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Patreon Exclusive: Playing Elements of Truth with other science creators (Patreon)

Published:
2025-12-09 12:29:55
Imported:
2026-09

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  • 577892430.mp4

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Content

In our recent video about Overconfidence, Derek posed questions from the upcoming table top game to other science creators to see what they knew and how confident they were in their guesses. Here is a compilation of all the questions asked and how they performed. A huge thank you to all the creators who gave up their time to be in this video.

Pledge your support on kickstarter now! - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elements-of-truth/elements-of-truth-by-veritasium

Comments

Trey Smith

This is fantastic. Looking forward to playing it with my family.

Nikolay Semov

The game is really cool! Unfortunately, there are only so many times you can play it (as is, without getting a new deck of cards). And you have to keep playing with roughly the same people because someone who's played it a few times would have a significant / unfair advantage over someone who's never played it.

Terry Bollinger

I'm going to comment at 1:26 before I see the answer. My problem is that the question is incompletely specified. Are you talking about oil in isolation, such as in a vacuum in space? Or, are you talking about oil in combination with a hidden, unlimited supply of oxygen that has not been specified in the problem? I'm a little surprised that Nile Red did not bring up this issue. That dude knows his chemistry! If you are talking about the chemicals in isolation, then the TNT wins hands down because it is in a highly unstable, energized chemical state. The oil is in an extremely stable low-energy state, chemically speaking, and will not break down to any lower energy state. It has no appreciable potential energy in a vacuum, other than the ability to cool down. If you are talking about both chemicals in combination with an unlimited supply of an unspecified oxidizing gas — presumably oxygen, though you could specify fluorine for a more even and interesting result — then the oil wins hands down. The carbon and hydrogen content, in combination with unlimited oxygen, will produce vastly more energy than the modest nitrogen-based internal instabilities of the TNT. (It’s almost always nitrogen, though xenon fluorides and oxides can also be quite spectacular.) If you assume a hidden, unlimited fluorine gas instead of oxygen, the two cases come out closer in potential energy because fluorine oxidizes nitrogen better. However, the oil is still going to win. Now, to get really picky, the question also does not specify any limits on the mechanisms permitted for defining and extracting potential energy, which is always a relative concept. For example, if you drop both compounds into a black hole, you will receive roughly equivalent outputs of energy. If you assume an unlimited hidden supply of antimatter to annihilate each compound, the energy is, of course, equivalent. That seems silly, but then again, so does secretly assuming an unlimited supply of oxygen or fluorine gas. Anyway, that's my answer. I will now turn the video back on and see what you guys say. ---------- Okay, guys, you can all do better than that! There are so many interesting issues in that question, and you've only touched on the tips of what you could discuss. No one even mentioned the oxygen supply issue! No one explored the possibility of annihilating matter or introducing other gases! You are some of the world's best science YouTubers! You can do more exploration!

Tristan Ursell

Whew ... semantics are hard ... specificity is difficult to convey ... like for the photosynthesis question ... "more efficient at absorbing the Sun's energy" ... what is 'absorbing'??? Feels like it should be something like "more efficient at converting the Sun's energy into useful work" ... but I get the point ... it's less about the question, and more about the discussion (like this) around the question :)