The internet is flooded with hilarious animated gifs of jumping cats, running babies, and hilarious fails. But there's a whole different class of cool gifs out there – gifs for fascinating education. These 20 awesome gifs will do exactly that – show you how things work.
The cool thing about these animated images is that they show just how effective a well-chosen video clip can be, no matter how brief. The gif with the Earth situated next to various stars, for example, takes only a few seconds to communicate the incomprehensible differences in scale between our planet and the biggest star we know of. The bean sprout gif, in just a short clip, explains how this plant can find solid objects to climb so easily. Even more amazing things and cool facts await below!
Enough with the silly fail and cute puppy gifs – educate yourself about the amazing world with these!
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This is how an energy-absorbing slinky falls when dropped
This is how the internal mechanism of a lock works
Beans' tendrils slowly rotate to find solid supports to climb
This clip illustrates how small the earth would be compared to NML Cygni, the largest known star
This is what an egg looks like underwater without its shell
Here's what happens when you dump a pot of boiling water into -41C air
This is how a ladybug unsheathes its wings and lifts off
This is how military helmet camouflage is applied
Dogs cup their tongues like this to lap up water
A cheetah uses its tail to counter torsion and keep balance as it chases its prey
The chrysopelea, or flying snake, can glide as many as 100 meters through the air
The sun never sets during an arctic summer - here's what a "day" looks like
These boxes demonstrate why the Pythagorean Theorem is true
One theory claims that the Easter Island statues were "walked" to their places
This gif shows the development of the human face in the womb
Here's how chains are assembled
This gif demonstrates why snake venom is deadly
How to remove your computer monitor's polarizing filter
Sulfur hexaflouride, a gas much denser than air, is poured into a boat that is floating on it
Some octopuses have uncanny and amazing camouflage skills
