MinutePhysics
is a series of videos on YouTube made by Henry Reich, a graduate of Grinnell College. They are physics-themed videos done in the form of Reich drawing pictures of things he talks about, and narrating. The title is an Artifact Title of when the videos were supposed to be only 1 minute long, but they are now usually 4-7 minutes long.
On October 2011, Henry launched a second channel, MinuteEarth, a Spin-Off channel explaining about the Earth, including but not limited to climate change, geography and biology.
MinutePhysics provides examples of:
- Antimatter: This video explains how it really works.
- Artifact Title:
- The title MinutePhysics originally referred to the fact that all of the videos were approximately 1 minute long, but now, the videos are usually 4-7 minutes long. Some videos are even over 10-15 minutes long.
- Some videos discuss things that have nothing to do with physics at all, such as the ones about Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe and the London Bridge. In these videos, the "Physics" in the title is crossed out and replaced with whatever topic the video is about, e.g. "Lingustics" or "History".
- Pure math (i.e. without any applications to physics) is a recurring subject in some videos.
- Art Shift: "How to Discover Weird New Particles" has some scenes where Legos are used to represent the particles.
- Crossover:
- They made a video with Michael Stevens from Vsauce discussing what would it be like if the Earth were hollow. At the end, the video links to Vsauce's own video "Guns in Space", which links back to the MinutePhysics video, which links back to the Vsauce video, which links back to the MinutePhysics video, which links back to...
- They made a video with xkcd explaining how to go to space, using the ten hundred words people use the most.
- A collaboration video was made with another educational Youtube channel called 3 Blue 1 Brown. The video is over 15 minutes long, which is about the average length of a 3 Blue 1 Brown video.
- They made a video with Michael Stevens from Vsauce discussing what would it be like if the Earth were hollow
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The video "The Hairy Ball Theorem", which is about the topological theorem of that name which states that you can't comb a ball totally flat if it's covered entirely with hair. He then goes on to say things like "don't go wasting your time playing around with a hairy ball to try to prove this wrong". At the end, he says that, since the theorem applies not only to balls but any 3-dimensional objects without any holes, the next time a mathematician gives you trouble, you should ask them if they can comb a hairy banana.
- In "Ye Olde Debunking", the word "thorn" is sometimes written as "þorn" (using the "thorn/th" letter).
- Double Entendre: Most of the things Henry says in "The Hairy Ball Theorem". See Does This Remind You of Anything? above.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Grandfather Paradox", a picture of a certain British boyband appears briefly as Henry mentions that time as we know so far only moves in one direction.
- Grandfather Paradox: A solution is given in this video: the "grandfather dies and you are not born" and "grandfather lives and you are born" situations actually happens simultaneously in a quantum superposition.
- Hurl It into the Sun: This video deconstructs it by explaining why doing this is actually harder than it is supposed to be: while the Earth is pulled by the Sun, the Earth also orbits it fast (30 km/second, or 67000 mph), and to drop a thing from the Earth to the Sun you have to lose that superfast orbital speed. There are some alternatives, though: either go to the outskirts of the Solar System (where the orbital speed to shed is lower, since the gravity pull is weaker) or use gravitational assists to slow down and/or direct the thing into the Sun.
- No-Dialogue Episode: "Proof Without Words -- The Circle", which has no narration but still has the background music.
- Nursery Rhyme: They rewrite "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to make the portrayal of stars more scientifically accurate.
- Special Guest:
- "Why Stones Are Round?" features Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal creator Zach Weiner as guest illustrator.
- Some videos are guest-narrated by physicist Sean Carroll.
- Several videos are guest-narrated by Neil Turok, South African physicist and Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
- Quite a few videos are guest-narrated by none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
- "Is the Universe Entirely Mathematical?" has Swedish-American cosmologist and MIT professor Max Tegmark as guest narrator.
- Hannah Hart from My Drunk Kitchen sings the botched "London Bridge" tune in "London Bridge Was Sold to the US!?"
- "Why Stones Are Round?"
- Stick Figure Animation: Humans (and cats and sheep) are drawn as stick figures. They even made a video explaining how to draw a stick figure.
- Teleportation: Explained here; teleportation actually exists in the quantum scale, albeit in the Destructive Teleportation sense.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The "ye" part is explained in "Ye Olde Debunking"; there used to be a glyph for "th", called "thorn" ("þ"), but when the glyph got dropped out of usage, the letter "y" is assumed instead because it looks like the "thorn" in handwritings.
