6 ms·

That Veritasium video is one of the most controversial educational videos I've seen. I think one of the issues with it is that it's a bit pedantic, but also ign

by 0xTJ 5y ago

That Veritasium video is one of the most controversial educational videos I've seen. I think one of the issues with it is that it's a bit pedantic, but also ignores other issues, that invites other people to be pedantic about it.

randyrand 5y ago
It’s not pedantic. EMI “teleporting” outside of wires is a real world issue that engineers deal with constantly. FCC certification is almost entirely about this phenomenon. It’s just told in a confusing controversial way.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  I'm not an avid Veritasium viewer but from what I've seen this MO seems to be kinda his shtick.
  - Jansen312 5y ago
    Veritasium is the better teacher. The rest is just jumping on the bandwagon to grab viewerships. Think about it, back in your school days, you have an inspirational teacher that challenge or motivate you to pursue something. Rarely that teacher will spoonfed you with all information. I have many great teachers that explain well. But not a single one of them make it to the list of inspirational. I have 1-2 memorable teacher that really inspire me and they don't exactly explain things exceptionally clearly and all-in-one package. Veritasium is the kind of person that moves needles. Electroboom will be the inspired students to follow-up. The fact that he demo that wind car thing correctly and better than the specialist shows that he is the better teacher.
    - blondin 5y ago
      sorry, veritasium is not / no longer the channel you think it is. they are not out to teach first. teaching became second at some point. making views became first and more important. it is totally understandable. (they talk about the team, paying people, etc.) i personally appreciate the honesty. the video they did around the subject should still be around.
      - Ostrogodsky 5y ago
        This is the youtube generation. Entertainment, clicks and wow factor first (and money of course), facts a distant second.
      - kzrdude 5y ago
        They really managed to get a success this time: lots of views for this controversial video! But for me, it feels like a lot of credibility capital was spent. I was probably part of the core audience a few years ago.
        runarberg 5y ago
        For me Veritasium lost all his credibility capital by the way he responded to Tom Nicholas’ video about YouTube sponsorships using Veritasium as a case study[1]. In stead of approaching the debate calmly (or better yet, simply ignoring it) he came to the comment section way too defensive, like a lot, basically calling Tom a lair and a bad actor. Actually that is not quite true, Veritasium lost a bunch of his credibility capital when he made the sponsored content for the self driving cars. I never watched that video as I spotted it was basically and ad and was reluctant to watch his new stuff after that (though I did). 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc
vexxed-concave 5y ago
True. It’s one of only a handful of YT videos I’ve ever left a comment on. In summary, just because something is “wrong” at one scale doesn’t invalidate useful models and workaday theorems at another. Also, for such a pedantic video his field lines were wrong.
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  Yeah, the assumption that Derek is 3 steps ahead might be wrong and he might just be wrong. Well played though that the world thinks he knew his wrongness would spur debate. Speaks to his earned credibility, but not to his infallibility.
- JshWright 5y ago
  > It’s one of only a handful of YT videos I’ve ever left a comment on. Which was exactly his point— It's called "engagement".
paxys 5y ago
That video perfectly summarizes online discourse. I personally found it fantastic as a resource. It was the best and most clear explanation of transmission of energy in an electrical circuit that I have seen. It debunked a lot of myths in my head that we were all taught in school. The thought experiment he proposed was just a hook to keep people interested - and it certainly did the job. Because it is a popular internet video by a popular YouTuber, however, the entire scientific community made it a mission to nitpick every detail of that experiment and show that the conclusion wasn't 100% accurate without a bunch of caveats. Which is fine, I guess, but also missing the point of the whole thing.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  I actually think he intentionally worked with (some of) these other youtubers. I've been enjoying watching all the "regulars" I follow on youtube challenge his assertions.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I'm sorry but no, the original video does clarify some important things that people misunderstand about transmission of electricity, but then it piles on a bunch of other really unclear information with no explanation. It answers a question with about 8 other questions and then offers no help in understanding any of them. You can't just say "there's electricity at the light bulb nearly immediately! (oh by the way it's not very much electricity but I'm not going to explain why or even how much less, and it's probably not even enough to turn on an LED but I'm not even going to mention that)" and then get pissy when people are like "???!??!?!" It's pretty blatantly deliberately misleading and confusing in order to stir up exactly this controversy. Especially since the effects he's describing are probably (as mentioned in this video) because of capacitance, and are completely dependent on the 1m distance between the wires across the entire span, a constraint he mentions basically once and then never again, and never says explicitly that it's related to the effect. This video and electroboom's videos are far more educational, and more importantly don't leave you hanging with a bunch of new questions with no resources provided to answer them.
  - function_seven 5y ago
jacobolus 5y ago
