— In which John Green teaches you about the Industrial Economy that arose in the United States after the Civil War. You know how when you’re studying history, and you’re reading along and everything seems safely in the past, and then BOOM you think, “Man, this suddenly seems very modern.” For me, that moment in…
Polar & Non-Polar Molecules: Crash Course Chemistry #23
— Molecules come in infinite varieties, so in order to help the complicated chemical world make a little more sense, we classify and categorize them. One of the most important of those classifications is whether a molecule is polar or non-polar, which describes a kind of symmetry – not just of the molecule, but of…
Reconstruction and 1876: Crash Course US History #22
— In which John Green teaches you about Reconstruction. After the divisive, destructive Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had a plan to reconcile the country and make it whole again. Then he got shot, Andrew Johnson took over, and the disagreements between Johnson and Congress ensured that Reconstruction would fail. The election of 1876 made the…
Atomic Hook-Ups – Types of Chemical Bonds: Crash Course Chemistry #22
— Atoms are a lot like us – we call their relationships “bonds,” and there are many different types. Each kind of atomic relationship requires a different type of energy, but they all do best when they settle into the lowest stress situation possible. The nature of the bond between atoms is related to the…
The Civil War Part 2: Crash Course US History #21
— In which John Green teaches you how the Civil War played a large part in making the United States the country that it is today. He covers some of the key ways in which Abraham Lincoln influenced the outcome of the war, and how the lack of foreign intervention also helped the Union win…
Lab Techniques & Safety: Crash Course Chemistry #21
— Hank takes a break from the desk to bring you to the lab in order to demonstrate some important points about the practical side of chemistry – experimentation in the laboratory. You’ll learn what to wear in the lab, how to dispose of chemicals safely, how to avoid the most common accidents, how to…
History of the 4th of July: Crash Course US History Special
— In which John Green teaches you a bit about the 4th of July. In this special short Crash Course, John celebrates American Independence Day by teaching you how the holiday came to be on the 4th of July, and the many ways that Americans celebrate the day. — — Transcript Provided by YouTube:…
Entropy: Embrace the Chaos! Crash Course Chemistry #20
— Life is chaos and the universe tends toward disorder. But why? If you think about it, there are only a few ways for things to be arranged in an organized manner, but there are nearly infinite other ways for those same things to be arranged. Simple rules of probability dictate that it’s much more…
Calorimetry: Crash Course Chemistry #19
— Today’s episode dives into the HOW of enthalpy. How we calculate it, and how we determine it experimentally…even if our determinations here at Crash Course Chemistry are somewhat shoddy. — — Transcript Provided by YouTube: 00:00 Hydrochloric Acid: every chemist’s frenemy, as terribly dangerous as it is terribly useful. 00:06 It’ll burn your…
Battles of the Civil War: Crash Course US History #19
— In which John Green lists a whole lot of the battles of the US Civil War in seven and a half minutes. We get a lot of requests for military history, so we offer a list of battle names, with some commentary about outcomes, and lots of really interesting pictures. This is a but…
Enthalpy: Crash Course Chemistry #18
— Energy is like the bestest best friend ever and yet, most of the time we take it for granted. Hank feels bad for our friend and wants us to learn more about it so that we can understand what it’s trying to tell us – like that any bond between two atoms contains energy.…
The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18
— In which John Green teaches you about the election of 1860. As you may remember from last week, things were not great at this time in US history. The tensions between the North and South were rising, ultimately due to the single issue of slavery. The North wanted to abolish slavery, and the South…
Energy & Chemistry: Crash Course Chemistry #17
— Grumpy Professor Hank admits to being wrong about how everything is chemicals. But he now wants you to listen as he blows your mind with a new sweeping statement: everything (yes, really everything this time) is energy. What?! This week, Hank takes us on a quick tour of how thermodynamics is applied in chemistry…
War & Expansion: Crash Course US History #17
— In which John Green teaches you about the Mexican-American War in the late 1840s, and the expansion of the United States into the western end of North America. In this episode of Crash Course, US territory finally reaches from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific Ocean. After Oregon was secured from the UK and…
Passing Gases: Effusion, Diffusion, and the Velocity of a Gas – Crash Course Chemistry #16
— We have learned over the past few weeks that gases have real-life constraints on how they move here in the non-ideal world. As with most things in chemistry (and also in life) how a gas moves is more complex than it at first appears. In this episode, Hank describes what it means when we…
Crash Course Outtakes
— In which John Green teaches you that things don’t always go as planned on the Crash Course set. Here we have outtakes from our Crash Course in Literature and some of the early US History episodes. Warning: there is some censored profanity in this video. It’s pretty mild, you can probably handle it. —…