YouTube has had quite a year. Today it announced that all told, the site saw more than one trillion playbacks in 2011. Awful videos are, of course, ubiquitous on YouTube (the #1 video on the site for the year that didn't come from a major music label was Rebecca Black's "Friday"), but the most-watched science videos of 2011 are, as you can see below, awesome.
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Rebecca J. Rosen is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where she oversees coverage of American constitutional law and government in the Battle for the Constitution series.