Everything There Is to Know About Science in 6 Seconds

The tightest experiments (and magic), in Vine form

Some day watching enough Vines will qualify you for a degree. Or, to take a test that gets you a degree. ("We're so proud of Mary; she's studying the Vines of Yale.""Oh, wonderful.") Harvard, MIT, and the like are all over MOOCs and YouTube EDU. "MOOC" was even added to the Oxford Dictionary today. But where are the Vines, academia? Vines can't be longer than six seconds, so the MOOC could move to Vine when the times come that seven or eight seconds of anything seems, you know, a little much for one sitting. I'm getting there.

For now, it's General Electric that's cultivating science via Vine. GE has been promoting #6secondscience on Twitter. People have come up with great stuff. Here's GE's best-of mixtape:

Actually I will give an honorary degree to anyone who can explain the food coloring sorcery. Or to anyone who brings me the bones of the guy who threw himself on the sand volcano.

How to make a scrambled hard-boiled egg:

And, one last time with the food coloring.

Here's how that works and how to do it. The secret is dish soap. That one is a good starter experiment because it involves no fire or batteries, it's meant for fifth-graders, and you can do it as a party trick at a moment's notice, anywhere the kitchen is unlocked. Plus all of the other tricks involve trading on your soul.