YouTube joins Mark Rober’s $55 million mission to help teachers spread the good word of STEM

Mark Rober is spending $55 million on a full grade school STEM curriculum that will be totally free for teachers anywhere to access.

And now he’s got YouTube on board.

Rober unveiled Class CrunchLabs last year on Tubefilter’s own Creator Upload podcast. He’d mentioned the project vaguely before our episode, but during his chat with COO Joshua Cohen and co-host Lauren Schnipper, he got into the deets.

“We’re doing a full science curriculum from third to eighth grade,” he said. “We’ll have videos like the one I did with Ronaldo, MrBeast, cameos from all [kids’] favorite creators. But then I’ll be hiding the vegetables, teaching the actual principles.”

He nods to an experiment where he puts a watermelon inside an MRI machine, then holds a 10-pound hammer. “Then I’m like, ‘By the power of Thor!’ and this hammer just rips out of my hand and demolishes the watermelon,” he laughs.

But this eye-catching intro is a clever machination. “Now that I have your attention, I can teach you about invisible eclectic waves,” he says. “I can’t teach you if I don’t have your attention, so now I’m taking all the tricks I learned on YouTube and we’re making this full curriculum for teachers.”

Rober says there will be 40 units total, and as of October 2025, he was filming Unit 3.

The reason he’s willing to splash so much cash? He has a lot of money and doesn’t spend much. He’s also not keen to just sit around on his hoard–especially when he knows there are educators and kids in need.

“These poor teachers, they actually pay money for content that’s not good,” he said. “They’re paying their own money, and they don’t have much. So we’re just gonna put it out there.”

He added that “having a mission, something to work toward, brings me a lot of fulfillment.”

So he’s been filming for Class CrunchLabs between putting out his regular YouTube installments–and this week, YouTube announced it’s an official part of the effort.

“We’re partnering with engineer and creator Mark Rober to bring his signature hands-on science experiments directly into the classroom. Class CrunchLabs is a free, standards-aligned science curriculum for Grades 3-8 designed to spark student curiosity, build teacher confidence, and make science feel doable and fun,” it wrote in a short company blog post.

It added that Class CrunchLabs was developed in partnership with the National Science Teaching Association, and that, when finished, it’ll include hundreds of hands-on challenges and “more than 1,000 banger videos.”

All of Class CrunchLabs’ content will be free, forever, on the dedicated Class CrunchLabs YouTube channel.

An initial wave of content is available there now in 34 different languages, timed for the fall ’26 back-to-school. Like Rober told us, a number of lessons feature cameos from familiar content creators like Emily Zhang, EpicSpaceman, AstroChuie, Astroathens, Sorcerer, ElectroBOOM, and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim. Every unit comes with supplemental materials like teacher guides, student workbooks, handouts, supply lists, and more.

Topics covered so far include gravitational force, electric & magnetic forces, and contact forces, all for grades 6-8.

Joining Rober’s endeavor, YouTube says, is “part of our ongoing effort to make YouTube a go-to resource for high-quality academic content.”