Sigma Pi Sigma Favorites: YouTube Science

By:

Jana Washington, SPS Education Intern

In today’s world, where technology is the main source of information sharing, people snap videos and upload them without thinking all the time; it’s almost second nature to many millennials and Generation Z. From cute videos of kittens to product reviews, YouTube is a wildly popular platform for sharing everything people want to see (and some things people don’t want to see!). It’s also become a great outlet for sharing science with the next generation.
The SPS National Office asked Sigma Pi Sigma members and SPS students to share their favorite science YouTuber channel. Among them, some have millions of subscribers, some are crash courses for general college classes, and others are focused on specific topics like the science behind beauty products or debunking common misconceptions about
the world.

Here are the top results:

Physics Girl, also known as Dianna Cowern, uses her channel to comment on and explain cool physics concepts. She aims to make science more accessible to everyone, including women and girls. Her super-successful videos earned her a place in the Forbes 30 Under 30 education category and won the top video prize from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.

Veritasium, a YouTube channel run by science communicator and filmmaker Derek Muller, shares videos that he says are “simply based on truth”. Focusing on scientific misconceptions, great songs, and fun experiments to test viewers’ scientific logic and reason, Muller’s channel has accumulated over six million subscribers!

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell focuses on explaining concepts about the universe through science, with infographics. From the concepts of loneliness and optimistic nihilism, to string theory and what would happen if we brought the Sun to Earth, the channel is ideal for the wandering mind, or for someone who just wants to look at awesome infographics.

MinutePhysics, created by Henry Reich (one of the 2016 PhysCon workshop leaders), explains physical science concepts and theories in terms that everyone can understand in five minutes or less. The clear narration and quirky cartoon drawings of MinutePhysics have acquired quite a large following and led to collaborative videos with other science YouTubers too. Check out the channel to learn about the physics of caramel and the shape of space!

Here are a few other YouTubers that members enjoyed viewing as well:

Vsauce: Created by Michael Stevens and now split into three different channels, Vsauce aims to answer questions about the universe through thinking, finding, and playing.

SmarterEveryDay: This channel is run by Destin Sandlin, who simply wants to get smarter every day and hopes that through his channel, you will too!

Andrew Dotson: Dotson’s channel focuses on what it’s like to be a physics student. Topics go from applying to graduate schools to explaining complex theories. Ultimately, Dotson’s channel offers tips and tricks to survive the undergraduate physics major.