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At the University of Salford's Energy House, all the energy use is monitored and controlled, allowing researchers to experiment with all sorts of insulation and energy-saving techniques. But how to control for factors like sun, wind and rain? The solution: put the whole house inside an environmental chamber: a building inside a building that means the weather is controlled, repeatable, and part of the science. Thanks to all the team at the University of Salford's School of Built Environment: y

In Bremen, Germany, there's a tower more than a hundred metres high: it's called the Fallturm, or the Drop Tower. If you want a cost-effective way to test an experiment in microgravity -- and your project can survive some pretty strong deceleration -- then this might well be a good place for you. And then there's the slingshot... Thank you to all the team at the Drop Tower! More info: https://www.zarm.uni-bremen.de/drop-tower.html Behind the Scenes on the Park Bench: https://www.youtube.com/wa

At the University of Manchester's High Voltage Laboratory, we see what happens when a DJI Phantom 3 drone gets hit with an electrical impulse of 1.4MV - basically, a lightning strike. Actually, two Phantom 3 drones. We had a backup. Thanks to the team at the High Voltage Lab! Here's their side of the story: http://www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk/science-engineering/2017/04/10/drone-vs-lightning/ And here's a teardown of the drone: http://www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk/science-engineering/2017/05/11

The Mars Yard, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is one of the closest simulations of Mars that we've got. Admittedly, there's a bit more atmosphere and gravity, but it's the only way to test what might happen before sending commands to a rover that's light-minutes away. More about the Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity Rover: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/ -- and thanks to everyone at JPL who helped make this video possible! Behind the scenes on the Park Bench with Matt: https://www.you

The radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico can do something that most radio telescopes can't: it can transmit. And that's useful for something other than sending messages to the stars: it might just help save the world one day. More about the Arecibo Observatory: http://www.naic.edu/ Behind the Scenes, including helmet-cam footage of the walk to the telescope, over on the Park Bench: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZAWqk-wrzc Camera and audio mix: Matt Gray http://mattg.co

There's an MRI scanner in Cardiff that can look at how the brain's wired up: your connectome. It's nowhere close to science fiction singularity brain-uploading, but it might well be part of unlocking new medical treatments in the years to come. Thanks to Prof. Derek Jones, and to all the team at CUBRIC : http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/cubric/ -- and to the Cardiff University film crew with their gimballed camera! Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin) Brain scan images courtesy of CUBRIC & Sieme

Welcome to the US National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, where there's a giant freezer filled with 20km of ice cores from Greenland and the Antarctic. Here's why. Thanks to everyone at the US National Ice Core Laboratory! You can find out more about them here: http://icecores.org/ The Ice Core Laboratory is supported by the National Science Foundation: https://www.nsf.gov/ Edited by Michelle Martin, @mrsmmartin I'm at http://tomscott.com on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomscott o

I'm visiting the University of Iowa's National Advanced Driving Simulator, to answer a question: how unsafe is it for me to vlog while driving? Is vlogging while driving dangerous? The team at the simulator are the experts to ask. More about the National Advanced Driving Simulator: https://www.nads-sc.uiowa.edu/sim_nads1.php or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrivingSim Camera operator: Jasmine Putney Edited: Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin) I'm at http://tomscott.com on Twitter at http://twitte

The European Space Agency offered me a seat on their zero-g plane: it's an Airbus A310 that flies parabolic maneuvers, pulling up into the sky and then arcing back down, giving its passengers about 20 seconds of weightlessness (or "microgravity") at a time. Here's how it works. Some people would have filmed their script on the ground, and just messed about while floating. I decided to go for something a bit more challenging. ** If you're a masters or PhD student from an ESA member state, and

This week's guest video comes from Active Galactic Videos: go subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/ActiveGalacticVideos/ They got to walk on the dish of a telescope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lfXsN45088 At the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, under the football stadium of the University of Arizona, there's an enormous rotating furnace, keeping tonnes of glass heated as it forms the mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope. Here's a look inside!

