Shadowing Practice: Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED - Learn English Speaking with Video
בחר מצב תרגול
כל מצב פותח חדר תרגול במסך מלא.
337 משפטים
אם המשפטים קצרים או ארוכים מדי, לחץ על ערוך כדי להתאים אותם.
1
- LEDs don't get their color from their plastic covers.
2
And you can see that because here is a transparent LED that also glows the same red color.
3
The color of the light comes from the electronics themselves.
4
The casing just helps us tell different LEDs apart.
5
In 1962, general Electric engineer Nick Holonyak created the first visible LED.
6
It glowed a faint red.
7
A few years after that, engineers at Monsanto created a green LED.
8
But for decades, all we had were those two colors.
9
So LEDs could only be used in things like indicators, calculators, and watches.
10
If only we could make blue, then we could mix red, green, and blue to make white, and every other color, unlocking LEDs for every type of lighting in the world, from light bulbs, to phones, to computers, to TVs to billboards.
11
But blue was almost impossible to make.
12
Throughout the 1960s, every big electronics company in the world, from IBM to GE, to Bell Labs, raced to create the blue LED.
13
They knew it would be worth billions.
14
Despite the efforts of thousands of researchers, nothing worked.
15
10 years after Holonyak's original LED turned into 20, then 30, and the hope of ever using LEDs for light, faded away.
16
According to a director at Monsanto, these won't ever replace the kitchen light.
17
They'd only be used in appliances, car dashboards, and stereo sets to see if the stereo was on.
18
This might still be true today, if not for one engineer who defied the entire industry and made three radical breakthroughs to create the world's first blue LED.
19
Shūji Nakamura was a researcher at a small Japanese chemical company named Nichia.
20
They had recently expanded into the production of semiconductors to be used in the manufacture of red and green LEDs.
21
But by the late 1980s, the semiconductor division was on its last legs.
22
They were competing against far more established companies in a crowded market, and they were losing.
23
Tensions started to run high.
24
Younger employees begged Nakamura to create new products, while senior workers called his research a waste of money.
25
And at Nichia, money was in short supply.
26
Nakamura's lab mainly consisted of machinery he had scavenged and welded together himself.
27
Phosphorus leaks in his lab created so many explosions, that his coworkers had stopped checking in on him.
28
By 1988, Nakamura's supervisors were so disillusioned with his research that they told him to quit.
29
So it was out of desperation that he brought a radical proposal to the company's founder and president Nobuo Ogawa.
30
The elusive blue LED, that the likes of of Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic had all failed at.
31
What if Nichia could be the one to create it?
32
After suffering loss after loss on their semiconductors for more than a decade, Ogawa took a gamble.
33
He devoted 500 million yen or $3 million, likely around 15% of the company's annual profit, to Nakamura's moonshot Project.
34
Everyone knew that LEDs have the potential to replace light bulbs, because light bulbs, the universal symbol for a bright idea, are actually terrible at making light.
35
They work by running current through a tungsten filament, which gets so hot, it glows.
36
But most of the electromagnetic radiation comes out as infrared, heat.
37
Only a negligible fraction is visible light.
38
In contrast, LED stands for light emitting diode.
39
It's right there in the name.
40
LEDs primarily create light, so they're far more efficient, and a diode is just a device with two electrodes, which only allows current to flow in one direction.
41
So here's how an LED works.
42
When you have an isolated atom, each electron in that atom occupies a discreet energy level.
43
You can think of these energy levels like individual seats from a hockey stadium, and all atoms of the same element, when they are far apart from each other have identical available energy levels.
44
But when you bring multiple atoms together to form a solid, something interesting happens.
45
The outermost electrons now feel the pole, not only of their own nucleus, but of all the other nuclei as well.
46
And as a result, their energy levels shift.
47
So instead of being identical, they become a series of closely spaced, but separate energy levels.
48
An energy band.
49
The highest energy band with electrons in it, is known as the valence band, and the next higher energy band is called the conduction band.
50
You can think of it like the balcony level.
51
In conductors, the valence band is only partially filled.
