My first youtube video and my second bowl project. Thanks to all the youtube wood turners for your inspiration and wisdom!
These bowls were an experiment with intersecting surfaces. They are hard maple with African mahogany accents.
This table is a Christmas present meant to match a gift from last year. It's also my entry to the Cronkwright Woodshop coffee table build off. Thanks to my wife for her awesome mosaic work. This is my first attempt at animation. Let me know what you think of the video, and thanks for watching!
I decided to have a little fun with this bowl project. I'm clearly no Frank Howarth! The bowl is maple and African mahogany - 10.5" diameter and 6" tall. Let me know what you think in the comments.
I had a lot of bowls to make for Christmas presents, so I just built a machine to do the work for me. The video is filmed mainly in stop motion format. It was inspired in part by my favorite Dr. Seuss story, The Sneetches. This bowl is made from oak and Spectraply (11" x 4").
We got a kitten for Christmas. His name is Hank. We wanted a place for him to get away from the dog (if he wants) and a place where the dog couldn't get his food. This is what I came up with.
One of my coworkers gave me a nice chunk of 8/4 red oak. My policy is if you give me wood, I make you something. This bowl is about 5" in diameter and 2" tall. The rim is segmented wenge.
My wife made a tile mosaic on the top of this old end table. I added a border around the edges, helped her paint the wood, grout the tile, and epoxy-seal the top. Turn the volume down if you don't like jazz (: Thanks for watching!
The mortar and pestle are made from cherry. The accents are spectraply off cuts from my "Segmented Bowl Factory" video. Given another shot, I would have changed the shape of the business end of the pestle. I think it came out a bit small.
I made a handle for a new tool out of palm wood and red oak. It isn't perfect, but I learned a lot. What do you think?
The turning subreddit started up their monthly challenges again. February's challenge is to turn a sphere. I've had some ideas swirling around in my head about resin and dowels, and I decided to give it a shot. The mold came together beautifully, and my estimate for the volume of resin was dead on! But the final sphere was far from attractive. Some lessons learned:
This is my first attempt at multi-axis turning: a couple of scoops/spoons from walnut and paduak. Multi-axis turning is really an art form of woodworking in itself. It breaks the door wide open from traditional solids of revolution to far more interesting, complicated, free form shapes. And it is really a test of your imagination, because the geometry associated with this type of turning is actually quite complex.
I love career day because it gives me a chance to show kids how fun my job can be. This year I went all out and built a large display with running water, moving parts, and lot's of color. Bring on the bad puns!
Gardening in the modern age means making things more complicated and arduous, with electrons, bits, and bytes. Behold: the garduino. My brother got me an arduino microcontroller board for Christmas, which to me was a solution looking for a problem. I finally found the problem: fresh herbs are expensive at the grocery store. But apparently not as expensive as adding a bunch of sensors and electronics to your garden.
Moms love the stuff their kids make - even when their kids aren't kids anymore. You won't be able to hang these vases on the refrigerator, but I think they'll look nice on a shelf or window sill. They were a lot of fun to make, especially with my wife helping. Cutting and gluing can be very relaxing in the right mindset. We're still woodturning novices, but I think our mom's are going to love the vases for Mother's Day this year. Thanks for watching and let me know what you think.
We all like games, but who among us needs another screen in their life? This is my first foray in the world of interactivity. It's an arcade-style puzzle box mini game. Powered by an Arduino with completely custom wooden enclosure and components, the goal was to make it look like something your parents told you not to play with when you were a kid. The object of the game is to adjust the knobs so each needle points at its respective LED, but it's not as easy as it sounds (or is it!?).
I haven't disappeared! In fact I have quite a few cool projects in the works and not just woodworking. Follow me on instagram to keep up with what I'm working on (@gradyhillhouse).
There’s a growing movement of people who believe that our space agencies are underfunded (see: Penny4NASA) because humanity is just not paying enough attention to our present accomplishments and future plans in space exploration. Well, I know one way to direct attention to something: Point at it.
I was commissioned to build this model in support of a presentation about geotechnical engineering. The goal is to illustrate the flow paths that groundwater takes under an obstruction (e.g. a sheet pile or cutoff wall). So much of engineering is just theoretical work, so it was really cool to see such an elegant example of a geotechnical engineering concept borne out in real dirt and water. Thanks for watching and let me know what you think.
