From Practical Engineering. Explaining how earthwork works, and why road construction often takes so long. Sign up for Brilliant for free at www.brilliant.org/PracticalEngineering and get 20% the annual premium subscription! Like it or not, roads are part of the fabric of society. Travel is a fundamental part of life for nearly everyone. Unfortunately, that means…

From Practical Engineering. Discussing the hydraulics of the humble highway culvert Go to https://NordVPN.com/practicalengineering or use code PRACTICALENGINEERING to get 70% off a 3-year plan plus one additional month free. Culverts are ubiquitous in the constructed world. They seem so obvious that you may never consider them. But, the engineering behind culverts is quite complicated…

From Practical Engineering. People use boats for all kinds of reasons, and in the same way, there are all kinds, shapes, sizes, and ages of locks used for waterway navigation across the world. Freight is big business. “Shipping” got its name for a reason, and we still use ships to move a lot of our…

From Practical Engineering. Discussing thrust forces in pipelines (with the help of our friends at Air Command Rockets). Go to https://NordVPN.com/practicalengineering or use code PRACTICALENGINEERING to get 70% off a 3 year plan plus 1 additional month free. Huge thanks to @Air Command Rockets for collaborating on the video. Go check out their channel for…

From Practical Engineering. A demonstration and brief explanation of air lock in fluid pipelines. Use code PRACTICAL10 to get 10 free meals including shipping with HelloFresh! https://bit.ly/2R4fLIc (purchase required) If you assume that gasses don’t get into pipes or that they can’t constrict the flow, you might design a pipeline that doesn’t work. Luckily for…

From Practical Engineering. A brief overview of this ingenious method of compressing air using only the power of water. Explore your creativity and get 2 free months of Skillshare premium membership: https://skl.sh/practicalengineering5 The way a trompe harnesses the power of water to generate compressed air with no moving parts is fascinating and its use is…

From Practical Engineering. A quick description and demo of this ingenious pump. Go to https://NordVPN.com/practicalengineering to get 81% off a 3 year plan. Use code PRACTICALENGINEERING to get 3 months free + NordPass. A hydraulic ram is a clever device invented over 200 years ago that can pump water uphill with no other external source…

From Practical Engineering. Exploring the protective systems that keep the power grid from self destructing. Get 9 free meals from HelloFresh at https://bit.ly/2pZsuRa and use code Practical9 at checkout. We usually think of the power grid in terms of its visible parts: power plants, high-voltage lines, and substations. But, much of the complexity of power…

From Practical Engineering. The vast majority of our grid-scale storage of electricity uses this clever method. Electricity faces a fundamental problem that comes with pretty much any product that’s provided on-demand: our ability to generate large amounts of it doesn’t match up that closely with when we need it. The storage of electricity for later…

From Practical Engineering. Discussing some of the fascinating engineering that goes into overhead electric power transmission lines. Get $80 off your first month of HelloFresh (with code Practical80): https://bit.ly/2VGUxzl In the past, power generating plants were only able to serve their local areas. As power plants grew larger and further away from populated areas, the…

From Practical Engineering. Untangling the various equipment you might see in an electrical substation. Go to https://NordVPN.com/practicalengineering to get 75% off a 3 year plan. Use code PRACTICALENGINEERING to get an extra month for free. In many ways, the grid is a one-size-fits-all system – a gigantic machine to which we all connect spinning in…

From Practical Engineering. Continuing the series on the power grid by diving deeper into the engineering of large-scale electricity generation. Get $80 off your first month of Hello Fresh (with code Practical80): https://bit.ly/2VGUxzl The importance of electricity in our modern world can hardly be overstated. What was a luxury a hundred years ago is now…

From Practical Engineering. Go to https://NordVPN.com/practicalengineering to get 75% off a 3 year plan. Use code PRACTICALENGINEERING to get an extra month for free. The modern world depends on electricity. It’s a crucial resource, especially in urban areas, but electricity can’t be created, stored, and provided at a later time. The instant it’s produced, it’s…

From Practical Engineering. The first 500 people to click get 2 months of Skillshare Premium free: http://skl.sh/practicalengineering4 We normally build a dam to hold water back and store it for use in water supply, irrigation, hydropower, or flood control. But sometimes we have to let some water go. Whether we need it downstream or the…

From Practical Engineering. Start your Squarespace free trial at http://www.squarespace.com/practicalengineering and use code PRACTICALENGINEERING to get 10% off your first purchase. Traffic management in dense urban areas is an extremely complex problem with a host of conflicting goals and challenges. One of the most fundamental of those challenges happens at an intersection, where multiple streams…

From Practical Engineering. A quick overview of how we build underwater structures. Get $80 off your first month of Hello Fresh: https://bit.ly/2VGUxzl and use code practical80. Oceans, rivers, and lakes are often beautiful, but they’re not necessarily convenient places to build things. Yet, many types of the infrastructure we depend on every day, including wharves,…