What if you could only see the world in UV?

Veritasium · 5.6M views · 2018-07-21 · 11:13

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Veritasium shows what the world looks like through a UV camera. It covers how pigments absorb UV, how fluorescence works, and how UV imaging reveals sunscreen effectiveness and skin damage.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as a cool, eye-opening look at the hidden ultraviolet world, especially in sunscreen and vitamin D threads.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2019–2021

Topics

Everyday physics & science demos Fundamental physics

What people said

hrnnnnnn · 2020-08 · Recommendation
You need fancy lenses to do UV photography. From wikipedia: "For UV photography it is necessary to use specially developed lenses having elements made from fused quartz or quartz and fluorite." Veritasium has a video using a special UV setup, it's pretty cool - [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

rjf72 · 2019-02 · Recommendation
Mildly amusing related aside from this. Because of this, glass is completely opaque in the UV spectrum. Looking at the world in UV [1] is quite interesting! Such a reminder that how and what we experience of the world is so largely a product of our physiological composition. What is perfectly transparent to us would be a great hiding place from the perspective of something that only saw in UV. [1] - [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

tasty_freeze · 2021-08 · Reference
I'm in my mid/late 50s, and had grandparents from Ireland, that is, I'm light skinned. As a kid my brothers and I would compete who could peel off the longest continuous strip of skin a day or two after going to the beach. Anyway, the skin on my exposed arms looks like "old man" skin -- lots of blotches, and more importantly not elastic. However, the skin that lives under my short sleeves is not only unblemished, it is as elastic as when I was a teenager. In short: yes, it will help against cosmetic damage as well as skin cancer. Bonus: the youtube channel veritasium did a video a few years ago where they use a UV filter on a camera to show (a) the effectiveness of sunscreen and (b) the damage which is visible in the UV years before it shows up in visible light. [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Veritasium, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks

SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources