Adam Savage - How Simple Ideas Lead to Scientific Discoveries

We live in a world in which we presuppose as a given that great scientific discoveries require the existence of great, expensive technological equipment: lasers, the Large Hadron Collider, microscopes, computers, the Hubble and Kepler telescopes, synchrotrons, super-duper cameras, you name it...

But more than great technology, the real secret to discovery is creativity, because creativity helps you make good use of whatever tools are actually available to you, even if they happen to be, as in the case of Eratosthenes, two sticks on the ground. In the following TEDTalk animated presentation, Myth Buster Adam Savage recounts a few examples (starting with Richard Feynman, moving on to Eratosthenes,  Galileo, and Armand Fizeau's toothed wheel to measure the speed of light,) about how small ideas can give rise to mind-blowing ideas and revolutionary discoveries.

And if Carl Sagan is more your style, you might be interested in his take on Eratosthenes.