In Göttingen, Germany, there's a four-tonne steel ball that can be raised up a 14-metre tower -- and then dropped in less than two seconds, crashing back to earth. It makes tiny, artificial earthquakes: here's why. Thanks to all the team at Wiechert'sche Erdbebenwarte Göttingen! You can find out more about them here: https://www.erdbebenwarte.de/ Three things I had to cut out of this video, because they didn't quite fit into the story or because I couldn't film them: The reason the steel ball

Thanks to the Starrship team for arranging this! I'm also over on their channel, flying with the Blades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWY3-1gOrxk • At the Royal Air Force training centrifuge in Farnbrough, pilots learn how to avoid G-LOC: g-induced loss of consciousness. Let's talk about g-force, about jerk, and about how to keep circulation flowing to your brain. FAQs: * Isn't 3.6g a really low g-tolerance? * Yep. Turns out I would not qualify to be a fighter pilot. The average range for g

If you're in Canada, you need good winter boots. But how do you know whether they're actually safe, or whether you'll fall over the first time you step on ice? This is WinterLab, part of the Challenging Environment Assessment Laboratories at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, where they're testing winter shoes with science. More about the lab and their ratings: http://www.ratemytreads.com/ Thanks to Evan from Rare Earth for being camera op! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtGG8ucQgEJPeUPhJ

At Reed College in Portland, Oregon, there's a TRIGA nuclear reactor, used for research. You can stand next to it and watch the blue glow from the bottom of a deep swimming pool. I had to visit. More about the reactor and about Reed College: https://reactor.reed.edu/ Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin) Post audio by Emi Paternostro (http://proximitysound.com) I'm at http://tomscott.com on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tomscott and on Snapchat an

The Global Vehicle Target is the new standard for testing autonomous driving and crash test systems. To cameras and radar, it looks like a car: but if you hit it, it'll fly apart. So if your emergency braking doesn't quite work... well, this is what happens. Thanks to everyone at Thatcham Research! You can find out more about them at https://www.thatcham.org/ and about the target at https://www.thatcham.org/car-safety/driver-assistance/ Filmed by Tomek: https://youtube.com/tomek Edited by Mich

Subscribe to Neuro Transmissions! https://www.youtube.com/user/neurotransmissions or start with their video on how to train a cat to high-five: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfsVw0ndFAQ We're all used to seeing MRI scans of brains. But how do they work? Can you really "see" brain activity, or read someone's mind? Alie and Micah from Neuro Transmissions went to get scanned -- and ended up having some fun with 3D printing, too.

The Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums is a collection of pigments, binders, and other art materials for researchers to use as standards: so they can tell originals from restorations from forgeries. It's not open to the public, because it's a working research library -- and because some of the pigments in there are rare, historic, or really shouldn't be handled by anyone untrained.

The Multi-Axes Rotation and Tilt Device (MART) is used for spatial orientation experiments: it's a chair balanced on a metaphorical knife-edge, powered by precise and fast motors. And my job was to not fall over.

In the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Laboratory at Brandeis University, there's the Artificial Gravity Facility: otherwise known as the rotating room. No-one's invented futuristic gravity plating yet, but if you want to test how humans would cope with artificial gravity, this is the best way.

At the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, the team at Mars Bioimaging are using detector equipment originally developed for the Large Hadron Collider, and putting it to a very different use: medical imaging that allows 3D, false-color images inside the human body.

If you invent a new theme park or amusement ride, how do you test it to make sure it's safe? There's no Federal Bureau of Zip Lines. I visited one of the companies that does just that sort of testing - and, now, inventing.

"Build some models" seems obvious: but this is a story of ingenuity, of using natural resources well, and of a country that humans dragged from the sea.

Turns out that trying to precisely detect fire from space is more difficult than "point a camera at it".

NERC's Space Geodesy Facility, hidden away in the English countryside, fires lasers at satellites. Because it turns out that knowing a satellite's position exactly is really, really difficult. More about the Facility: http://sgf.rgo.ac.uk/

In Lübeck, Germany, there's one of several eHighway test projects: overhead catenary wires, where electric trucks with pantographs can pull power directly from the grid. Thanks to everyone who gave so much time to make this video possible!

Every few months, when the wind's blowing in the right direction, a bottle of air is taken from Kennaook / Cape Grim, at the northern tip of Tasmania, and saved for science. Here's how and why.

At the Department of Collective Behaviour, part of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, researchers are putting locusts into simulated worlds, both virtual and physical, in the hope that they can figure out how devastating swarms form and move.

The asterisk is important. The Extremely Large Telescope, in Paranal, Chile, is probably going to be the largest optical telescope that will ever be constructed. I was invited out there by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and the European Southern Observatory, and I wasn't going to turn down a chance like that.