After yesterday’s link to an Ignite Talk, Scrabble: How to Confuse and Destroy Your Opponents, I thought I’d take this opportunity to feature a few more great five-minute talks. Remember, the Ignite format is very strict: five minutes per talk, twenty slides total, and slides auto-advance every fifteen seconds. So each of these talks is sort of a bite-sized lecture. Some are delivered by experts, others by people who just know interesting stuff. Enjoy!

Will Noel, “Restoring The Archimedes Palimpsest”

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a 10th century manuscript of the mathematician’s work. Unfortunately it was turned into a prayer book in the 13th century. Will Noel explains how he helped rescue the text in this week’s Ignite talk.

Note: you can also check out the palimpsest online at ArchimedesPalimpsest.org.

Vanessa Holfeltz, “Boiling Water in 5 Easy Steps” (Using a Nuclear Reactor)

In this week’s Ignite Show, Vanessa Holfeltz walks us through the steps of building a nuclear reactor just to boil water. It’s a great look at the science and engineering behind the tech.

Alexis Bauer, “How to Work a Crowd”

In this week’s Ignite Show episode, Alexis Bauer show’s us how easy and effective it is control your own social fate and turn a room full of strangers into friends.

Michael Galpert, “Internet Images: Identifying Real Vs. Fake”

You can’t believe everything you see on the internet. In this week’s ignite episode, Michael Galpert shows us how to spot the difference between real and fake images.

Note: the speaker doesn’t really have time to show us specifics on how to spot fake images, but does show a lot of good fake image examples, and basically says to trust no one.

Jason Grigsby, “Cup Noodle: Innovation, Inspiration and Manga”

In just five minutes, Jason Grigsby shares the story and learnings from the creation of Cup Noodle. A lot more went into making that product than meets the eye.

Note: Jason is a friend and former coworker in the tech industry (we worked together for…five years?). I can vouch for his knowledge of both Cup Noodle as well as startups.