Not everyone has the thumb coordination to fly a quad copter, and few have a pilot buddy who can carry them skyward, but just about anyone can fly a kite. The hobby of Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) has been given a new wind with the advent of affordable, light-weight action cameras and advanced remote-controlled devices. Even though it’s been over a hundred years since George Lawrence took his famous panorama of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, the kite is still the simplest way to get a lofted perspective for your photography.
Whether you brew your own libations at home, or just consume enough of them to keep a tap on hand, the simplest way to spice up your kegerator is with a custom handle. It’s a quick, easy project on the lathe and there’s tons of room for creativity.
For me, discussing the weather is more than idle small talk. So when I got interested in web-enabled electronics (the Internet of Things), I knew immediately that my first project be related to the first thing I do when I log onto my computer at work each day: check the weather. This "weather station" simply pulls weather data from the internet and displays it using analog electrical panel meters.
FAQ:
Today on Practical Engineering we're talking about hydrology, and I took a little walk through my neighborhood to show you some infrastructure you may have never noticed before.
Demonstrations using the Algodoo software and a custom-built physical model of a rotating satellite.
I turned a birthday gift for my brother this week, and decided to make a video about a relatively recent change in the MLB's rules governing wooden baseball bats.
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Dirt is probably the cheapest and simplest construction material out there, but it's not very strong compared to other choices. Luckily geotechnical engineers have developed a way to strengthen earthen materials with almost no additional effort - Mechanically Stabilized Earth (aka MSE or Reinforced Soil). If you look closely, you'll see MSE walls are everywhere. Thanks for watching, and let me know what you think!
Trying something new today: Practical Engineering Shorts, where we just dip our toes into the technical details behind current events. Let me know what you think!
Engineers that work with fluids need a solid understanding of how they behave, and there’s one branch of fluid mechanics that plays a role in areas all across our lives. Whether you’re designing a water tower for a city or you just want to understand how those upside-down pet bowls work, you’ve got to know how to relate the depth and pressure of a fluid: hydrostatics. Thanks for watching!
Don't let anyone try to convince you that the earth is a sphere! It's actually closer to an ellipsoid. How does your airline pilot know which direction to head when he’s over the ocean with no landmarks? How do we know the exact boundaries between parcels of land and between states and countries? These are questions we answer with geodesy (sometimes known as Geodetics Engineering): the science of how we characterize the shape and size of the earth.
What happens when a civil engineer mixes water and electricity? The results aren't always ideal, but you always learn something!
Yes, he can get nerdier! Submit your photos of interesting infrastructure here: http://practical.engineering/whats-that-infrastructure/
What's better than transportation infrastructure? More transportation infrastructure! Thanks again to everyone who sent in photos.
Mass is a challenging concept to tie down, yet it is one of the most crucial measurements in our world. Since the 1800's, we've used a physical artifact as a standard for mass calibration across the world. Within the next few years, that will all change because of this ingenious device: the watt balance.
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I got so much feedback on the DIY Watt Balance video that I decided to do a followup to show how it was built and answer a few other popular questions. Thanks for watching!
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In today’s video, we’re talking about computational hydraulic river modeling. HEC-RAS is ubiquitous in the industry, and many H&H engineers in the U.S. use it regularly for various applications including floodplain mapping, reservoir simulations, breach analysis of dams, and even fluvial geomorphology. Water resources engineers are very fortunate that many of the most-used software packages are available for free. I prepared a rudimentary model of the Kasei Valles on Mars to demonstrate RAS's capibilities. It's not scientifically rigorous in any way, but it provides some nice visualizations that illustrate why engineers use computation hydraulic river models.
You never know what's buried below your feet, but it could be infrastructure! Today's episode of WTI shows a number of subsurface utilities. Have a cool infrastructure photo? Send it in the [email protected]. Have a great new year celebration! And, always call 811 (or your country's equivalent) before you dig. You never know what could be running below the ground!
I got a new toy in the shop and thought I'd take the chance to try it out on video. Expect more metal fabrication in future videos!
This is a demo of a bell siphon I built in collaboration with a couple of engineering professors. There are certain cases where it would be nice to be able to create a siphon without any intervention, a self-priming or automatic siphon: the next level of siphonry. It's built out of an acrylic sheet and a piece of clear pipe. Thanks to Rolf Hut and Pete Marchetto for inviting me to collaborate on their project.
The airwaves are awash with invisible communications keeping us connected and facilitating our information society. All that telecommunication requires a lot of infrastructure! Today's episode of WTI shows some wireless telecommunications.
