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Comment by csense | Hacker News Reader

I'm a big fan of AlphaPhoenix's content. He deserves to be in the big leagues of science YouTubers with SmarterEveryDay, Veritasium, Mark Rober and 3B1B.

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I’m not a fan of the “big leagues” of science YouTube, many seem to have been tainted by the attention algorithm game.

Especially Mark Rober. His videos aren't really about science at all, but rather attention-grabbing feats like package thief glitter bombs, squirrel mazes, and chemical volcano explosions—pure entertainment. None of his videos teach you anything like Steve Mould's videos do.

Rober is surely an entertainer first, but he claims to be an engineer rather than a scientist. The videos are more about building things which solve specific problems rather than revealing scientific truth.

Off the top of my head, I remember how the pin failed in the automatic placekicker video, how the cameras worked in the moving dartboard, how they had to use different materials to contain the large scale elephant foam...

I think the point is to get people excited about science and show what is possible/spark curiosity rather than trying to recreate a classroom. You can see this by all the kids that take his classes. There is space for both to exist.

I wonder how many of those kids are going to reconsider once they find out that doing "real science" is, in reality, far more boring.

Same could be said about almost all of the "technology" field most of us work in. I mean think of how many people dream of being a game developer... what a shock that must be.

Excited about engineering, not really science.

Yes, and he might even agree, since he now uses his youtube videos to advertise his $249 creative engineering course on monthly.com.

Agreed. I’m especially disappointed with Veritasium because Derek’s originally PhD thesis was how these sort of “controversial,” clickbait-y popular science videos are actually really terrible at teaching anything.

Yeah he’s great, I recently binged his videos and he’s criminally underrated. He’s a really smart dude who’s great at explaining things without dumbing it down too much, and also very entertaining. Plus his excitement and enthusiasm is infectious, he really loves what he’s doing.

Don’t forget Applied Science!

or The Science Asylum

To add some others:

Physics Explained is great physics channel that doesn't shy away from math, with derivations of many fundamental equations. His most recent one deriving the Chandrasekhar limit on white dwarf stars from relatively basic physics is great!

The Efficient Engineer is a really good one for clear concise explanations of mechanical engineering principles.

Stuff Made Here is awesome too.

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