Controversial is fine to the extent the controversy shows people struggling toward clearer understanding and better explanations, and as long as all parties are operating in good faith (i.e. not being deliberately misleading). Let me highly recommend Mehdi Sadaghdar’s (ElectroBOOM) excellent response video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 which does a great job of empirically investigating and theoretically explaining the subtleties involved, in a polite, respectful, and entertaining way. I have similarly enjoyed the exchange between Sadaghdar and Steve Mould about the physics of the “chain fountain”. These kinds of friendly scientific “debates” show viewers (e.g. kids) a bit of how the scientific process and scientific discourse works, in a form that is more accessible and digestible than technical journal papers or history books. Having a discussion back and forth helps to improve both viewers’ specific knowledge and viewers’ processes for comprehending and interrogating new information, so long as the median viewer actually sees some of the responses. (Someone who only ever saw the first Veritasium video probably ends up with a somewhat wrong mental model.)
- kongolongo 5y ago
  ElectroBOOM's exchange with a retired MIT professor (it was over whether or not KVL always holds) was also very polite, respectful, and entertaining and yet surprisingly the professor who must have received and exchanged feedback before having published many, many times seemed to have a meltdown over a the disagreement.
  - canjobear 5y ago
    Successful professors can get to the point where they’re no longer interacting much with people who disagree with them.
- QuantumG 5y ago
  Teaching. What a concept. It warms my heart to see a generation of scientists, engineers and communicators attacking frontiers again. For a while there it felt like just a few of my friends were fighting for the future and everyone else had written it off to Sci-Fi.
Laremere 5y ago
As much as I love Veritasium, I feel the OP video is better than his. Actually doing the experiment is really good, and it honestly feels like he was fishing for another debate like the faster than wind car by giving only a super theoretical and unintuitive explanation. (I don't have any real evidence of that, but it does /feel/ like it.) I also wonder what would happen if, instead of a setup like this: ┏───────light────────┓ ┕──────battery───────┛ You did something like this: ┏──────────────light─┓ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┕─battery────────────┛ That is, battery (and switch) and light at opposite corners of a large square, instead of on the middle of a long double-line. Veritasium video implies the current will start flowing at sqrt(2) * width, instead of at 2 * width. Would these effects really work over longer distances like this?
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  You also need to account for the fact that oscilloscope wires would also be longer going to the light bulb. You can imagine this on the extreme case where light and battery are 1 km apart. Now, you need oscilloscope wires to go 1km far to connect to the light bulb and your timing is off.
- teddyh 5y ago
  Once the light and battery are far apart, I have a horrible suspicion that the definition of simultaneity will become problematic.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Yeah, this is what im wondering. The proposed mechanism for this is that the wires generate electric fields that influence electrons remotely. Fine. What happens when they are not close enough for any meaningful electric field interaction?
  - BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
    He says near the end of the video that a Part 2 video is forthcoming with more exploration of: - Different sized loops - Wires closer together / farther apart - Wires on the ground instead of in air - Current on both sides of switch - Wires in two big spread-out loops - Different strength resistors
leafmeal 5y ago
Here's the link if you're as curious as me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY
JshWright 5y ago
> I think one of the issues with it is that it's a bit pedantic, but also ignores other issues, that invites other people to be pedantic about it. I think the video is intentionally misleading. He got a taste of how "successful" a controversial video can be with the "Wind powered car going faster than the wind" thing, and he's leaning into that. I just don't see any other explanation for how he chose to frame the problem.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  I completely agree. When I got an EE degree, most of the content was about how electric fields work. It's not a simple concept. That video was reductive to the point that it made me angry. For all practical purposes, he is wrong, and he should admit that.
  - fouc 5y ago
    Not everyone has an EE degree.. As far as I can tell, the majority of the video seemed like a honest way of explaining the electric field / "flow of electricity" phenomenon to the layperson.
- jarenmf 5y ago
  That's unfortunate because his content used to be very good and this video seems only seeking engagement at a very shallow level, e.g. doesn't even mention transmission lines.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    My early thought was that, at the very least, Poynting Vectors deserve a video but Transmission Lines also deserve a video. Here's a problem I recall from Jackson which might (or might not) provide a missing link: Given two parallel conductors of arbitrary shape, prove that the product of capacitance-per-unit-length and inductance-per-unit-length is a constant (i.e., independent of profile and separation). I remember finding a suitable answer, but I can't for the life of me remember how.
  - Jansen312 5y ago
01100011 5y ago
A long, long time ago, before I realized software makes more money than being an EE(albeit with less life satisfaction), I went to school for EE. I like the Veritasium video for the debate it is spurring, but I really hate his impractical assumptions(funny, since 80% of EE is 1st and 2nd order approximations with 10% tolerances, but I digress). I get that he needs to simply things dramatically because of the audience he's trying to reach, but light year long superconducting wires and a light bulb that turns on with infinitesimal current just bother me. I guess normies wouldn't get that interested by talking about transient EM waves... but the video just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I understand why EEs are making response videos. I wish he at least mentioned that the power reaching the light bulb would be practically useless. Oh well. Hopefully it spurs a few young minds into sacrificing higher pay for a career in EE or physics.

