3 Awesome Science Things to Show Your Kid Today

Every day the internet gifts us a weird, wonderful mix of videos, GIFs, and memes, the best of which offer funny, informative, horizon-expanding stuff to share with your kids. Problem is, it takes a while to wade through all the other nonsense to find them. And who has time for that? Not you. Here, then, is a daily dose of cool new science content to share with your kids — and keep you in the viral-loop. Today’s finds include a first hand look at silicone spinning, a what a volcano eruption looks like from space.

Silicone Spin

Why is it so addicting to watch silicone being fed into a rolling machine? It sort of looks like it’s being turned into a giant Fruit by the Foot, right? Well, actually, it’s a glimpse of part of the rubber making process in which Liquid Silicone Rubber is passed through the rollers again and again in order to heat it up. It’s sort of like how bakers knead dough before sending it into the oven. This is also the process in color is added and, presumably, when the worker tries not to get his fingers stuck.

Fly Me to the Moon

Motion designer Christian Stangl spent more than a year making Lunar, a short film that “tells the story of the Space Race post-Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin by focusing on the Apollo project and everything those brave souls accomplished while away from our Pale Blue Dot.” It’s only about 7 minutes long but it’s stunning design — including incredibly beautiful flyover shots and a lifelike rendering of the moon’s surface, are guaranteed to ignite the space race inside anyone remotely interested in life away from earth.

Explosions in the Sky

It’s incredible what happens when you change your perspective, isn’t it? Like this 2009 photo of the Sarychev Volcano on Matua Island in the Kuril Islands, taken safely from the International Space Station. Shown from above and captured in time, the main white cloud of gas, cloaked in soot and dust, almost looks like an alien spaceship taking off with plumes of ignition smoke around it. It brings beauty to a normally catastrophic event.