52
This means with a little bit of thermal energy, electrons can jump into nearby unfilled seats, and if an electric field is applied, they can jump from one unfilled seat to the next and conduct current through the material.
53
In insulators, the valence band is full, and the difference in energy between the valence and conduction bands, the band gap, is large.
54
So when an electric field is applied, no electrons can move.
55
There are no available seats to move into in the valence band, and the band gap is too big for any electrons to jump into the conduction band, which brings us to semiconductors.
56
Semiconductors are similar to insulators, except the band gap is much smaller.
57
This means at room temperature, a few electrons will have sufficient energy to jump into the conduction band, and now they can easily access nearby empty seats and conduct current.
58
Not only that, the empty seats they left behind in the valence band can also move.
59
Well, really, it's the nearby electrons jumping into those empty seats.
60
But if you look from afar, it's as though the empty seat or hole is moving like a positive charge in the opposite direction to the electrons in the conduction band.
61
By themselves, pure semiconductors are not that useful.
62
To make them way more functional, you have to add impurity atoms into the lattice.
63
This is known as doping.
64
For example, in silicon, you can add a small number of phosphorus atoms.
65
Phosphorus is similar to silicon, so it easily fits into the lattice, but it brings with it one extra valence electron.
66
This electron exists in a donor level just beneath the conduction band.
67
So with a bit of thermal energy, all these electrons can jump into the conduction band and conduct current.
68
Since most of the charges that can move in this type of semiconductor are electrons, which are negative, this sort of semiconductor is called n-type, n for negative, but I should point out that the semiconductor itself is still neutral.
69
It's just that most of the mobile charge carriers are negative.
70
They're electrons.
71
So there is also another type of semiconductor where most of the mobile charge carriers are positive, and it's called p-type.
72
To make p-type silicon, you add a small number of atoms of, say, boron.
73
Boron fits into the lattice, but brings with it one fewer valence electron than silicon.
74
So it creates an empty acceptor level just above the valence band.
75
And with a bit of thermal energy, electrons can jump outta the valence band, leaving behind holes.
76
It is these positive holes which are mostly responsible for carrying current in the p-type semiconductor.
77
Again, the material overall is uncharged, it's just that most of the mobile charge carriers are positive holes.
78
Where things get interesting is when you put a piece of p-type and n-type together.
79
Without even connecting this to a circuit, some electrons will diffuse from n to p and fall into the holes in the p-type.
80
This makes the p-type a little negatively charged, and the n-type a little positively charged.
81
So there is now an electric field inside an inert piece of material.
82
Electrons keep diffusing until the electric field becomes so large, it prevents them from crossing over.
83
And now we have established the depletion region, an area depleted of mobile charge carriers.
84
There are no electrons in the conduction band and no holes in the valence band.
85
If you connect a battery the wrong way to this diode, it simply expands the depletion region until its electric field perfectly opposes that of the battery and no current flows.
86
But if you flip the polarity of the battery, then the depletion region shrinks, the electric field decreases, and electrons can flow from n to p.
87
When an electron falls from the conduction band into a hole in the valence band, that band gap energy can be emitted as a photon.
88
The energy change of the electron is emitted as light, and this is how a light emitting diode works.
89
The size of the band gap determines the color of the light emitted.
90
In pure silicon, the band gap is only 1.1 electron volts.
91
So the photon released isn't visible, it's infrared light.
92
These LEDs are actually used in remote controls for your TV, and you can capture them on camera.
93
Moving up the spectrum, you can see why the first visible light LEDs were red and then green, and why blue was so hard.
94
A photon of blue light requires more energy, and therefore a larger band gap.
95
By the 1980s, after hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent hunting for the right material, every electronics company had come up empty handed.
96
But researchers had at least figured out the first critical requirement, high quality crystal.
97
No matter what material you used for the blue LED, it required a near perfect crystal structure.
98
Any defects in the crystal lattice, disrupt the flow of electrons.
99
So instead of emitting their energy as visible light, it is instead dissipated as heat.