by 0xTJ 5y ago

randyrand 5y ago

It’s not pedantic. EMI “teleporting” outside of wires is a real world issue that engineers deal with constantly. FCC certification is almost entirely about this phenomenon. It’s just told in a confusing controversial way.

formerly_proven 5y ago
I'm not an avid Veritasium viewer but from what I've seen this MO seems to be kinda his shtick.
- Jansen312 5y ago
  Veritasium is the better teacher. The rest is just jumping on the bandwagon to grab viewerships. Think about it, back in your school days, you have an inspirational teacher that challenge or motivate you to pursue something. Rarely that teacher will spoonfed you with all information. I have many great teachers that explain well. But not a single one of them make it to the list of inspirational. I have 1-2 memorable teacher that really inspire me and they don't exactly explain things exceptionally clearly and all-in-one package. Veritasium is the kind of person that moves needles. Electroboom will be the inspired students to follow-up. The fact that he demo that wind car thing correctly and better than the specialist shows that he is the better teacher.
  - blondin 5y ago
    sorry, veritasium is not / no longer the channel you think it is. they are not out to teach first. teaching became second at some point. making views became first and more important. it is totally understandable. (they talk about the team, paying people, etc.) i personally appreciate the honesty. the video they did around the subject should still be around.
    - Ostrogodsky 5y ago
      This is the youtube generation. Entertainment, clicks and wow factor first (and money of course), facts a distant second.
    - kzrdude 5y ago
      They really managed to get a success this time: lots of views for this controversial video! But for me, it feels like a lot of credibility capital was spent. I was probably part of the core audience a few years ago.
      - runarberg 5y ago
        For me Veritasium lost all his credibility capital by the way he responded to Tom Nicholas’ video about YouTube sponsorships using Veritasium as a case study[1]. In stead of approaching the debate calmly (or better yet, simply ignoring it) he came to the comment section way too defensive, like a lot, basically calling Tom a lair and a bad actor. Actually that is not quite true, Veritasium lost a bunch of his credibility capital when he made the sponsored content for the self driving cars. I never watched that video as I spotted it was basically and ad and was reluctant to watch his new stuff after that (though I did). 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc

vexxed-concave 5y ago

True. It’s one of only a handful of YT videos I’ve ever left a comment on. In summary, just because something is “wrong” at one scale doesn’t invalidate useful models and workaday theorems at another. Also, for such a pedantic video his field lines were wrong.

