STEM Lores

Math · Physics · Chemistry — animated history of science

Every number,
every law,
every element
has a story.

STEM Lores tells them: the people, the mistakes and the moment it finally made sense — then the idea itself, animated. Three YouTube channels, one curiosity, and the written story behind every video.

Watch the latestRead the stories

The channels

Each one with its own narrator, music and look.

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Chemistry Lore

@chemistrylore · Just launched

The stories inside the elements.

The Element Files: who found each element, what it does to us, where it hides in your life and the strangest thing it ever did — from hydrogen to the end of the periodic table.

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Latest videos

Newest first, from all three channels.

The stories behind the videos

All stories →
Physics Lore · 2 min readWhy Feynman Told Physicists to Hang 137 on the WallIn 1985 Richard Feynman picked out one number for physicists to worry about. More than forty years on, it is measured to twelve digits and still unexplained.Physics Lore · 6 min readWhy Does 137 Haunt Physics? The Strange Story of the Fine-Structure ConstantA pure number with no units sets how strongly light grips matter. We have measured it to twelve digits, and nobody can say why it is 1/137.Math Lore · 3 min readThe Mutilated Chessboard Problem: Why 31 Dominoes Can't Cover 62 SquaresThe area matches exactly. The colors do not. A puzzle from a 1946 logic textbook shows how the right way of looking beats any amount of trial and error.Math Lore · 6 min readWhy Is e = 2.718…? How Compound Interest Found the Number of GrowthNobody chose the number 2.718281828…; let growth feed on itself and it answers, in banks, in atoms, in luck and in a circle.Math Lore · 3 min readHow Many Ways Can 4 Letters All Go in the Wrong Envelopes? The Story of DerangementsMost people guess the chance is below one third. Count the shuffles and every letter goes wrong more often than that, with e hiding in the answer.Math Lore · 3 min readCompound Interest and the Number e: Why Your Balance Stops Near 2.718Split one year's interest into ever smaller payments and the money does not explode. It creeps up toward a single number, and Jacob Bernoulli found it first.

Latest Shorts

One idea, under a minute.

How the Lores are made

01

Real history, checked

Every story starts from sources — papers, letters, lab notebooks. Numbers and dates are checked by a person before anything is published.

02

Animated with code

Diagrams, simulations and proofs are drawn programmatically, so a wave moves by its real equation and a proof builds one step at a time.

03

Honest about the voice

Narration is synthetic text-to-speech, and every description says so. Each channel has its own narrator, music and visual language.

Watch on YouTube ↗