Engineering statics (or the study of objects at rest) is a fundamental part of most engineering curricula. It's broadly applicable not only to engineers, but anyone who has anything that needs to stay put. Thank you for watching, and let me know what you think.
Sinkholes form through both natural and human-made processes.
A primer on one of the most important companions to civil engineering: land surveyors.
If you've got a telescope, give the crowd a show next week. Make the eclipse bigger! Eclipse glasses are okay, but the sun is only as big as your thumbnail at arms length. That's not very big. I need something to impress some kindergartners! Hopefully the sun funnel can do it.
In civil engineering, quicksand is more than just a puddle of mud! The "quick condition" occurs when seepage reduces the effective stress of a soil. This can lead to some dangerous conditions, especially if the seepage causes piping erosion to occur at a dam. Thanks for watching!
Okay this is the last video on the hazards of soil mechanics for a while :)
Hydraulic transients (also known as water hammer) can seem innocuous in a residential setting, but these spikes in pressure can cause major damage to large pipelines and industrial pipe networks. In this video, we briefly discuss how water hammer occurs and how engineers mitigate the effect.
A few things that can go very wrong when you put steam in a pipe...
Water hammer can work in both directions, and I only discussed one of those in the previous video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoLmVFAFjn4). Today's episode revisits that demonstration to show how water hammer can form a vacuum pressure in a pipe. Momentum carrying fluid away from a valve wants to keep going even after the valve is closed. This generates a negative pressure than can cause major damage!
...and other musings on thermal movement of large civil works.
What's the difference between concrete and cement?
More destructive testing to answer your questions about concrete.
Original Title: What are Cosmic Rays? Ever heard of a muon? I hadn't either until I stumbled upon this awesome project! Now I can detect and count these cosmic particles from my desktop - and you can too.
The basics of fluid cavitation, including demonstration from AvE.
How simple reinforcement is used to prevent collapse of rock tunnels.
Wind can be one of the most critical and complicated loads on civil structures.
Check out the first two videos on concrete if you haven't seen them already:
Comparing modern concrete to that of the western Roman empire.
Sometimes conventional reinforcement isn't enough. The basics of prestressed concrete.
Purpose and function of elevated water storage tanks.
Engineers need to be able to predict how water will behave in order to design structures that manage or control it. And fluids don’t always behave the way you’d expect. On this episode of Practical Engineering, we’re talking about one of the most interesting phenomena in open-channel flow: the hydraulic jump.
A weir is a small dam built across a river to control the upstream water level. Weirs have been used for ages to control the flow of water in streams, rivers, and other water bodies. Unlike large dams which create reservoirs, the goal of building a weir across a river isn’t to create storage, but only to gain some control over the water level. Over time, the term weir has taken on a more general definition in engineering to apply to any hydraulic control structure that allows water to flow over its top, often called its crest. In fact, the spillways of many large dams use weirs as control structures. So how do they work?
Dams serve a wide variety of purposes from hydropower to flood control to storage of water for municipal and industrials uses. But when a dam’s useful purpose fades away, the structure itself still remains. Dams come in all shapes and sizes, but contrary to what you might think, the most dangerous dams are often the smallest, also known as low head dams.
A quick overview of how we build underwater structures.
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 of traffic - including vehicles, bikes and pedestrians - need to safely, and with any luck, efficiently, cross each others’ paths. However we accommodate it now or in future, traffic will continue to be one of the biggest challenges in our urban areas and traffic signals will continue to be one of its solutions.
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 impounded water behind the dam is simply too full to store any more, nearly every dam needs a spillway to safely discharge water. The spillway is a critical part of any dam and often the most complex component. So how does it work?
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 used no matter how far apart the producer is from the user. And the infrastructure that makes all this possible is one of humanity’s most important and fascinating engineering achievements: the power grid.
Continuing the series on the power grid by diving deeper into the engineering of large-scale electricity generation.
Untangling the various equipment you might see in an electrical substation.
Discussing some of the fascinating engineering that goes into overhead electric power transmission lines.
The vast majority of our grid-scale storage of electricity uses this clever method.
Exploring the protective systems that keep the power grid from self destructing.
A quick description and demo of this ingenious pump.
A brief overview of this ingenious method of compressing air using only the power of water.
A demonstration and brief explanation of air lock in fluid pipelines.
Discussing thrust forces in pipelines (with the help of our friends at Air Command Rockets).
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 stuff. The video provides a basic summary of how locks work, including an explanation of the water saving basins used on the new locks at the Panama Canal.