GenerocUsername 5y ago
Yeah, the assumption that Derek is 3 steps ahead might be wrong and he might just be wrong. Well played though that the world thinks he knew his wrongness would spur debate. Speaks to his earned credibility, but not to his infallibility.
JshWright 5y ago
> It’s one of only a handful of YT videos I’ve ever left a comment on. Which was exactly his point— It's called "engagement".

paxys 5y ago

That video perfectly summarizes online discourse. I personally found it fantastic as a resource. It was the best and most clear explanation of transmission of energy in an electrical circuit that I have seen. It debunked a lot of myths in my head that we were all taught in school. The thought experiment he proposed was just a hook to keep people interested - and it certainly did the job. Because it is a popular internet video by a popular YouTuber, however, the entire scientific community made it a mission to nitpick every detail of that experiment and show that the conclusion wasn't 100% accurate without a bunch of caveats. Which is fine, I guess, but also missing the point of the whole thing.

spookthesunset 5y ago
I actually think he intentionally worked with (some of) these other youtubers. I've been enjoying watching all the "regulars" I follow on youtube challenge his assertions.
stormbrew 5y ago
I'm sorry but no, the original video does clarify some important things that people misunderstand about transmission of electricity, but then it piles on a bunch of other really unclear information with no explanation. It answers a question with about 8 other questions and then offers no help in understanding any of them. You can't just say "there's electricity at the light bulb nearly immediately! (oh by the way it's not very much electricity but I'm not going to explain why or even how much less, and it's probably not even enough to turn on an LED but I'm not even going to mention that)" and then get pissy when people are like "???!??!?!" It's pretty blatantly deliberately misleading and confusing in order to stir up exactly this controversy. Especially since the effects he's describing are probably (as mentioned in this video) because of capacitance, and are completely dependent on the 1m distance between the wires across the entire span, a constraint he mentions basically once and then never again, and never says explicitly that it's related to the effect. This video and electroboom's videos are far more educational, and more importantly don't leave you hanging with a bunch of new questions with no resources provided to answer them.
- function_seven 5y ago

jacobolus 5y ago

Controversial is fine to the extent the controversy shows people struggling toward clearer understanding and better explanations, and as long as all parties are operating in good faith (i.e. not being deliberately misleading). Let me highly recommend Mehdi Sadaghdar’s (ElectroBOOM) excellent response video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 which does a great job of empirically investigating and theoretically explaining the subtleties involved, in a polite, respectful, and entertaining way. I have similarly enjoyed the exchange between Sadaghdar and Steve Mould about the physics of the “chain fountain”. These kinds of friendly scientific “debates” show viewers (e.g. kids) a bit of how the scientific process and scientific discourse works, in a form that is more accessible and digestible than technical journal papers or history books. Having a discussion back and forth helps to improve both viewers’ specific knowledge and viewers’ processes for comprehending and interrogating new information, so long as the median viewer actually sees some of the responses. (Someone who only ever saw the first Veritasium video probably ends up with a somewhat wrong mental model.)

kongolongo 5y ago
ElectroBOOM's exchange with a retired MIT professor (it was over whether or not KVL always holds) was also very polite, respectful, and entertaining and yet surprisingly the professor who must have received and exchanged feedback before having published many, many times seemed to have a meltdown over a the disagreement.
- canjobear 5y ago
  Successful professors can get to the point where they’re no longer interacting much with people who disagree with them.
QuantumG 5y ago
Teaching. What a concept. It warms my heart to see a generation of scientists, engineers and communicators attacking frontiers again. For a while there it felt like just a few of my friends were fighting for the future and everyone else had written it off to Sci-Fi.

