failure

Tom Scott performs a fictional story at GeekyConf about the day Google accidentally stops checking passwords, letting anyone into any account. It works as a parable about how a single point of failure in login can unravel everything built on it.

Cockpit footage of a Swiss Airbus A340 crew dealing with rising oil temperature in one engine on a Zurich to Shanghai flight, ending with a safety landing. It shows the pilots' procedures through the emergency.

Asianometry explains why India, a chip design powerhouse, cannot fabricate chips, tracing the 1980s government attempt to build a national semiconductor champion and how it collapsed. It includes the sabotage at the SCL fab.

An excerpt of a C-SPAN interview in which Thomas Sowell argues that preferential admission policies produce mismatch, dropouts and resentment.

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.

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'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.

Louis Rossmann examines a 2012 MacBook Pro logic board that Apple refurbished for GPU failures and that failed again. He criticizes the quality of Apple's authorized repair work and argues for right to repair.

A TEDxNashville talk by uBeam founder Meredith Perry about becoming a technology innovator and her plan for wireless charging of phones.

Richard Cook's short Velocity 2013 talk on resilience in complex adaptive systems, arguing systems operate near the edge of failure and that the surprise is how rarely they fail. He presents a model of how pressures push systems toward failure boundaries.

Footage of an Airbus A380 engine blade-off test, in which a fan blade is deliberately released at full thrust to show the engine contains the failure.

A controlled demonstration by Wabash National of a tank trailer collapsing under vacuum, staged at an industry expo. The tank implodes as air is pulled out.

Louis Rossmann explains why many 16-inch MacBook Pros fail and are difficult to repair, focusing on power design on the logic board. He argues the design leads to failures that are hard to fix.

Louis Rossmann, an independent repair shop owner, explains a recurring MacBook logic board design problem that leads to failures such as a black screen. The video is part of his right-to-repair advocacy.

A pulmonologist and critical care physician explains how COVID-19 can lead to pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. He covers evidence-based ARDS treatments such as low tidal volume ventilation.

A June 1986 CNN interview with physicist Richard Feynman about the Challenger disaster and the management failures he found while serving on the investigating commission.

Alain de Botton gives a TED talk questioning how we define success and failure. He argues that snobbery and the assumption that outcomes are fully earned make career anxiety worse.

Adam Grant's TED talk on the habits of original thinkers, including procrastination and embracing failure. He argues the greatest originals fail the most because they try the most.

A NASA video on the 29 days after the James Webb Space Telescope's launch, when thousands of parts must deploy in sequence on the way to its destination a million miles away.

A 1937 GM-produced film explaining how the automobile differential lets wheels turn at different speeds around a corner. It uses clear animations and cutaway demonstrations to build the idea from first principles.

Technology Connections takes apart a 1940s Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster. It senses the toast's own browning and lowers and raises it automatically using purely mechanical parts and no electronics.

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.

A 1953 US Navy training film on the basic mechanisms in fire control computers: shafts, gears, cams and differentials. It shows how these mechanical parts compute ship and target firing solutions.

Bill Hammack of Engineer Guy explains the engineering behind the aluminum beverage can: why it is cylindrical, how it is manufactured, why it narrows at the top, the double seam, and how the pull tab works.

Technology Connections explains how old-fashioned non-electronic rice cookers work, using a magnet and spring switch tripped by the Curie point. It shows the thermodynamics and magnetism behind a simple appliance.

A 1930s Chevrolet training film explaining the principles and development of the differential gear. It builds the idea step by step from first principles to the finished mechanism.

The first episode of Clickspring's series on reproducing the Antikythera Mechanism by hand, laying out the plan and the history. The series follows a machinist building the ancient Greek device with traditional tools and methods.

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.

Practical Engineering explains why connecting solar and other inverter-based generation to the grid is hard. It covers grid stability, load balancing and the behind-the-scenes engineering challenges of renewables.

A 1936 Chevrolet-sponsored film that explains how a car transmission works by treating gears as spinning levers. It uses physical models to make the mechanism clear.

Practical Engineering explains what a black start is: restarting a power grid after total collapse. It shows why most plants need outside power to start and why rebuilding a synchronized grid is delicate and high-stakes.

The opening lecture of Steve Brunton's Control Bootcamp, covering the kinds of control and why closed-loop feedback matters. It starts a series that follows the control chapter of the Brunton and Kutz data-driven science book.

Matthias Wandel uses anemometer measurements to find where to place a fan to move the most air through a house at night. He finds that placing the fan some distance back from the window works better.

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.

The original five-minute Dropbox demo video, which presented the product's features before a finished product existed. It was aimed at technical early adopters and became famous as a launch strategy.

Veritasium explains why bicycles are stable, arguing that gyroscopic effects are not the answer. The video shows countersteering and an experiment where riders blocked from steering the opposite way cannot turn.

The Primitive Technology channel shows the construction of a tiled roof hut in the bush using only primitive tools and materials made in earlier videos. It includes tiles, a kiln, clay walls and underfloor heating.

Technology Connections explains why single-hose portable air conditioners are inefficient and often a poor choice compared with window units. It details how the single hose pulls in warm outside air and wastes energy.

Veritasium explores planned obsolescence, from the Phoebus lightbulb cartel to printers and phones. It explains how companies deliberately shortened product lifetimes and why products aren't better.

A clip from the BBC series Britain from Above showing UK peak power demand. It shows a grid engineer preparing for the surge as millions put the kettle on when a popular show ends.