Alien­at­ing Air­port

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17-Year-Old Joan Baez Performs at Famous “Club 47” in Cambridge, MA (1958)

in Music | January 9th, 2011

The video above brings you way back (we think) to 1958, when Joan Baez was only 17, to a con­cert she played at the leg­endary Club 47 in Cam­bridge, Mass. While the teenage ingénue broke onto the folk scene, Bob Dylan was still a stu­dent back in Hib­bing, Min­neso­ta. Five years lat­er, Baez intro­duced Dylan to the music world; the two dat­ed for a while; and then, even while going their sep­a­rate ways, they put their stamp on the 60s folk scene – a sto­ry that gets well doc­u­ment­ed in the book, Pos­i­tive­ly 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fari­na and Richard Fari­na. If you click here, you can watch Baez, now in her prime, per­form a com­plete con­cert in 1965. The show runs 65 min­utes and fea­tures 18 songs.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Guthrie’s Fan Let­ter To John Cage and Alan Hov­haness (1947)

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

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The Greatest Composers: According to You & The New York Times

in Music | January 8th, 2011

Antho­ny Tom­masi­ni, the chief music crit­ic for the New York Times, has start­ed the year with a play­ful way of find­ing out “what makes great music great?” To answer the ques­tion, he has invit­ed read­ers to make a list of the Top 10 com­posers in his­to­ry. And that invites answers to a series of sec­ondary ques­tions: “Should influ­ence mat­ter, or just the works them­selves? What about pop­u­lar­i­ty? Are there any objec­tive cri­te­ria?” The Times will actu­al­ly post a bal­lot next week. (Keep an eye on the Arts­Beat blog.) But, in the mean­time, Tom­masi­ni has kicked off the project by post­ing a video (above) focus­ing on the tow­er­ing Baroque com­pos­er, J.S. Bach. And, speak­ing of Bach, don’t miss our pre­vi­ous post show­ing where you can down­load the com­plete organ works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach for free.  Thanks to Joshua and Robin for the tip on the NYTimes project!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.