Silicone oil droplets provide a physical realization of pilot wave theories.
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Huge thanks to:
Dr. Stephane Perrard, Dr Matthieu Labousse, Pr Emmanuel Fort, Pr Yves Couder and their group site http://dualwalkers.com/
Prof. John Bush: http://math.mit.edu/~bush/
Dr. Daniel Harris
Prof. Stephen Bartlett
Looking Glass Universe: http://bit.ly/LGUVe
Workgroup Bohemian Mechanics: http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~bohmmech/
Filmed by Raquel Nuno

Thanks to Patreon supporters:
Nathan Hansen, Bryan Baker, Donal Botkin, Tony Fadell, Saeed Alghamdi

Thanks to Google Making and Science for helping me pursue my #sciencegoals. If you want to try this experiment, instructions are here: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12650-016-0383-5

The standard theory of quantum mechanics leaves a bit to be desired. As Richard Feynman put it, “I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics.” This is because observations of experiments have led us to a theory that contradicts common sense. The wave function contains all the information that is knowable about a particle, yet it can only be used to calculate probabilities of where a particle will likely turn up. It can’t give us an actual account of where the particle went or where it will be at some later time.

Some have suggested that this theory is incomplete. Maybe something is going on beneath the radar of standard quantum theory and somehow producing the appearance of randomness and uncertainty without actually being random or uncertain. Theories of this sort are called hidden variable theories because they propose entities that aren’t observable. One such theory is pilot wave theory, first proposed by de Broglie, but later developed by Bohm. The idea here is that a particle oscillates, creating a wave. It then interacts with the wave and this complex interaction determines its motion.

Experiments using silicone oil droplets on a vibrating bath provide a remarkable physical realization of pilot wave theories. They give us a physical picture of what the quantum world might look like if this is what’s going on – and this theory is still deterministic. The particle is never in two places at once and there is no randomness.

Edited by Robert Dahlem

Sound design by A Shell in the Pit

The best and worst predictions in science are both based on the same underlying physics
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Prof. Brian Schmidt
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Prof. Geraint Lewis

More on this topic: http://wke.lt/w/s/XDkwi

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Virtual particles are a way of talking about fields and their interactions as though particles are doing all the work. This is why there is some controversy around using the term ‘virtual particles’. Some people think the term is useful, especially since in calculating with Feynman diagrams you draw all the particle interactions that are possible (and then do the calculations to get the right answer). While others feel this terminology is misleading because virtual particles don’t behave like real particles and can’t be observed.

Mounting evidence suggests a lot of published research is false.
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Patreon supporters:
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More information on this topic: http://wke.lt/w/s/z0wmO

The Preregistration Challenge: https://cos.io/prereg/

Resources used in the making of this video:

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False:
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Trouble at the Lab:
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

Science isn’t broken:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1

Visual effects by Gustavo Rosa

How can you Yo-Yo without the string attached?
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For more on yo-yos check out: http://bit.ly/290wR3a

How to yo-yo without a string attached… So many crazy tricks and the science that makes it possible.

Edited and animated by Daniel Joseph Files

Celsius never devised nor used the scale that now bears his name.

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Special thanks to Michael Stevens of Vsauce! http://youtube.com/vsauce1

More info about Celsius and temperature scales: http://wke.lt/w/s/2I6Nu

References for this video:

A History of the Thermometer and its uses in Meteorology by W. E. Knowles Middleton

Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold by Tom Shachtman

The Science of Measurement, A Historical Survey by Herbert Arthur Klein

Lehrbuch der Chemie by Jöns Jakob Berzelius

Special Thanks to the Uppsala University Museum
I filmed this in Uppsala in the summer of 2012! So I’ve been thinking about this idea for a very long time. I’m glad to finally have it out there in the world.

A rare look inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault which is closed ~350 days a year
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More info on the seed vault: http://wke.lt/w/s/EKFlK
My trip to Norway was funded by Screen Australia, Film Victoria and Genepool Productions as part of a new project. More information soon.

