AsapSCIENCE

About

AsapSCIENCE is a YouTube channel that offers scientific explanations on a wide range of subject topics through its weekly science-educational animated web series.

History

The AsapSCIENCE YouTube^[1] channel was launched on May 28th, 2012 by Canadian biologists Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, who aimed to create videos that would inspire people to take an interest in science.^[4] On June 6th, the channel released its pilot episode, which explains how the static noises we hear on the radio are partially caused by the cosmic microwave background, a type of thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang (shown below, left). On June 27th, the channel uploaded a video offering a number of scientifically proven hangover remedies. Within the first year and a half, the videos gained over 640,000 and 1.75 million views respectively.

On December 9th, the AsapSCIENCE Tumblr^[7] blog was launched, highlighting videos from the YouTube channel and other science-related news items. On January 19th, 2013, Moffit and Brown participated in a live Google Hangout to receive feedback from fans on how to proceed with the web series (shown below, left). On May 17th, AsapSCIENCE uploaded a music video for the song “The New Periodic Table Song,” which celebrates the periodic table of chemical elements (shown below, right). In the following five months, the video gathered upwards of 2.74 million views and 7,800 comments.

On the same day, a page titled “AsapSCIENCE Music” was created on the music-sharing website Bandcamp,^[2] featuring a digital album containing “The New Periodic Table Song” and other music tracks from various AsapSCIENCE videos. On August 5th, the channel posted a video in which Moffit and Brown answer fan-submitted questions about themselves and the web series (shown below, left). On August 13th, AsapSCIENCE uploaded a hearing test playing sounds at increasing frequencies to gauge the age of the listener’s ears (shown below, right). Within three months, the videos gained over 430,000 and 6.5 million views respectively.

Reception

On September 26th, 2013, the entertainment blog Crave Online^[3] published an article highlighting several notable AsapSCIENCE videos. By October 8th, the channel had grown to over one million subscribers.^[8] As of November 2013, the AsapSCIENCE YouTube^[1] channel has garnered upwards of 148 million video views and the @AsapSCIENCE Twitter^[6] feed has received over 53,000 followers.