100
So the first step in Nakamura's proposal to Ogawa, was to disappear to Florida.
101
He knew an old colleague there whose lab was beginning to use a new crystal making technology called Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition, or MOCVD.
102
An MOCVD reactor, essentially a giant oven, was and still is the best way to mass produce clean crystal.
103
It works by injecting vapor molecules of your crystal into a hot chamber where they react with a base material called a substrate to form layers.
104
It's important that the substrate lattice matches the crystal lattice being built on top of it to create a stable, smooth crystal.
105
This is a precise art.
106
The crystal layers often need to be as thin as just a couple of atoms.
107
Nakamura joined the lab for a year to master MOCVD.
108
But his time there was miserable.
109
He wasn't allowed to use the working MOCVD, so he spent 10 of his 12 months assembling a new system, almost from scratch.
110
Even worse, his lab mates shunned him because Nakamura didn't have a doctorate, nor any academic papers to his name, as Nichia didn't allow publishing.
111
His lab mates, all PhD researchers, dismissed him as a lowly technician.
112
This experience fueled him.
113
Nakamura wrote, "I feel resentful when people looked down on me.
114
I developed more fighting spirit.
115
I would not allow myself to be beaten by such people." He returned to Japan in 1989 with two things in hand.
116
One, an order for a brand new MOCVD reactor for Nichia, and two, a fervent desire to get his PhD.
117
At that time in Japan, you could earn a PhD without having to go to university, simply by publishing five papers.
118
Nakamura had always known his chances of inventing the blue LED were low.
119
But now he had a backup plan.
120
Even if he didn't succeed, he could at least get his PhD.
121
But now the question was with MOCVD under his belt, which material should he research?
122
By this time, scientists had narrowed the options down to two main candidates, zinc selenide, and gallium nitride.
123
These were both semiconductors with band gaps, theoretically, in the blue light range.
124
Zinc selenide was the far more promising option.
125
When grown in an MOCVD reactor, it had only a .3% lattice mismatch with its substrate, gallium arsenide.
126
Therefore, zinc selenide crystal had about a thousand defects per square centimeter, within the upper limit for LED functioning.
127
Its only issue was that while scientists had figured out multiple different ways to create n-type zinc selenide, no one knew how to create p-type.
128
In contrast, gallium nitride had been abandoned by almost everybody for three reasons.
129
First, it was much harder to make a high quality crystal.
130
The best substrate for growing gallium nitride was sapphire, but its lattice mismatch was 16%.
131
This resulted in higher defects, over 10 billion per square centimeter.
132
The second problem was that like zinc selenide, scientists had only ever created n-type gallium nitride using silicon.
133
P-type was elusive.
134
And third, to be commercially viable, a blue LED would have to have a total light output power of at least a thousand microwatts.
135
That's two orders of magnitude more than any prototype had ever achieved.
136
So between the two candidates, almost all researchers were focused on zinc selenide.
137
Nakamura surveyed the crowded field and decided that if he were going to publish five papers by himself, he'd better focus on gallium nitride, where the competition was much less fierce.
138
This material's main claim to fame was one development back in 1972, when RCA engineer Herbert Maruska made a tiny gallium nitride blue LED, but it was dim and inefficient.
139
So RCA slashed the project's budget, calling it a dead end.
140
20 years later, scientific opinion hadn't changed.
141
When Nakamura attended the biggest applied physics conference in Japan, the talks on zinc selenide had over 500 attendees.
142
The talks on gallium nitride had five.
143
Two of those five attendees were the world experts on gallium nitride, Dr. Isamu Akasaki and his former grad student, Dr. Hiroshi Amano.
144
In contrast to Nakamura's academic background, they were researchers at Nagoya University, one of Japan's best.
145
A few years earlier, they had made a breakthrough on the first problem of high quality crystal.
146
Instead of growing gallium nitride directly on sapphire, they first grew a buffer layer of aluminum nitride.
147
This has a lattice spacing in between that of the other two materials, making it easier to grow a clean gallium nitride crystal on top.
