energy use

A long Technology Connections video arguing that public understanding of renewable energy is distorted. It covers solar economics, land use compared with ethanol corn, and battery myths such as cobalt.

Technology Connections explains the difference between power (watts) and energy (watt-hours) and why confusing them leads to errors. It runs about 52 minutes and uses everyday examples.

Andreas Antonopoulos answers a Bitcoin Q&A question about energy consumption in mining. He argues that mining is arbitrage for the cheapest electricity, drives investment in renewables, and that the traditional financial system has hidden externalities.

Posy gives a short history of the computer mouse cursor, from early straight pointers to the tilted arrow, comparing Apple and Windows designs. He then explains why he designed his own cursor set and offers it as a free download.

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.

Linus Tech Tips looks at whether buying a used GPU that was previously used for crypto mining is a good idea, as miners prepare to sell off cards. The video discusses how mining affects wear on cards and what to watch for.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains how the greenhouse effect actually works, given that infrared is mostly absorbed low in the atmosphere already. She walks through why more CO2 still warms the surface.

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.

A short Harvard animation narrated by Professor Rob Lue introducing mitochondria as the cell's powerhouses and how cells turn food and oxygen into energy.

Technology Connections explains how a home can act as a thermal battery by pre-cooling or pre-heating when electricity is cheap or abundant. He shows how this shifts load off-peak and eases strain on the grid.

Technology Connections explains why electric kettles are uncommon in the US, centering on 120V circuits limiting power. He tests ways of boiling water on gas, electric ranges and kettles.

A 2011 remix of over six hours of talks by Kirk Sorensen and other thorium advocates, explaining thorium as a nuclear fuel and the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). It argues LFTRs could produce energy without long-lived transuranic waste.

Real Engineering looks at why Africa's abundant solar potential is hard to turn into usable power, especially for Europe. It covers the transmission, infrastructure and economic obstacles, and the pivot from concentrated solar to photovoltaics.

Real Engineering looks at the numbers for running California on renewables, focusing on the large energy storage needed. It argues about the cost of batteries and the role of other sources.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains that waste heat from ever-growing energy use could eventually boil the oceans in a few centuries, whatever the energy source. She discusses proposed ways to cool the planet.

A Vox explainer on how many of the British Museum's treasures were taken during British imperial rule, focusing on the Benin Bronzes and requests for their return.

Tantacrul explains how he and engraver Simon Smith designed the free music notation font for MuseScore 3.6. It draws on the history of the SCORE notation application by Leland Smith.

Tom Scott tours Ocado's automated grocery warehouse, where thousands of robots move boxes on a grid called the Hive, and asks whether they are individual robots or a hive mind.

Minutephysics compares how efficiently different processes convert mass to energy per E=mc^2, from fire and fission to fusion, antimatter and black holes, which can convert a large fraction of mass to energy.

Numberphile's Ben Sparks works through the physics of a car crash, showing how kinetic energy grows with the square of speed and why stopping distance climbs so quickly as velocity increases.

Real Engineering examines the efficiency of hydrogen as an energy carrier. It follows production, storage and fuel cell conversion losses and compares hydrogen cars with battery electric vehicles.

Veritasium's explainer on entropy, presented as one of physics' most important and least understood concepts. It uses examples such as heat engines and the sun's energy flowing through the Earth.

Not Just Bikes takes on the common excuse that a country is simply too big or spread out for good transit and walkable cities. The video argues that city density and short everyday trips matter, not national size or overall population density.

A PBS Space Time episode asking what matter, mass, and energy really are, starting with inertial versus gravitational mass and what mass-energy equivalence means.

A 20-minute S3 episode touring Terraform Industries, a startup making synthetic natural gas from air and solar power. It walks through the reactor, injection system, direct air capture and electrolyzer, plus the company's cost goals and next milestone.

RethinkX summarizes its report arguing that mainstream LCOE estimates are inflating a bubble in coal, gas, nuclear and hydro assets. It claims solar, wind and batteries will strand conventional energy investments.

Adam Ragusea explores why Hershey's chocolate tastes the way it does to many non-Americans, tracing it to butyric acid and Hershey's history, and why familiarity makes Americans love it. He compares it with British Cadbury.

Food YouTuber Adam Ragusea argues that gas stovetops are weaker than electric burners, dirty to clean, and a health risk from indoor air pollution. He cites Consumer Reports ratings and a literature review on gas stove health effects.

Technology Connections explains how dishwashers work, why detergent pods underperform powder, and how to use the pre-wash and main-wash compartments. It argues you don't need to pre-rinse dishes.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains how close nuclear fusion really is to break-even, and why headlines about ITER and lab milestones are misleading. She distinguishes plasma gain (Q plasma) from whole-system gain (Q total) and shows the latter is still far below one.

Huygens Optics explains the Fourier transform and shows how a lens performs one optically. A DLP projector is used as a Fourier filter to do simple pattern recognition on lithographic character patterns.

Not Just Bikes explains how small pockets of shops and restaurants inside residential Dutch neighbourhoods create liveliness and help reduce traffic. It argues this kind of mixed-use design has been illegal in most of the US and Canada for a century because of zoning, and should be brought back.

Kurzgesagt compares how many people nuclear accidents have killed against other energy sources. It walks through the worst nuclear accidents and puts their death tolls in context per unit of energy.

Not Just Bikes explains missing middle housing, such as duplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings. The video argues that zoning in the US and Canada has made these options almost illegal.

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.

Not Just Bikes explains the Downs-Thomson paradox using Amsterdam and Toronto: road widening doesn't fix congestion, and buses stuck in traffic make transit slow. It argues for giving transit its own priority infrastructure.

Veritasium explores why energy is not conserved in general relativity, using Emmy Noether's theorem linking symmetries to conservation laws. Physicists interviewed explain energy loss in an expanding universe.

A Climate Town episode on who uses America's water, particularly Western water. It looks at agriculture such as alfalfa and animal feed, and at water-rights rules that discourage conservation.

Engineering Explained uses physics to show why today's electric cars, including Teslas, are poor at towing, pointing to battery energy density and weight. It examines Cybertruck and F-150 towing claims.

Technology Connections looks at why awnings disappeared from houses and how effective they are at cutting solar heat gain and cooling costs. It argues they are a simple, forgotten cooling technology.