civil engineering

Practical Engineering explains Mechanically Stabilized Earth, where layers of reinforcement make soil strong enough to hold heavy loads, shown with a sand structure supporting a car. It notes that MSE walls are everywhere in infrastructure.

Practical Engineering summarizes the 2017 Oroville Dam spillway failure, explaining the engineering details behind the incident. It also discusses how operators and regulators failed to keep downstream residents safe.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy explains how medieval engineers designed stone cathedrals using rules of thumb, with no science, mathematics or literacy. He uses it to define the engineering method.

A Tom Scott guest video by Grady Hillhouse of Practical Engineering on the 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse. A seemingly minor change to the support design led to catastrophic failure, which is why the case is taught as a lesson to check and double-check everything.

Practical Engineering gives a short introduction to concrete, covering the difference between concrete and cement, the ingredients, and reinforcement. It includes a hydraulic press demonstration of compressive strength.

Practical Engineering explains how continuous welded rail copes with thermal expansion by restraining it, using the relationship between temperature, stress and strain. The video is part of a series on railways.

Practical Engineering explains pumped storage hydropower, which makes up most grid-scale electricity storage. It covers how it works and why it fits only certain geographies.

Practical Engineering compares modern concrete with that of the Roman Empire, covering modern techniques like roller compacted concrete and water-reducing admixtures. It explains the tradeoffs of Roman construction versus reinforced concrete.

Practical Engineering explains what a 100-year flood actually means, combining statistics, hydrology and how society treats risk. Grady walks through local drainage infrastructure and the caveats in estimating flood probability.

Practical Engineering explains how canal locks work, including the water-saving basins of the new Panama Canal locks.

Practical Engineering explains why San Francisco's Millennium Tower is sinking and tilting, covering how geology and foundation design (friction piles in the Colma Formation) affect skyscrapers. It also covers the fix being attempted.

Practical Engineering explains how engineers and agencies put a dollar value on a human life to weigh cost against safety. It covers the legal and regulatory basis for these calculations.

Tom Scott visits a rotating house near San Diego and explains how electricity, gas and water keep working on the rotating part. It includes a 3D render of the utility connection system.

Real Engineering explains the engineering behind the James Webb Space Telescope, including its folding mirror, sunshield, orbit and cooling systems, and why deployment was so difficult.

Tom Scott tells how John Reber's plan to dam San Francisco Bay was disproved by the Army Corps of Engineers' giant hydraulic Bay Model in Sausalito. The model showed the plan would have been dangerously wrong.

Kurzgesagt asks whether advanced civilizations could have existed on Earth in the deep past and left little evidence. It looks at time as a dimension for searching for alien civilizations and the limits of the geological record.

PBS Space Time examines the Silurian hypothesis, the idea that an industrial civilization could have existed on Earth before humans. It looks at what traces such a civilization might leave in the geological record.

An engineering explainer on why Tesla abandoned the induction motor for the Model 3 and used an IPM-SynRM design. It covers the reluctance torque and permanent magnet principles behind the choice.

Practical Engineering's explanation of the February 2021 Texas winter storm and the resulting power grid outage. It lays out the facts about ERCOT, the grid's isolation, and how generation across fuel types failed in the cold.

Real Engineering examines whether greening the Sahara could draw down carbon and slow climate change. It concludes that the effort would be enormously costly and that changes in albedo and other effects undercut the climate benefit.

An Isaac Arthur episode on civilizations in the dark, post-stellar universe, including black hole farming, accretion disks and the Penrose process as energy sources.

SuperfastMatt looks at how the Tesla Model S retracting door handles were redesigned over time, from many parts to a motor plus sensor, with a focus on engineering and reliability.

Kurzgesagt's animated explainer on CRISPR gene editing, covering how the technology works and what it could mean for curing disease, designer babies and aging. It frames genetic engineering as an irreversible change coming to humanity.

Veritasium rides a boat across the Los Angeles reservoir covered in 96 million black plastic balls. He explains why they were really introduced, which was not primarily to reduce evaporation.

A Kurzgesagt animation on using gene drives to modify mosquitoes against malaria, and whether we should. It explains the mechanism and the ethical trade-offs.

Tom Scott visits ThyssenKrupp's test tower in Rottweil to see the Multi, a rope-free elevator that uses linear motors to move cabins sideways as well as vertically.

Engineering Explained examines BMW's Hydrogen 7, a V12 that burns liquid hydrogen or gasoline. He covers cryogenic storage at -253C and why the approach is impractical.

Engineering Explained argues that internal combustion engines are far from dead, and discusses the continued development of ICEs and the problems facing electric vehicles.

Asianometry explains the EUV light source inside ASML's lithography machines, where lasers hit falling tin droplets twice to produce 13.5 nm light. It walks through the engineering of the droplet generator, the pre-pulse and main laser, and the plasma that results.

Linkus7 explains how a community reverse-engineered The Wind Waker to predict its random number generator and beat the Sploosh Kaboom battleship minigame consistently. It includes d3 animations by Peter Schmidt-Nielsen.

Kurzgesagt explains the black hole bomb and how far-future civilizations might extract energy from spinning black holes, including Dyson-sphere-style ideas.

Real Engineering analyzes whether electric planes are feasible, focusing on battery energy density limits compared with jet fuel. It concludes electric flight works mainly for short ranges.

Real Engineering looks at why nuclear power plants are expensive and how their economics compare with fossil and renewable alternatives. It is based on a video from the Illinois Energy Professors.

Real Engineering explains why biofuels, especially corn ethanol, are a poor energy source, looking at energy inputs, efficiency and carbon cost.

Not Just Bikes introduces the "stroad", a street-road hybrid common in the US and Canada that fails at both jobs. He contrasts it with Dutch design, where each road has a single purpose, and covers cost, danger and ugliness.

Isaac Arthur explains the orbital ring, a megastructure launch-assist system that could move bulk cargo cheaply to orbit and beyond. He compares it with space elevators and discusses power transmission.

An Isaac Arthur episode on civilizations in the far future, past the Black Hole Era. It covers iron stars, Boltzmann brains, reversible computing and the idea of reversing entropy.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how China built the world's largest high-speed rail network so quickly and why its rail strategy differs from America's. It covers politics, social benefits and the economics of unprofitable lines.

Tom Scott stands by a construction site and explains why reversing vehicles now use a white-noise hiss instead of beeping. The sound is easier to locate directionally and less annoying to neighbours.

An Isaac Arthur episode on arcologies, self-sufficient habitats that could house whole cities, on Earth or on harsh worlds. It covers how such structures might work and what limits their size.