148
The only issue was that the aluminum caused problems for the MOCVD reactor, making the process hard to scale.
149
But Nakamura wasn't even close at this stage.
150
Back at Nichia, he couldn't get gallium nitride to even grow normally in his new MOCVD reactor.
151
After six months, desperate for results, he decided to take the machine apart and build a better version himself.
152
His 10 months spent putting together the reactor in Florida, were suddenly invaluable.
153
He began following the same routine each day, arrive at the lab at 7:00 AM.
154
Spend the first half of the day welding, cutting, and rewiring the reactor.
155
Spend the rest of the day experimenting with the modified reactor to see what it can do.
156
At 7:00 PM go home, eat dinner, wash and sleep.
157
Nakamura repeated this routine every single day, taking no weekends and no holidays except for New Year's Day, the most important holiday in Japan.
158
After a year and a half of continuous work, he came into the lab on a winter day in late 1990.
159
As usual, he tinkered around in the morning grew a gallium nitride sample in the afternoon, and tested it.
160
But this time, the electron mobility was four times higher than any gallium nitride ever grown directly on sapphire.
161
Nakamura called it the most exciting day of his life.
162
His trick was to add a second nozzle to the MOCVD reactor.
163
The gallium nitride reactant gases had been rising in the hot chamber, mixing in the air to form a powdery waste.
164
But the second nozzle released a downward stream of inert gas, pinning the first flow to the substrate to form a uniform crystal.
165
For years, scientists had avoided adding a second stream to MOCVD because they thought it would only introduce more turbulence.
166
But Nakamura used a special nozzle so that even when the streams combined, they remained laminar.
167
He called his invention the two-flow reactor.
168
Now, he was ready to take on Akazaki and Amano, but instead of copying their aluminum nitride buffer layer, his two flow design allowed him to make gallium nitride so smooth and stable, it itself could be used as a buffer layer on the sapphire substrate.
169
This in turn, yielded an even cleaner crystal of gallium nitride on top, without the issues of aluminum.
170
Nakamura now had the highest quality gallium nitride crystals ever made.
171
But just as he was getting started, things took a wrong turn.
172
While he had been in Florida, Nobuo Ogawa had stepped back from Nichia to become chairman.
173
In his day, Nobuo had been a risk taking scientist, designing the company's first products.
174
It's why he supported Nakamura's lofty plans all this time.
175
But in his place, his son-in-law, Eji Ogawa, became CEO of the company, and the younger Ogawa had a much stricter outlook.
176
One Nichia client said, "He has a mind of steel, and he remembers everything." In 1990, an executive at Matsushita, an LED manufacturer and Nichia's biggest customer, visited the company to give a talk on blue LEDs.
177
In it, he claimed zinc selenide was the way forward, declaring "gallium nitride has no future." That very same day, Nakamura received a note from Eji, stop work on gallium nitride immediately.
178
Eji had never supported the research and wanted to end what he saw as a colossal waste.
179
But Nakamura crumpled up the note and threw it away, and he did so again, and again, when a succession of similar notes and phone calls came from company management.
180
Out of spite, he published his work on the two-flow reactor without Nichia's knowledge.
181
It was his first paper.
182
One down, four to go.
183
With crystal formation settled, he turned to the second obstacle, creating p-type gallium nitride.
184
Here Akazaki and Amano had again beaten him to the punch.
185
They had created a gallium nitride sample doped with magnesium, but at first, it didn't perform as a p-type as they expected.
186
However, after exposing it to an electron beam, it did behave as a p-type, the world's first p-type gallium nitride, after 20 years of trying.
187
The catch was that no one knew why it worked.
188
And the process of irradiating each crystal with electrons was too slow for commercial production.
189
At first, Nakamura copied Akazaki and Amano's approach, but he suspected the beam of electrons was overkill.
190
Maybe all the crystal needed was energy.
191
So he tried heating magnesium doped gallium nitride to 400 degrees Celsius in a process known as annealing.
192
The result, a completely p-type sample.
193
This worked even better than the shallow electron beam, which only made the surfaces of the samples p-type, and simply heating things up was a quick scalable process.
