This week on the channel +836K views this week

A cube between portals gives minutephysics a forceful puzzle

Henry Reich's only new upload swaps the cube for a piston, and viewers question what the portals can push.

Channel:

minutephysics Story of October 16, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

What if you try to sandwich a cube between two portals?

Put a piston through a portal, let it emerge from another and extend until it hits itself from behind. That is where minutephysics takes its latest thought experiment, and where the audience starts checking the mechanics.

"What if you try to sandwich a cube between two portals?" was the channel's only new upload, reaching just over half a million views. Its description lays out several possibilities: a weak piston crumples, a rigid one stops extending if the portals are sufficiently heavy, or lighter portals get pushed apart. That last possibility rests on the video's argument that the portals exchange momentum with whatever passes through them.

Viewers are questioning that premise rather than simply choosing an outcome. Several compare a portal to a doorway or window: passing through an opening, they argue, need not exert a force on the opening itself. Others focus on compression within the piston. The discussion turns a fantastical setup into a very specific question about where the forces act.

The portal puzzle is also the channel's busiest upload by daily views. Behind it, "Strings Don't Vibrate The Way You Think" continues drawing attention to the unexpected motion of instrument strings, using a high-speed camera lent by Destin from Smarter Every Day. The older "Do *you* understand ISO?" keeps the photography corner active too.

Minutephysics added about 10,000 subscribers over seven days, putting six million within touching distance, although its daily viewing is much slower than usual. SciShow is having a busier-than-usual day among nearby science channels; here, the distinctive activity is a comment section asking whether a hole can push back.

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Where next?

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What viewers say

A door opening isn’t pushed in the opposite direction when you walk through it. The piston isn’t touching the portal, it’s going through it. Why would an opposite force be subjected to something not in contact with the piston?
@BlessingLeivdalKristensenSee it on YouTube
A portal shouldn't be "pushing" or "pulling" anything. It's just a window to another space. That would be like saying putting your arm out your car window is your window pushing your arm outward...
@Chakotay33.See it on YouTube
The portal isn't a solid object connected to what's moving through it. It's a hole. You don't push a hole by going through it. 😅
@DemonKingVISee it on YouTube

Public comments from the video's page on YouTube