Curiosity is the ultimate discovery tool. It can lead us to dream about the future, or question the world around us, or discover new ideas worth spreading. Ready to sharpen your curiosity this week? Watch the 5 TED-Ed Lessons below — all created in collaboration with TED2016 speakers.

1. How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries

One day, Eratosthenes, a librarian of the Library of Alexandria, received a letter from someone who noticed that when he looked down a well at noon on the solstice, the sun was directly overhead. This simple observation, paired with impressive geometry, helped Eratosthenes calculate the diameter of the earth within 1 percent. Adam Savage, co-host of the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, shares how seemingly insignificant insights led to great discoveries, such as the speed of light and the movement of subatomic particles. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

2. A brief history of plural words

1 goose, 2 geese. 1 book, 2 beek? A thousand years ago, the latter would be correct as well. Today, making a word plural isn’t always as simple as adding an “s” to the end. To find out how English plurals got so irregular, John McWhorter tracks how the Viking invasion shaped the way we speak today. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

3. Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na’vi real languages?

What do Game of Thrones’ Dothraki, Avatar’s Na’vi, Star Trek’s Klingon and LOTR’s Elvish have in common? They are all fantasy constructed languages, or conlangs. Conlangs have all the delicious complexities of real languages: a high volume of words, grammar rules, and room for messiness and evolution. John McWhorter explains why these invented languages captivate fans long past the rolling credits. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

4. The language of lying

We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day. And although we’ve spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect these lies by tracking physiological changes in their tellers, these methods have proved unreliable. Is there a more direct approach? Noah Zandan uses some famous examples of lying to illustrate how we might use communications science to analyze the lies themselves. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

5. What if we could look inside human brains?

The brain is a miraculous machine, able to form emotions, dreams, and even thoughts about its own existence. But still, much of how it works remains a mystery. Moran Cerf, a professor of neuroscience, explains how instead of just scanning them from the outside, scientists can now look inside living brains. By inserting electrodes into epilepsy patients, scientists can see which cells fire in response to specific stimuli, giving insight into the relationship between thought and action. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

To learn more about TED2016, go here and here.

American society often tells restless kids to do two very different things at the same time. Go change the world — but do it in a way that makes us comfortable. Question authority — as long as “authority” lives somewhere else.

Fortunately, the long history of scientific discovery points out a secret third path open to young explorers. Mythbuster Adam Savage examines this option — and the benefits of restless curiosity — in a fast-paced and engaging TED-Ed video (Watch: How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries.)

This week, share his TED-Ed lesson with students to deepen understanding of how simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries.

Then share this TED-Ed lesson series to introduce a cornucopia of inventions that shape history.

Shakespearean insults, mind-boggling numbers, universal mysteries, and microscopic battles — these topics are just hint of the intellectual expanse covered by the educators and animators in the top ten most viewed Lessons on ed.ted.com. Click any image to view the full Lesson.

#1 Power of Simple Word - Long, fancy words designed to show off your intelligence and vocabulary are all very well, but they aren’t always the best words. In this short, playful vide explains why simple, punchy language is often the clearest way to convey a message.

#2 How Big is Infinity? - Using the fundamentals of set theory, explore the mind-bending concept of the “infinity of infinities” — and how it led mathematicians to conclude that math itself contains unanswerable questions.

#3 Secret Life of Plankton - New videography techniques have opened up the oceans’ microscopic ecosystem, revealing it to be both mesmerizingly beautiful and astoundingly complex.

#4 Questions No One Knows the Answers to - In the first of a TED-Ed series designed to catalyze curiosity, TED Curator Chris Anderson shares his boyhood obsession with quirky questions that seem to have no answers.

#5 Just How Small is An Atom - Just how small are atoms? And what’s inside them? The answers turn out to be astounding, even for those who think they know. This fast-paced animation uses spectacular metaphors (imagine a blueberry the size of a football stadium!) to give a visceral sense of the building blocks that make our world.

#6 Victor Wooten: Music as a Language - Music is a powerful communication tool–it causes us to laugh, cry, think and question. Bassist and five-time Grammy winner, Victor Wooten, asks us to approach music the same way we learn verbal language–by embracing mistakes and playing as often as possible.

#7 Insults by Shakespeare  – “You’re a fishmonger!” By taking a closer look at Shakespeare’s words — specifically his insults — we see why he is known as a master playwright whose works transcend time and appeal to audiences all over the world.

#8 How Simple Ideas Lead to Scientific Discoveries - Adam Savage walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods anyone could have followed — Eratosthenes’ calculation of the Earth’s circumference around 200 BC and Hippolyte Fizeau’s measurement of the speed of light in 1849.

#9 The Wacky History of Cell Theory Scientific discovery isn’t as simple as one good experiment. The weird and wonderful history of cell theory illuminates the twists and turns that came together to build the foundations of biology.