Planet influencers. Mark Robert, a California engineer who excels in science experiments

“Today we’re going to throw two grenades into a pool of liquid nitrogen.” Mark Robert isn’t the only one doing daring science experiments on him YoutubeBut no one does it better than him. Each of his videos has been viewed more than 20 million times on average. The key to his success, he explains on ABC.

I get people’s attention with something huge like the biggest shotgun in the world but at the end of the day I want to tell them about the science behind it.

A bowling ball controlled by body movements, a giant algae volcano, an obstacle course for squirrels … Mark’s brain is overflowing with crazy ideas, served by an indisputable talent for storytelling and his boiling point. Eternal teenager.

But Mark Robert is also an engineer by training, who has gone through Apple and Nasa, and so is capable of taking on challenges he’d launched himself like this battery for a lemon electric car. “The trick is to find the right minerals to put in the lemon. The zinc wants to get rid of the electrons and the copper wants them back. They can’t do that without being connected by an electrolyte and that’s the juice. Lemon!”

Once a year, a YouTuber dedicates a video to a good cause. “It’s strange if you tell me that when I speak into a microphone, 25 million people listen, he explains. So I can’t just sit there and do nothing knowing I have that strength.” Last spring, he revealed that his son has autism and tried to explain in his own generalizing spirit how autistic people perceive the world. “It’s a sensory burden with everything happening at the same time. If we talked together in this park, I could just ignore everything and focus on your voice. But if I were autistic, I would hear the ice cream seller from a distance. The kid who cries because he has no snow, the cars and the plane passers-by…”

He raised over $3 million in three hours on his channel for an association. But goodwill soon turned against him. Numerous messages on social networks criticized the work of this association, considering it extremely inappropriate, and even harmful for people with autism.