Laremere 5y ago

As much as I love Veritasium, I feel the OP video is better than his. Actually doing the experiment is really good, and it honestly feels like he was fishing for another debate like the faster than wind car by giving only a super theoretical and unintuitive explanation. (I don't have any real evidence of that, but it does /feel/ like it.) I also wonder what would happen if, instead of a setup like this: ┏───────light────────┓ ┕──────battery───────┛ You did something like this: ┏──────────────light─┓ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┕─battery────────────┛ That is, battery (and switch) and light at opposite corners of a large square, instead of on the middle of a long double-line. Veritasium video implies the current will start flowing at sqrt(2) * width, instead of at 2 * width. Would these effects really work over longer distances like this?

systemvoltage 5y ago
You also need to account for the fact that oscilloscope wires would also be longer going to the light bulb. You can imagine this on the extreme case where light and battery are 1 km apart. Now, you need oscilloscope wires to go 1km far to connect to the light bulb and your timing is off.
teddyh 5y ago
Once the light and battery are far apart, I have a horrible suspicion that the definition of simultaneity will become problematic.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Yeah, this is what im wondering. The proposed mechanism for this is that the wires generate electric fields that influence electrons remotely. Fine. What happens when they are not close enough for any meaningful electric field interaction?
- BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
  He says near the end of the video that a Part 2 video is forthcoming with more exploration of: - Different sized loops - Wires closer together / farther apart - Wires on the ground instead of in air - Current on both sides of switch - Wires in two big spread-out loops - Different strength resistors

leafmeal 5y ago

Here's the link if you're as curious as me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY

JshWright 5y ago

> I think one of the issues with it is that it's a bit pedantic, but also ignores other issues, that invites other people to be pedantic about it. I think the video is intentionally misleading. He got a taste of how "successful" a controversial video can be with the "Wind powered car going faster than the wind" thing, and he's leaning into that. I just don't see any other explanation for how he chose to frame the problem.

pclmulqdq 5y ago
I completely agree. When I got an EE degree, most of the content was about how electric fields work. It's not a simple concept. That video was reductive to the point that it made me angry. For all practical purposes, he is wrong, and he should admit that.
- fouc 5y ago
  Not everyone has an EE degree.. As far as I can tell, the majority of the video seemed like a honest way of explaining the electric field / "flow of electricity" phenomenon to the layperson.
jarenmf 5y ago
That's unfortunate because his content used to be very good and this video seems only seeking engagement at a very shallow level, e.g. doesn't even mention transmission lines.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  My early thought was that, at the very least, Poynting Vectors deserve a video but Transmission Lines also deserve a video. Here's a problem I recall from Jackson which might (or might not) provide a missing link: Given two parallel conductors of arbitrary shape, prove that the product of capacitance-per-unit-length and inductance-per-unit-length is a constant (i.e., independent of profile and separation). I remember finding a suitable answer, but I can't for the life of me remember how.
- Jansen312 5y ago

01100011 5y ago

A long, long time ago, before I realized software makes more money than being an EE(albeit with less life satisfaction), I went to school for EE. I like the Veritasium video for the debate it is spurring, but I really hate his impractical assumptions(funny, since 80% of EE is 1st and 2nd order approximations with 10% tolerances, but I digress). I get that he needs to simply things dramatically because of the audience he's trying to reach, but light year long superconducting wires and a light bulb that turns on with infinitesimal current just bother me. I guess normies wouldn't get that interested by talking about transient EM waves... but the video just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I understand why EEs are making response videos. I wish he at least mentioned that the power reaching the light bulb would be practically useless. Oh well. Hopefully it spurs a few young minds into sacrificing higher pay for a career in EE or physics.