WEBVTT

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Bean bags are awesome.

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But I see a few people out there

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who are standing,

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we got some over here,

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and standing takes more work than lounging.

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Using the Live Strong Organization's online database

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of weight loss resources,

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you can calculate

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that by the time I'm done with this speech,

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those of you who are standing

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will have burned 7.5 more calories

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than those of you who are bean-bagging it.

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Okay, here's a question,

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speaking of weight loss, specifically weight,

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this feature's live.

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I'm actually here in front of you guys,

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we're all here together.

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But this speech is being recorded

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and it will become a video

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that people can access all over the world

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on computers,

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mobile devices,

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televisions.

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I weight about 190 pounds.

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How much will the video weigh?

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Asking questions like that

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is what I do every week on my channel Vsauce.

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For the last two years,

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I have been asking really fun questions,

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mind-boggling questions,

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and approaching them

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as sincerely as I can,

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celebrating scientific concepts and scientists.

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And I research

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and write

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and produce

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and host

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and edit

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and upload

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and run the social media all by myself,

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but it's not lonely

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because Vsauce has more than 2 million subscribers,

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and every month, my videos are seen

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by more than 20 million people.

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Yeah.

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It's very exciting.

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I've found that asking a strange question

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is a great way to get people in,

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not just people, but fans.

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And fans are different than just viewers or an audience

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because fans want to come back.

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They subscribe to you on YouTube

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and they want to watch everything you made

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and everything you plan to make in the future

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because we are curious people

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and sparking curiosity is great bait.

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It's a great way to catch a human.

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And once you've caught them,

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you have this captive audience that you can,

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with the goal in mind of answering the question,

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accidentally teach a lot of things to.

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So, let's take a look at some of my videos.

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Here are eight of them.

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But down here in the lower-right corner,

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"What Color is a Mirror?"

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When people see that,

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it's very difficult not to click because you think,

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"Come on, are you serious?

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How could you possibly answer that question?"

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Well, so far, 7.6 million people have watched

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this five-minute video about what color a mirror is.

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And in that episode, I answer the question

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and I get a chance to explain

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what would normally be kind of dry topics:

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optics,

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diffuse versus specular reflection,

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how light works,

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how light works on the retina,

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and even the etymology of color terms

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like white and black.

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Okay, spoiler alert:

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mirrors are not clear,

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they are not silvery

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like they're often illustrated.

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Mirrors, technically speaking,

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are just a tiny, tiny, little bit

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green.

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You can demonstrate this

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by putting two mirrors next to each other,

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facing so they reflect back and forth

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and back and forth forever.

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Look down that infinite reflection

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and it will get dimmer

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because some light is lost or absorbed every time,

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but it will also become greener

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because green light,

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that is light of a wave length

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that we perceive as green,

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is best reflected by most mirrors.

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Okay, so, how much does a video weigh?

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Well, when you stream a video onto your computer,

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that information is temporarily stored

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using electrons.

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And the number of electrons on your device

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won't actually increase or decrease.

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But it takes energy to store them in one place,

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and we know,

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thanks to our friend Albert Einstein,

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that energy and mass are related.

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Okay, so here's the thing:

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let's say you're watching a YouTube video

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at a really nice resolution, 720p.

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Assuming a typical bit rate,

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we can figure that a minute of YouTube video

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is going to need to involve

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about 10 million electrons on your device.

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Plugging all those electrons

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and the energy it takes to hold them

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in the correct place for you to see the video

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into that formula,

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we can figure out

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that one minute of YouTube video

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increases the mass of your computer

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by about 10 to the negative 19th grams.

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Written out, it looks like this.

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That's like nothing.

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That's, you could call that nothing

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and you wouldn't really get in trouble

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because the best scales we've ever invented

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that we could try to use

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to actually to detect that change

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are only accurate to 10 to the negative 9th grams.

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So, we can't measure it,

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but we can, like we just did,

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calculate it.

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And that's really cool

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because when I was a kid,

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my school had two shelves of science books.

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That was really cool,

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but I read all of them within, like, two grades,

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and it was hard to get more books

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because books are heavy

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and you need space for them

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and moving books around is a lot tougher

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than what we can today.

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With numbers that small,

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I can fit thousands of books

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on my own little personal electronic reader.

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I can stream hours and hours

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and days and days of YouTube video

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without my computer ever getting measurably heavier.

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And as information becomes that light,

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it becomes more democratic,

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meaning that more teachers

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and presenters

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and creators

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and viewers than ever before

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can be involved.

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Right now on YouTube

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there is an explosion of content

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like this happening.

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The three Vsauce channels

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are down there in the corner.

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But everyone else, all together,

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collectively,

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their views dwarf what I can do alone

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or with the people that I work with,

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and that is really, really exciting.

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It turns out that tapping into people's curiosity

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and responsibly answering their questions

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is a brilliant way to build fans and an audience

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and get in viewers.

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It's even a great way for brands and companies

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to build trust.

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So, calculating the weight of a video

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is kind of a funny question,

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but I cannot wait to see

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what we ask and answer next.

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As always, thanks for watching.