194
His work also revealed why the p-type had been so difficult.
195
To make gallium nitride with MOCVD, you supply the nitrogen from ammonia, but ammonia also contains hydrogen.
196
Where there should have been holes in the magnesium doped gallium nitride, these hydrogen atoms were sneaking in and bonding with the magnesium, plugging all the holes.
197
Adding energy to the system, released the hydrogen from the material, freeing up the holes again.
198
By now, Nakamura had all the ingredients to make a prototype blue LED, and he presented it at a workshop in St. Louis in 1992 and received a standing ovation.
199
He was beginning to make a name for himself, but even though he had created the best prototype to date, it was more of a blue violet color and still extremely inefficient, with a light output power of just 42 microwatts, well below the 1000 microwatt threshold for practical use.
200
At Nichia, the new CEO's patience had run out.
201
Eji sent written orders to Nakamura to stop tinkering and turn whatever he had into a product.
202
His job was on the line, but in Nakamura's own words, "I kept ignoring his order.
203
I had been successful because I didn't listen to company orders and trusted my own judgment." At this point, he only had the third hurdle left, getting his blue LED to a light output power of a thousand microwatts.
204
A known trick to increase the efficiency of LEDs was to create a well, a thin layer of material at the p-n junction called an active layer that shrinks the band gap just a bit.
205
This encourages more electrons to fall from the end type conduction band into holes in the p-type valence band.
206
The best active layer for gallium nitride was already known to be indium gallium nitride, which would not only make the band gap easier to cross, but also narrow it just the right amount to bring its blue violet gap down to true blue.
207
This time, Akasaki and Amano didn't scoop Nakamura.
208
They were stuck trying to grow indium gallium nitride in the first place.
209
Amano recalled, "It was generally said that gallium nitride and indium nitride would not mix, like water and oil." But Nakamura had an advantage, his ability to customize his MOCVD reactor.
210
This allowed him to use brute force, adjusting the reactor to pump as much indium as he could onto the gallium nitride, in the hopes that at least some would stick.
211
To his surprise, the technique worked, giving him a clean indium gallium nitride crystal.
212
He quickly incorporated this active layer into his LED, but the well worked a little too well and overflowed with electrons, leaking them back into the gallium nitride layers.
213
Unfazed, within a few months, Nakamura had fixed this too by creating the opposite of a well, a hill.
214
He returned to his reactor one more time to make aluminum gallium nitride, a compound with a larger band gap that could block electrons from escaping the well once inside.
215
The structure of the blue LED had become far more complex than anyone could have imagined, but it was complete.
216
By 1992, Shūji Nakamura had this.
217
- And I showed the chairman, I told him, "Please, hey chairman come to my office." I showed him the blue LED and he said, "ohh, this is great no?" I became so happy.
218
I just became, out of my office, yeah.
219
- After 30 years of searching by countless scientists, Nakamura had done it.
220
He had created a glorious, bright blue LED that could even be seen in daylight.
221
It had a light output power of 1,500 microwatts and emitted a perfect blue at exactly 450 nanometers.
222
It was over 100 times brighter than the previous pseudo-blue LEDs on the market.
223
Nakamura wrote, "I felt like I had reached the top of Mount Fuji." Nichia called a press conference in Tokyo to announce the world's first true blue LED.
224
The electronics industry was stunned.
225
A researcher from Toshiba remarked, "Everyone was caught with their pants down." The effect on Nichia's fortunes was immediate and explosive.
226
Orders flooded in, and by the end of 1994, they were manufacturing 1 million blue LEDs per month.
227
Within three years, the company's revenue had nearly doubled.
228
In 1996, they made the jump from blue to white, by placing a yellow phosphor over the LED.
229
This chemical absorbs the blue photons and re-radiates them in a broad spectrum across the visible range.
230
Soon enough, Nichia was selling the world's first white LED.
231
At last, unlocking the final frontiers so many had doubted, LED lighting.
232
Over the next four years, their sales doubled again.
233
By 2001, their revenue was approaching $700 million a year.
