Zombies! 5 TED-Ed Lessons that animate the walking dead

Laura McClure — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 01:40:32 +0000

Zombies eat brains. They also feed brains — when they star in educational videos like ours, that is. Ready to reanimate your love of math, science and mayhem? Watch 5 TED-Ed Lessons with zombies, below.

1. Can you solve the bridge riddle?

Taking that internship in a remote mountain lab might not have been the best idea. Pulling that lever with the skull symbol just to see what it did probably wasn’t so smart either. But now is not the time for regrets because you need to get away from these mutant zombies…fast. Can you use math to get you and your friends over the bridge before the zombies arrive? Alex Gendler shows how. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

2. Diagnosing a zombie: Brain and body

Zombies eat brains. They are also, like all of us, driven by brain functions. What is happening in their brains to make them act as they do? In this intriguing dialogue, Tim Verstynen & Bradley Voytek apply the various human medical possibilities that make zombies…zombies. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

3. Making a TED-Ed Lesson: Animating zombies with puppets

What style of animation perfectly mimics the movement of zombies? Puppet animation allows for just the right amount of zombie-like stiff limbs and jerky stumbles. TED-Ed animators show how to bring a zombie to life through 2D puppet animation (and how to try this at home). Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

4. Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns)

Few mistakes sour good writing like nominalizations, or, as Helen Sword likes to call them, zombie nouns. Zombie nouns transform simple and straightforward prose into verbose and often confusing writing. Keep your nouns away from elongating nominalizations! Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.

5. How do you decide where to go in a zombie apocalypse?

Can geography save your life in case of, say, a zombie apocalypse? Understanding the push and pull factors that create geographic movement — or how people, resources, and even ideas travel — might help you determine the location that’s best for survival. David Hunter playfully analyzes the geography skills that you’d need to escape the zombies. Watch this TED-Ed Lesson below.