Discussing the hydraulics of the humble highway culvert
Explaining how earthwork works, and why road construction often takes so long.
Exploring the relationship between speed, safety, and geometry of roadways.
Exploring the complexities that go into the creation and application of asphalt concrete.
One of the most annoying parts of driving...
Some pavement can let water in and keep everything else out.
Original Title: How Do Cities Manage Stormwater? Rainwater and cities aren't always a good mix, but they can be!
An overview of how engineers use storm hydrology to design infrastructure. Use code 80PRACTICAL to get $80 off across 5 HelloFresh boxes, including free shipping on your first box at https://bit.ly/30sYo7c
The things we build to protect ourselves from flooding.
Explaining the basics of coastal erosion with a homemade wave generator!
Why coastal floods have little to do with rain and everything to do with wind. Most of the world’s biggest cities and about half of the global population live within 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the ocean. That’s pretty important, especially given the huge amount of land that isn’t near a coastline. We’ve talked about riverine flooding caused by intense precipitation in a previous video. But, there’s another type of flooding that has almost nothing to do with rain and almost everything to do with air.
When disaster strikes, the flurry of political positioning and fingerpointing can make it difficult to understand what really happened. This video provides a summary of the facts of the 2021 Texas winter storm. This February of 2021, a major winter storm made its way through the U.S. central plains, setting all-time records for low temperatures across the country. One of the biggest impacts of the storm happened here in Texas where people across the state suffered extended outages of electricity and water. It was one of the worst winter weather events in history, creating loss-of-life and economic impacts that will take years to unfold. Many are still recovering from the storm and will be for years to come.
What factors affect how liquids flow through pipes? Engineers use equations to help us understand the pressure and flow rates in pipes. Pipe systems are important to us, so it’s critical that we can design them to carry the right amount of flow without too much drop in pressure from one end to the other.
Exploring the engineering principles behind the recent obstruction of the Suez Canal, which caused a weeklong disruption in global shipping traffic. I give a brief overview of the bank effect and dilatancy of coarse-grained soils. Hopefully, the video helps you understand a few of the engineering challenges associated with navigating massive ships through tiny canals and what can happen when they run aground! Errata: - I incorrectly described the landform as the "Suez Peninsula." It is the "Suez Isthmus."
Explaining how pumps produce both pressure and flow with some fun water demonstrations. There’s a popular and persistent saying that pumps only create flow in a fluid, and resistance to that flow is what creates the pressure in a pipe. This video goes into some details about how two kinds of pumps work: centrifugal pumps and positive displacement pumps.
February 2017 saw one of the most serious dam-related engineering incidents in history with the failure of the service spillway at Oroville Dam. Whether they realized it or not, the people living and working downstream of Oroville Dam put their trust in the engineers, operators, and regulators to keep them safe and sound against disaster. In this case, that trust was broken. This video provides a summary of the event, including an explanation of the engineering details behind the failure.
Three hydraulic effects that ruin a pump. We collectively move incredible volumes of fresh water, drainage, and wastewater into, out of, and around our cities every day. And, we mostly do it using pumps. I love pumps. But, even though they are critical for the safety, health, and well-being of huge populations of people, there are a lot of things that can go wrong if not properly designed and operated.
n May of 2021, inspectors on the I-40 Mississippi River Bridge near Memphis, Tennessee discovered a major crack in a structural member. They immediately contacted emergency managers to shut down this key crossing to vehicle traffic above and maritime traffic below. This video provides a summary of the event, including a discussion on arch bridges, fatigue in steel members, and national bridge inspection standards. Errata: (1) 8:38 "at minimum, an arm's length away" should be "at maximum, an arm's length away" (2) 1:14 New Madrid is usually pronounced MA-drid, not ma-DRID. (3) 4:55 ”It’s hard to understate the severity” should be “overstate”
Humans are kind of gross. We collectively create a constant stream of waste that threatens city-dwellers with plague and pestilence unless it is safely carried away. Sewers convert that figurative stream into a literal one that flows below ground away from public view (and hopefully public smell). Your friendly neighborhood sewage collection system is not a magical place where gross stuff goes to disappear. It is a carefully planned, thoroughly tested system designed to keep the stuff we don’t want to see - unseen.
“Rigging” is the term used to describe all the steps we go through to attach a load to a crane so it can be suspended and moved. And, like all human endeavors, rigging is prone to error. Some of the most serious crane failures in history had nothing to do with the crane itself but were actually a result of poor rigging. There’s a lot that can go wrong below the hook, so in this video, we’re going to take a look at a few of the fundamentals in attaching and securing a load and some of the hidden hazards that can pop up if not done properly and carefully.