234
Over 60% came from blue LED products.
235
Today, Nichia is one of the largest LED manufacturers in the world with an annual revenue in the billions.
236
As for Nakamura, to whom Nichia owed the quadrupling of its fortunes?
237
- I increased my salary, $60,000.
238
After doubling, yeah.
239
- I heard you only got $170 bonus - Each patent.
240
- So you got $170 bonus for the patent.
241
- Yes, yes.
242
- This was all while the blue LED was generating hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.
243
Eji Ogawa had always seen Nakamura's stubborn individuality as a liability, not a strength.
244
The message was clear.
245
In 2000, after more than 20 years at Nichia, Nakamura left the company for the US, where job offers had been pouring in.
246
But his troubles with Nichia weren't over.
247
He began consulting for Cree, another LED company.
248
Nichia was furious and sued him for leaking company secrets.
249
Nakamura responded by counter-suing Nichia for never properly compensating him for his invention, seeking $20 million.
250
In 2001, the Japanese courts ruled with Nakamura and ordered Nichia to pay him 10 times his initial request.
251
But Nichia appealed and the case was eventually settled with a payout of $8 million.
252
In the end, this was only enough to cover Nakamura's legal fees.
253
This is all he got for an invention that now comprises an $80 billion industry, from house lights to streetlights.
254
While you watch this video on a phone, computer or TV.
255
If you're outside following traffic lights or displays, chances are you are relying on blue LEDs.
256
We might even be getting too much of them.
257
You may have heard warnings to avoid blue light from screens before bed because it can disrupt your circadian rhythm.
258
That all comes from the gallium nitride blue LED.
259
But as for lighting, there are virtually no downsides to an LED bulb.
260
Compared to an incandescent or fluorescent bulb, they are far more efficient.
261
They last many times longer, are safer to handle, and are completely customizable.
262
30 years after the first white LED, high-end bulbs today allow you to choose between 50,000 different shades of white.
263
Most importantly, their price has come down to only a couple of dollars more than other types of bulbs.
264
And at their efficiency, with average daily use and electricity pricing, you can recoup that cost in only two months and continue to save for years after that.
265
The result is a lighting revolution.
266
In 2010, just 1% of residential lighting sales in the world were LED.
267
In 2022, it was over half.
268
Experts estimate that within the next 10 years, nearly all lighting sales will be LED.
269
The energy savings will be enormous.
270
Lighting accounts for 5% of all carbon emissions.
271
A full switch to LEDs could save an estimated 1.4 billion tons of CO2, equivalent to taking almost half the cars in the world off the road.
272
Today, Nakamura's research is on the next generation of LEDs, micro LEDs, and UV LEDs.
273
- So what are they making in there?
274
- LEDs, lasers, power devices.
275
This is one the best facility in the US.
276
- And this is because of you?
277
What's a standard LED size?
278
- 300 times 200 microns.
279
- Okay.
280
- Smallest is five microns.
281
- That is insanely tiny.
282
- So basically you can use that for like near-eye display such as AR and VR.
283
- You could have like a retina display that's like right up here?
284
- Yep. - A human hair would be about that thick.
285
- Yep.
286
- And that's a really, really tiny LED.
287
UV LEDs could be used to sterilize surfaces like in hospitals or kitchens.
288
Just flick on the UV lights and pathogens would be dead in seconds.
289
- COVID-19, you know, UV LED companies' stock prices were going, skyrocketed because everyone expected to be using these UV LEDS.
290
We can sterilize all the COVID-19, no?
291
For emitting diode, we use indium gallium nitride.
292
For UV, we use aluminum gallium nitride.
293
Okay.
294
- 'Cause the band gap is much bigger.
295
- Do you think this is what's coming?
296
- It's okay, it work, but the problem is the cost.
297
The efficiency is less than 10%.
298
The cost is very high.
299
But if the efficiency becomes more than 50%, cost is almost comparable to the mercury lamp.
300
- And you think it will happen, right?
301
Like the efficiency will go up?
302
- Yeah, yeah, I think so.
