Minimal Surfaces—The Shapes That Help Us Understand Black Holes

In this video I talk about minimal surfaces and how you can do your own experiment to prove if something is a minimal surface. I talk about why minimal surfaces are important in math and physics and show you some neat experiments to make several minimal surfaces at home

[TheActionLab]

This will all be on your next test...listen carefully

[prathambhardwaj]

My man went around the earth just for this video😭massive respect🙌🙌🙌

[DeSinc]

6:25 I had no clue that would be what it looks like, that's heaps cool

[paulrispin]

I had a student about 20 years ago who did this as an extended project whilst still in high school. He DID do the maths to prove the minimal surface which involved multivariate calculus (multiple integration). He went on to Oxford. Just stunning level of maths for somebody still in school

[umeshdhawade]

You know that a person is dedicated when they walk around the whole world to prove their point.

[bunniiac]

The part with the string and the cube blew my mind, I didn't even know that was a thing that happened

[cinemartin]

6:44 Wow, I didn't expect the soap cube to form such a structure inside itself at all! Physics is really an amazing thing.

[vitaliyjuterbog]

That part where you almost got a hypercube by dipping a cube of straws into soap; that was cool.

[gabor]

The demonstration with the cube totally blew my minimal surface brain away.

[aramislucas]

So the definition of minimal surface is: an object made in such way that when you dip a wire frame of it in soap, it doesn't look like Pringles.

[punking]

7:36 can we appreciate how this man walked around the whole world for us?

[thejoker]

I'm so disappointed that you didn't dip the eggs in soap.

[benjamingoldstein]

8:30 specifically, the MEAN curvature at each point is 0. Specifically, a minimal surface is just a solution to the minimal surface equations (in R3). This doesn’t mean the the “second derivative of a curve on the surface is always 0” (that would mean the surface is always a plane), it means that the mean of the principle curvatures at each point is 0. This is a concept in differential geometry.

[SK-vgxh]

7:36 it's really appreciable how you have to walk through the whole earth to make us understand this simple point.

[mrrcjunk]

Just helped me understand how boundary patches are created in the CAD software I use. Very interesting. Might be useful for future demonstrations of minimal surfaces too

[samgu]

"nature always does the calculations perfectly"

well, considering math was invented to describe nature, that is inherently true

[danieoberholzer]

holy shit. When the cube went into the soap bubble i literally gasped in awe and just stared like a deer in headlights.

[TrippyGang]

Please keep doing these crazy mind boggling science experiments I love it! Nobody else does this so I'd pay for you to continue finding new things lol you keep me interested in science the way I usually am. Thank you so much! I love the natural geometry and everything!

[JoshLathamTutorials]

7:30 That's what i love about this channel. The dedication you have to circumnavigate the Earth just for a 10 second piece of video.

[clonefighter]

6:38 I thought it formed a hypercube projection first.