Every time you throw food into a blender, you’re doing science. This seemingly mundane appliance is actually a cavitation chamber.

Your blender transforms chunks of fruit or veggies into a smooth mixture, first by cutting them up into smaller pieces and then by bombarding the smaller morsels with tiny air bombs. As these bubbles collapse, shock waves break the bits of food up even further.

This process is revealed in beautiful slow motion in the videos featured here. The short documentary of the rips and explosions that happen inside one of the most common kitchen gadgets is part of a new series of videos about the science of cooking produced by scientist-turned-chef Chris Young, Ryan Matthew Smith and Grant Crilly at ChefSteps.

Young, who has degrees in theoretical mathematics and biochemistry from the University of Washington, wants to use science “to tell the story of cooking in a way that people haven’t seen it before,” he said. Videos explaining the science of pressure cooking, grilling and the viscosity of food are in the works.

Young hopes his open-source approach to what he calls empirical cooking will jumpstart discussions on what scientific principles might be involved in particular recipes. “By giving that explanation, you start to get a discussion of other ways you might do it to improve it, and that fosters innovation and creativity,” he said.

When Young first started experimenting with empirical cooking about 12 years ago, he didn’t have a community of chefs and scientists to toss around ideas with. He recalls cold-calling researchers to talk about scientific articles on subjects like multimodal flavor perception and sensory suppression.

“Those were some weird phone calls,” he said.

But things are starting to change, he says, with more formal collaborations between top-tier chefs and world-class scientists, and with chef-oriented scientific journals popping up.

Young’s vision for ChefSteps is part Khan Academy, part Wikipedia, with a hint of Reddit sprinkled in. Already, you can go on the site and take a free course on sous vide, a technique used to vacuum cook food. There are weekly cooking challenges, forums where members can discuss cooking techniques, and of course, step-by-step recipes for dishes like wine infused pear, sous-vide steak, and magic sorbet dragon.

Videos: ChefSteps