first flight

Nature video showing MIT researchers flying the first plane with no moving parts, powered by an ion drive that creates an ionic wind from high-powered electrodes. The 5m-wide craft flies across a sports hall.

Half as Interesting explains why airlines flew empty 'ghost flights' out of Heathrow to keep their landing slots under use-it-or-lose-it rules.

Derek Sivers annotates a short clip of a lone dancer at a festival, showing how a first follower turns a ridiculous act into a movement. He draws out lessons about leadership and making it easy to follow.

CGP Grey explains how the 2015 UK general election showed the flaws of first-past-the-post voting, with parties like UKIP winning many votes but few seats.

A BBC Earth clip from Super Powered Owls in which the team uses sensitive sound equipment to compare owl flight with other birds. It shows why owls fly almost silently.

Wendover Productions explains why Boeing's efficient 787 beat Airbus's giant A380, contrasting hub-and-spoke with point-to-point routes. It covers the economics of long-haul flights.

Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia analyzes Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, the first AAA game built around ray tracing. It covers the new global illumination, emissive lighting, DLSS and performance on AMD and Nvidia hardware.

CGP Grey explains first-past-the-post voting and why it pushes elections toward two dominant parties. It is the first in his series on electoral systems.

A short CGP Grey explainer on the alternative vote (instant runoff voting) versus first past the post, made around the 2011 UK referendum. It shows how ranked ballots are tallied and why they avoid spoiler effects.

Game Maker's Toolkit examines Nintendo's design approach of starting from a core play mechanic, making it fun, and building around it. Examples include Mario's jump and Luigi's Mansion's vacuum.

Astrophysicist David Kipping presents the halo drive, a proposed way to propel a starship to a good fraction of light speed by gaining energy from a black hole. The video is based on his peer-reviewed paper and explains why energy is the main obstacle to interstellar flight.

Primer uses simulations to compare voting systems such as first-past-the-post, approval, ranked choice and others. It shows how each system behaves and can be manipulated, with links to further voting theory resources.

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.

3Blue1Brown's first chapter on deep learning explains what neurons and layers are and the math underlying a basic neural network, using handwritten digit recognition with visual animations.

Wendover Productions explains how airlines make money from different cabin classes and why premium seats matter so much to profits. It also touches on how this shaped decisions such as the decline of supersonic travel.

Scott Manley explains the plumbing of rocket engines, including pressure-fed, gas generator, expander and staged combustion cycles. He shows why more complex designs exist and what they gain.

Smarter Every Day shares a binaural audio recording of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch made by Trevor Mahlmann, with explanations of the sounds including the sonic booms of the landing boosters. It is meant to be heard with headphones.

Eager Space examines the practicality of putting data centers in orbit, walking through three scenarios with cost calculations and the launch cost reductions that would be required.

Scott Manley examines why SpaceX, Google and others are looking at orbital data centers. He walks through the economics, heat rejection and solar power arguments, with links to the Lumen/Starcloud and Google Suncatcher papers.

Mentour Pilot, a 737 instructor, explains the approach-to-stall and escape manoeuvre and why the 737 MAX needs MCAS while the 737NG did not. He covers the jackscrew and pitch behavior in terms a general viewer can follow.

Scott Manley surveys the research on whether people can adapt to rotating artificial gravity, from early Soviet centrifuge tests to modern studies. He concludes it is an engineering problem and discusses Coriolis effects and station radius.

Scott Manley explains the nuclear salt water rocket, Robert Zubrin's concept of a rocket fueled by a rapid nuclear reaction in uranium salt dissolved in water. He covers its extraordinary performance and the dangers of managing it.

Kurzgesagt explains the skyhook, a rotating cable with a counterweight that could catapult spacecraft from Earth orbit toward deep space. It covers why it would make space travel cheaper and more efficient.

A two-minute minutephysics video explaining why turning a bicycle requires first steering briefly the other way. It covers counter-steering and balance with slow-motion footage and 3D animation.

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.

3Blue1Brown explains the math and mechanics behind Bitcoin visually: ledgers, digital signatures, proof of work and the blockchain, building up a decentralized payment system from first principles.

The first video in Not Just Bikes' Strong Towns series explains the financial instability of North American cities, based on Strong Towns research. It argues that low-density suburban growth costs more to maintain than it brings in.

VFX supervisor Jonas Ussing examines what studios mean by "no CGI", showing how much invisible CGI hides behind practical-effects marketing. It is the first part of a multi-part series that includes analysis of doctored behind-the-scenes footage.

The first of four short videos from Bill Hammack (engineerguy) introducing and giving the history of a 100-year-old mechanical computer, Michelson's harmonic analyzer. The series goes on to explain Fourier synthesis, analysis and operation of the machine.

Technology Connections takes a long, detailed look at how a 1970s electromechanical pinball machine works, from relays to stepper motors and mechanical logic. It is the first part of a series.

The first episode of Crash Course World History, in which John Green covers the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture and how it shaped civilization. It is delivered fast and with jokes.

The first part of Extra History's animated miniseries on the South Sea Bubble. It explains how England's government debt led Robert Harley to turn to financier John Blunt, whose schemes began inflating artificial demand for shares.

CGP Grey explains Mixed-Member Proportional representation, the system used in New Zealand where voters get two votes. It covers how it differs from first-past-the-post.

Ben Felix explains how to compare renting and buying a home by looking at unrecoverable costs, and distills it into the 5% rule of thumb. It is framed for a Canadian audience but broadly applicable.

The first episode of a Cities: Skylines series on urban politics and planning, focused on parking. It uses the game to show how parking minimums shape cities, drawing on Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking.

A short clip from Carl Sagan's Cosmos in which he explains how Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth using shadows in two Egyptian cities. It is a clear, visual account of an ancient scientific feat.

Veritasium explains what a black hole should look like, using J.P. Luminet's 1979 work and a cardboard 3D model to show how light bends around it. It was made just as the first black hole image was released.

The Center for Election Science explains favorite betrayal in instant-runoff voting: in some elections, ranking your favorite first can cause your least favorite to win. It contrasts this with plurality voting's spoiler problem.

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.

A short Wendover Productions explainer on ETOPS, the rules that let twin-engine jets fly long routes over oceans. It covers the economics that favored twinjets like the 787 over four-engine aircraft like the A380 and 747.