303
- It's just a matter of time.
304
- Yeah, I think so.
305
- And he's even tackling one of the biggest challenges of our time.
306
- I'm interested in physics.
307
- Me too!
308
- I'm still interested in nuclear fusion.
309
So recently I started the company of nuclear fusion.
310
- Really? - Oh yeah, last year.
311
- No way. - No way, aha.
312
- In 2014, Nakamura, Akasaki and Amano were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for creating the blue LED.
313
Shortly afterwards, Nakamura publicly thanked Nichia for supporting his work, and he offered to visit and make amends, but they turned down his offer and today their relationship is still cold.
314
But perhaps even more important than the Nobel Prize, By the time Nakamura released his blue LED in 1994, he had published over 15 papers, and he finally received his doctorate in engineering.
315
Today he has published over 900 papers.
316
Throughout his entire journey, one thing has never changed.
317
What is your favorite color?
318
- Oh, blue.
319
- Was it always blue?
320
Or only after you made the LED?
321
- I was born in a fishing village.
322
Fishing village.
323
In front of the house is awesome like, ocean.
324
Blue always.
325
- While I was learning about Nakamura's story, I realized that what set him apart from the thousands of researchers trying to unlock the blue LED, it wasn't necessarily his knowledge, but his determination, critical thinking, and problem solving skills.
326
Where others saw dead ends, he saw potential solutions.
327
So if you're looking for a free and easy way to start building these skills for yourself right now, look no further than today's sponsor, Brilliant.
328
Brilliant will make you a better thinker and problem solver while helping you build real skills and everything from math and data science, to programming technology, and you name it.
329
On Brilliant, you'll learn through discovery by trying things for yourself, and you'll not only gain knowledge of key concepts, but learn to apply them to real world situations, all while building your intuition, giving you the tools to solve whatever problems come your way.
330
There is so much to learn on Brilliant.
331
They have thousands of interactive lessons on just about anything that you're curious about.
332
And because each lesson is bite-sized, you can do them in just minutes.
333
So if you're like me and made a resolution to learn something new every day this year, Brilliant will help you actually do it.
334
The best part is you can learn from anywhere, right on your phone.
335
So whenever you have a few minutes, you can be building a quicker sharper mind.
336
So to try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for 30 days, visit brilliant.org/veritasium or click that link down in the description, and the first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription.
337
So I wanna thank Brilliant for sponsoring this video, and I want to thank you for watching.
הורד אפליקציה
כל מה שאתה צריך כדי לדבר בשטף
הגיית AIציון לכל משפט
תרגול IPAשלוט בכל צליל
אוצר מיליםבנה את מאגר המילים שלך
משחק אוצר מיליםלמד תוך כדי משחק
אותו ערוץ
C11
White holes and wormholes are probably real. Here's why.
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C11
Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
No device could prove Einstein wrong... until now
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C12
You've (Likely) Been Playing The Game Of Life Wrong
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
We're trying something new...
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C120
How does light 'know' the shortest path?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
Why Cold Drinks Were Deadly Before 1914
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
Exposing The Flaw In Our Phone System
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Our Greatest Delusion
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
The Most Controversial Problem in Philosophy
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
We've Been Using The Wrong Science In Court For 50 years
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B24
Explaining Pi With Pizza
University Students
B214
5 Fun Physics Phenomena
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C12
The Absurd Engineering Behind the Internet
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B11
Falling ladders - why does this happen?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepHigh School Students
C110
How a slinky falls in slow motion #shorts
University StudentsWorking Adults
C13
We're 99.9% sure this pattern is true, but no one can prove it
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B23
What is the secret of a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C18
How An Infinite Hotel Ran Out Of Room
University Students
FOR YOU
המלץ על סרטון
C11
7 משפטים
Diodes Explained - The basics how diodes work working principle pn junction
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
41 משפטים
Making a 360° Controller Smaller than a Penny!
