planetary gears

A Blender-animated explanation of the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive, showing how the engine, two motor-generators, planetary gearset and battery work together as an eCVT.

Weber State's Professor Kelly explains the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid transaxle, including its planetary gearset eCVT and all nine operating modes. It also covers how the engine reaches nearly 40 percent thermal efficiency.

A short animated explanation of the power split device in Toyota-style hybrids, a planetary gearset that works as an eCVT. It shows how engine and motor power are combined.

Elon Musk's 2016 IAC presentation on the technical challenges and architectures for building a self-sustaining human presence on Mars.

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 secret project cutscene for The Planetary Datalinks from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, featuring a quote about free information flow as the safeguard against tyranny.

A 1953 US Navy training film explaining the basic mechanisms in mechanical fire control computers aboard ships. It shows how gears, differentials and cams solved mathematical problems in permanent mechanical form.

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.

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.

A Disney Research SIGGRAPH 2013 demo of an interactive system that lets non-experts design animated mechanical characters. The user sketches motion curves and the system generates optimized mechanisms and gear trains for 3D printing.

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.

Kurzgesagt lays out a speculative plan to terraform Venus, covering its hostile atmosphere and how it might be made Earth-like, with a sources page linked.

Arthur Ganson's kinetic sculpture chains twelve 1:50 worm gear reductions so the final gear, embedded in concrete, would take over two trillion years to turn once.

A Veritasium video on the asteroid threat, with UCLA's Dave Jewitt explaining detection efforts and how different asteroid sizes compare in damage.

The first of Richard Feynman's 1964 Cornell Messenger Lectures, The Character of Physical Law, focusing on the law of gravitation. Feynman builds up from planetary motion to the nature of physical laws.

A short Boston Dynamics clip of the Sand Flea, an 11-pound RC-car-style robot that can jump about 30 feet into the air. An onboard stabilization system keeps it oriented in flight and for landings.

Dave Jones of EEVblog tears down a Kollsman MD-1 Automatic Astro Compass, a mechanical analog computer from a B-52 bomber. It is part of a star-tracker inertial navigation system that computes altitude and azimuth.

A short film in which friends build the first true-to-scale model of the solar system, with full planetary orbits, on a Nevada dry lakebed. It conveys the real distances and sizes involved.