reactor roof

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.

WIRED has UCLA professor Amit Sahai explain zero-knowledge proofs to a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student and an expert. Each round goes deeper into the cryptography and why it matters.

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.

Engineering Explained follows up on Tesla's claim that a Cybertruck towing a Porsche 911 could beat the 911 alone over a quarter mile. He walks through the MotorTrend drag race and explains why the claim did not hold up.

3Blue1Brown walks through a very hard Putnam competition problem and its elegant solution, emphasizing the visual intuition and the thought process behind solving it.

Veritasium's explainer on Godel's incompleteness theorems and the limits of mathematical proof, tracing set theory, Hilbert's program and the road to Turing and modern computing.

Real Engineering's Brian McManus explains Helion's approach to nuclear fusion: colliding two plasma rings, compressing them magnetically, and capturing energy directly from the changing magnetic flux rather than boiling water. It covers why this pulsed design sidesteps problems of tokamaks and laser fusion.

A CAD-based animation from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics showing how the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator is configured and what its fusion research aims to achieve. It runs about 11 minutes.

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.

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.

Not Just Bikes argues that winter is not what stops Canadians cycling, using Oulu, Finland as proof that safe, well-maintained cycling infrastructure enables year-round biking despite harsh weather.

Techmoan's beginner introduction to the compact cassette, testing metal tapes and Dolby S noise reduction on a Sony TC-S1 deck. He checks whether a cassette can sound close to a CD when good tape and equipment are used.

Big Clive tears down the Dubai lamp, a Philips LED bulb developed with Dubai's ruler for maximum efficiency and long life. He examines its construction and circuitry, including underrun LEDs and many filament strips.

Mathologer examines the infamous Numberphile claim that 1+2+3+... equals -1/12, explaining what is wrong with the calculation and how it connects to real math like the zeta function and analytic continuation.

3Blue1Brown shows how pi emerges from prime numbers via complex numbers and sums of squares, culminating in a formula for approximating pi.

Numberphile's Tony Padilla and Matt Parker discuss Graham's number, once the largest number used in a mathematical proof, and how enormous it is.

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.

Technology Connections examines an old feature-rich microwave and shows how it uses a humidity or steam sensor and lookup data to cook food well, arguing it beats many modern ones.

The Slow Mo Guys film a TV and screens with a high-speed camera to show how displays build an image. The footage includes CRT-style scanning and how pixels light up over time.

Verge Science's pilot of its Trial & Error series follows amateur scientist Jon Larsen on a hunt for micrometeorites. It shows how tiny space rocks can be found on rooftops and confirmed under a microscope.

Randall Munroe of xkcd answers what would happen if you swam in a spent nuclear fuel pool, and how much radiation you would receive at the surface versus at depth.

A short Vox explainer on the duck curve, the shape electricity demand takes in California as solar output grows. It explains why grid operators struggle to balance supply and demand with lots of solar.