track maintenance

Yosh trains a reinforcement learning agent to drive Trackmania until he can no longer beat it. The video explains how the training works and the design choices involved.

A short clip of Richard Feynman explaining how a train stays on its tracks, through the conical shape of wheels and how it handles curves without differentials.

A short clip from the 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine in which Richard Feynman explains how a train stays on the track. He covers the geometry of tapered wheels that steer the train back toward the center of the rails.

A short BicycleDutch episode showing how people with disabilities use Dutch cycle tracks on hand-cycles, tricycles and mobility scooters.

A short Tracklib video visualizing the disco sample that Daft Punk's One More Time is built from. It shows how the track is composed from the original material.

Practical Engineering explains how continuous welded rail copes with thermal expansion by restraining it, using the relationship between temperature, stress and strain. The video is part of a series on railways.

Hans Rosling uses augmented-reality animation to show 200 countries over 200 years in four minutes, built from 120,000 data points. It tracks life expectancy and income to show the world's development.

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.

Wendover Productions explains why US passenger rail lags behind other countries. It covers freight companies owning most of the track, geography and population density, and the economics of competing with flying.

CGP Grey tells the story of Alexander Pope's long takedown of a historian, Thomas Hearne, framed around the quirks of library books and archival research. It is a funny, digressive video essay about literary feuds and tracking down original sources.

Mick West analyzes the Navy's Gimbal UFO video and gives four checkable observations suggesting it is an infrared glare that appears to rotate because the camera rotates while tracking. He argues the object is likely a hot craft hidden behind the glare.

Wendover Productions explains why Amtrak trains run late: most Amtrak routes run on freight-owned track, and the law giving passenger trains priority is rarely enforced. The video covers rail ownership versus control and how freight carriers hold the leverage.

Corridor Crew tracks down Disney's lost sodium vapor prism process, used for Mary Poppins-era transparency mattes. They explain how a narrow sodium wavelength and a beam splitter enabled better compositing than green screen.

A short, sarcastic Half as Interesting video about a tiny freight railway in Canada built to exploit a shipping regulation loophole. It explains how a track just 100 feet long counted as a railway.

AVweb's Paul Bertorelli analyzes the safety record of the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS), looking at the 90-plus deployments over 20 years of Cirrus flying. He asks whether the whole-aircraft parachute has actually saved lives.

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

Technology Connections takes apart the step-by-step electromechanical logic of a 1970s pinball machine. He shows how relays, steppers and switches track state and score without electronics.

Musician Benn Jordan uses AI to detect AI-generated music and digs into music industry data, including streaming payouts and sample library copyright problems. He covers ways to tell whether a track is human-made.

Adam Neely analyzes vaporwave through music theory, timbre and nostalgia, and includes a parody track made for the video. He also touches on the phenomenology of music.

Tom Scott investigates moire-effect beacons, called Inogon leading marks, a Swedish invention from the 1980s that shows different patterns depending on the viewer's position. He visits one used to mark an undersea cable and tracks down its history.