Cranes are the backbone of construction projects. So why do so many of them fall down? Because they are so pervasive and they do such a dangerous job of lifting massive objects high into the air, occasionally cranes fail. In this video, I want to walk through some of the reasons these failures occur, using historical events as case studies.
On June 24, 2021, a portion of Champlain Towers South, a 12-story condominium in Surfside, Florida, near Miami Beach, collapsed around 1:30 am. It was one of the most deadly structural collapses in U.S. history. This video summarizes the events of this unthinkable tragedy, a few of the structural engineering issues that may have played a part, and finally the process of forensic structural investigations.
Things can and still go wrong with heavy lifts even when the crane is perfectly safe and sound. “Rigging” is the term used to describe all the steps we go through to attach a load to a crane so it can be suspended and moved. And, like all human endeavors, rigging is prone to error. Some of the most serious crane failures in history had nothing to do with the crane itself but were actually a result of poor rigging. There’s a lot that can go wrong below the hook, so in this video, we’re going to take a look at a few of the fundamentals in attaching and securing a load and some of the hidden hazards that can pop up if not done properly and carefully.
In May 2020, heavy flooding resulted in the catastrophic failure of the Edenville Dam embankment, sending a wall of water downstream in the Tittabawassee River and completely draining Wixom Lake. The breach wave quickly overwhelmed the downstream Sanford Dam, overtopping and failing the structure. Over 10,000 residents in Sanford, Midland, and Saginaw were evacuated. The independent forensic team charged with investigating the event released an interim report in September 2021. The conclusions of the report include a discussion of a relatively rare phenomenon in earthen dams. Let’s walk through the investigation to try and understand what happened.
Why do structures big and small sink into the ground, and what can we do to stop it? ☕ Sign up to Morning Brew for free today: https://bit.ly/mbpracticalengineering Before the so-called Starbase supported crazy test launches of the Starship spaceflight program, it was just a pile of dirt. After nearly two years, they hauled most of that soil back off the site for disposal. It might seem like a curious way to start a construction project, but foundations are critically important. Building that giant dirt pile was a clever way to prevent these facilities from sinking into the ground over time. Errata: 1. The SpaceX South Texas Launch Site is located at Boca Chica near South Padre Island (not near Boca Chica on South Padre as stated in the intro).
The Millennium Tower at 301 Mission Street in San Francisco is famously tilting and sinking into the ground. How does geology affect the design of skyscraper foundations, and what is being done to fix this structure?
Can you name that infrastructure? Answer: Concrete Armor Units
Can you name that infrastructure? Answer: Backflow Prevent Device (aka Dual Check Valve Assembly)
If all the earth was solid rock, life would be a lot simpler, but maybe a lot less interesting too. It is both a gravitational necessity and a source of job stability to structural and geotechnical engineers that all construction - great and small - sits upon the ground. And the ways in which we accomplish such a seemingly unexceptional feat are full of fascinating and unexpected details.
In some cases, it just stops being feasible to chase the slope of a sewer farther and farther below the ground surface. A good alternative is to install a pumping station that can lift raw sewage from its depths back closer to the surface. Lift stations can be small installations designed to handle a few apartment complexes or massive capital projects that pump significant portions of a city's total wastewater flow.
We often use chemicals, filters, and even gigantic colonies of bacteria to clean sewage on such a massive scale, but the first line of defense in the fight against dirty water is usually just gravity.
I went around San Antonio filming a few of my favorite infrastructure projects.
In both wastewater treatment and fermentation, humans co-opt microorganisms to convert a less desirable liquid into a better one. This video explores the secondary wastewater treatment process through the lens of homebrewing.
It is undoubtedly unintuitive that water flows in the soil and rock below our feet. This video covers the basics of groundwater engineering, including how wells are built, how injection wells work, and how aquifers interact with surface water features.
Sewers were one of the earliest and most impactful advents of public health in urban areas, and it’s exciting that we’re still finding new ways to use them to that end.
Next time you see a dam, retaining wall, caisson, or any other subsurface construction, there’s a good chance that engineers have had to consider how groundwater will affect the stability. Even though you’d never know they’re there, some combination of drains and cutoffs were probably installed to keep the structure (and the people around it) safe and sound.