Special thanks to Bente Naeverdal and the Crop Trust: https://www.croptrust.org

Longyearbyen on Svalbard is the northernmost settlement with over 1000 residents
My trip to Norway was funded by Screen Australia, Film Victoria and Genepool Productions as part of a new project. More information soon.

More info on Svalbard: http://wke.lt/w/s/yiYNC

Music licensed from http://www.cuesongs.com “After Catalunya”
Spotify page: https://play.spotify.com/artist/2JnQ2AxkaRjlGCNmfkHiJd
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/emphemetry/id414183064

Captions:
Come take a walk with me around Longyearbyen, the largest town on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard.

Parts of it look familiar, but make no mistake, this place is different.

At 78 degrees North, it lies just 800 miles or 1300 kilometres from the North Pole. And with over 2,000 permanent inhabitants it is the Northernmost real town on Earth.

There are only 50km of road, including the small streets between houses, so people get around the island mainly on snowmobile.

In fact there are more registered snowmobiles than residents.

Anyone leaving town is required to travel with a gun and someone who knows how to use it because the islands are also home to polar bears.

The average daytime high is below freezing for all but four months of the year, and from the end of October to mid-February the sun doesn’t rise at all. This is the long polar night.

Living here is tough. This past December an avalanche in town destroyed 10 homes, which used to be here, killing two people.

So how did this cold, remote, ice-covered archipelago come to be inhabited?

The hills around town are rich in coal deposits that have been mined for over 100 years.

The coal was transported to the port via a series of aerial tramways some of which remain today, though they are no longer operational.

Coal is a reminder that Svalbard was not always an Arctic ice world. 360 million years ago it was actually in the tropics North of the equator. A swampy area, it was covered with the precursors to modern ferns, which were much larger than they are today, reaching 10-30 metres in height.

This vegetation was then covered in mud and sand and submerged under the sea. Over time it turned into the coal deposits that in the 20th century brought miners from Norway, Russia, and the US.

Most of the coal mines have now closed and the economy is gradually shifting towards tourism, education and research.

Tourists take trips on snowmobiles and dog sleds.

There is a university centre in Svalbard, which offers semester courses in biology, physics and geology.

And up on the side of a mountain is the Svalbard Global seed vault… but that’s a story for another time.

The locals tell me that interest in the region from different nations is increasing.

As the globe warms and Arctic ice shrinks, trade routes are opening up across the North. And Svalbard is strategically placed between North America, Asia and Europe.

One day in the future Svalbard may no longer be as cold or remote as it once was.

But for now it is a reminder of how through our ingenuity people can live in the most inhospitable of places.

Shot with a DJI Phantom 4 drone

We also made a video about laser cooling! http://bit.ly/PhysGirl
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Check out Beyond Slow Motion: http://bit.ly/VeBeyondSlowMo
More on this topic: http://wke.lt/w/s/ef3eV

Special thanks to Laser Away in Santa Monica for helping make this happen – your staff was awesome! http://bit.ly/VeLaserAway

Research and filming by Raquel Nuno and Aaron White.

A story is worth a thousand data points.
My second channel: http://bit.ly/2veritasium
More info on this topic: http://wke.lt/w/s/TzNC0

Why do droplets of food coloring attract, repel, and chase each other?
Snatoms molecular models: http://igg.me/at/snatoms
More about this topic: http://wke.lt/w/s/VRjRQ

Original paper on droplets: http://stanford.edu/~manup/docs/Cira_DancingDroplets.pdf
Marangoni Flow: http://web.mit.edu/2.21/www/Lec-notes/Surfacetension/Lecture4.pdf
Surface Energy: https://itf.fys.kuleuven.be/~joi/papers/Wettingandspreading.pdf

Filming and master pipetting by Raquel Nuno
Research and writing by Aaron White