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
260 משפטים
【TED】優れたリーダーはどうやって行動を促すか/サイモン・シネック （日本語字幕）
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C11
19 משפטים
I Made an EMP Device... It Actually Works
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
20 משפטים
The Semiconductor Production Process Explained Clearly
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
80 משפטים
The surprising pattern behind color names around the world
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
742 משפטים
The REAL reason China built so much
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B24
31 משפטים
What happens to old electronic devices when you upgrade?
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B24
638 משפטים
Jensen Huang: The Mindset That Built NVIDIA
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
422 משפטים
20 Minutes of REAL English Listening Practice 👂 - Native Conversation with New Vocab! S1E6 (B2-C1)
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B23
338 משפטים
I Tested the MOST VIEWED TikTok CANDY Recipes! 🍬
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
Why This Video Is Perfect for English Speaking Practice
The video about the blue LED is a goldmine for IELTS speaking practice and general fluency. Its mix of technical explanations, storytelling, and conversational tone makes it ideal for learning how to communicate complex ideas clearly. The dialogue flows naturally, with pauses and emphasis that mirror real-life speech, helping you master rhythm and intonation—key for sounding confident in English. Plus, it’s engaging content, so you’ll stay motivated while practicing.
Breaking Down Natural English Phrases
Let’s look at 3 phrases that make the video’s speech sound authentic:
- “If only we could make blue, then we could mix red, green, and blue to make white…” The use of “if only” and “then” creates a logical, conversational flow, showing how to connect ideas. It’s a common structure in debates or explanations, perfect for english speaking practice.
- “Everyone knew that LEDs have the potential to replace light bulbs, because light bulbs… are actually terrible at making light.” The casual “actually” softens the statement, making it sound less formal. This is how native speakers often add emphasis in everyday talk.
- “So it was out of desperation that he brought a radical proposal…” Starting with “so” and using “it was… that” adds drama and focus. This structure is great for storytelling, a skill tested in IELTS speaking.
A Simple Shadowing Routine to Try
Use this video with a shadowing site or just your phone for a quick, effective practice loop: 1. Watch a 10-second clip, focusing on the speaker’s pace and stress. 2. Pause, then repeat the clip aloud, mimicking every sound—even pauses. 3. Record yourself, then compare to the original. Note where your rhythm or pronunciation differs. 4. Repeat until you match the speaker’s flow. This shadow speech method trains your mouth and brain to work together, making natural speech feel automatic. It’s a proven way to learn english with youtube and boost your speaking skills fast.
דקדוק בסרטון הזה
המבנים שהדובר משתמש בהם הכי הרבה, עם המילים המדויקות מהסרטון:
| מבנה | בסרטון |
|---|---|
| סביל (Passive voice) be + past participle — הדגש הוא על מה שקורה, לא על מי שעושה את הפעולה | is known · is applied · is called |
| הווה מושלם (Present perfect) have/has + past participle — פעולה שקרתה בעבר ועדיין יש לה חשיבות או השפעה עכשיו | have established · has come · has published |
| משפטי זיקה (Relative clauses) who / which + clause — מידע נוסף על אדם או דבר | electrons, which are · holes which are |
מהי טכניקת השאדואינג?
שאדואינג היא טכניקת למידת שפה מבוססת מדע שפותחה במקור להכשרת מתורגמנים מקצועיים ופופולרית על ידי הפוליגלוט ד"ר אלכסנדר ארגואלס. השיטה פשוטה אך עוצמתית: אתה מקשיב לאודיו באנגלית ילידית וחוזר עליו בקול רם מיד — כמו צל העוקב אחרי הדובר עם עיכוב של 1–2 שניות בלבד. בניגוד להאזנה פסיבית או תרגילי דקדוק, שאדואינג מכריח את המוח והשרירים בפה לעבד ולשחזר דפוסי דיבור אמיתיים בו זמנית. מחקרים מראים שזה משפר משמעותית את דיוק ההגייה, האינטונציה, הקצב, הדיבור המחובר, הבנת השמיעה ושטף הדיבור — מה שהופך אותו לאחת השיטות היעילות ביותר להכנה לIELTS Speaking ולתקשורת באנגלית בעולם האמיתי.