Over the past 6 years of reading emails and comments from people who watch Practical Engineering, I know that parts of heavy construction are consistently misunderstood. So, I pulled together a short list of the most common misconceptions. Hope you don't mind just a little bit of ranting from me ;)
Like laparoscopic surgery for the earth, horizontal directional drilling (or HDD) doesn’t require digging open a large area like a shaft or a bore pit to get started. Instead, the drill can plunge directly into the earth’s surface. From there, horizontal directional drilling is pretty straightforward, but it’s not necessarily straight. In fact, HDD necessarily uses a curved alignment to enter the earth, travel below a roadway or river, and exit at the surface on the other side.
People use water at more or less a constant rate and yet, mother nature supplies it in unpredictable sloshes of rain or snow that can change with the seasons and often have considerable dry periods between them. If the sloshes get too far apart, we call it a drought. And at least one study has estimated that the past two decades have been the driest period in more than a thousand years for the southwestern United States, leading to a so-called “mega-drought.”
Metals are so necessary and important to modern society that we’ll never escape the problem of corrosion, but the field of corrosion engineering continues to advance so that we can learn more about how to manage it and mitigate its incredible cost.
In June of 2022, many tourists and residents of the Yellowstone National Park area found themselves at ground zero of a natural disaster. Torrential rainfall in Wyoming and Montana brought widespread flooding to the streams and rivers that flow through this treasured landscape and beyond. How will the National Park Service Rebuild? Hasty engineering of large infrastructure can be extremely damaging to natural systems like those in Yellowstone, and you don’t want to invest millions of dollars into repairs that might be subject to similar flooding in the future. After all, we build parks (and roads to parks) to get closer to the natural environment and all its wildness, and there’s almost nothing more natural or wild than a flood.
Making a structure last as long as possible before it needs to be replaced isn’t just good stewardship of resources. It’s a way to keep the public safe and prevent environmental disasters too. Corrosion is one of the number one ways that infrastructure deteriorates over time, so cathodic protection systems are an essential tool for keeping the constructed environment safe and sound.
In July of 2022, the Texas Department of Transportation issued an emergency suspension of work on the half-finished Harbor Bridge project in Corpus Christi, citing serious design flaws that could cause the main span to collapse if construction continues. Since then, they have continued a very public feud with the contractor that is far from resolved. This video explores some of the alleged design flaws and discusses potential next steps on the bridge project.
Even within the field of corrosion engineering, coatings are a major discipline with a large body of knowledge and expertise spread across engineers, chemists, inspectors, and coatings contractors, all to extend the lifespan and safety of our infrastructure.
The Sanibel Causeway was rendered completely impassable to vehicles. Less than a month later, it was open to traffic.
Almost all dams need a way to release excess water when the reservoir is full. Although many dams use uncontrolled spillways, gated spillways provide more control over the flow, allowing us to build smaller, more cost-effective structures. There are countless arrangements of mechanical devices that have been used across the world and throughout history to manage the flow of water. But, modern engineering has coalesced to variations on only a few different kinds of gates.
This event highlights the need for making critical substations more secure and also making the grid more robust so that someone can’t rob tens of thousands of people of their lights, heat, comfort, and livelihood for four days with just a few well-placed bullets.
Over the years, engineers have come up with a lot of creative ways to mitigate the settlement of heavy stuff on soft soils, but one of those solutions seems so simple that it’s almost unbelievable: just make embankments less heavy.
Last August, a flood took out the aging water system in Jackson, Mississippi, leaving nearly everyone in the City without water. Only a few months later, arctic weather broke so many pipes in the city that residents again lost access to water, some for nearly two weeks, continuing one of the worst water crises in American history.
The basics of fluvial geomorphology (the science behind the shape of rivers)
From preconstruction costs to inflation to unexpected site conditions, there are a lot of reasons construction budgets rarely align with construction costs. Let's talk about it!
The unintended consequences of trying to change the course of rivers.
On the evening of Friday, February 3, 2023, 38 of 149 cars of a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Five of the derailed cars were carrying vinyl chloride, a hazardous material that built up pressure in the resulting fires, eventually leading Norfolk Southern to vent and burn it in a bid to prevent an explosion. The ensuing fireball and cloud brought the normally unseen process of hazardous cargo transportation into a single chilling view, and the event became a lightning rod of controversy over rail industry regulations, federal involvement in chemical spills, and much more.
It turns out that plenty of types of infrastructure, especially those that have serious implications for public safety, are equipped with instruments to track their performance over time and even save lives by providing an early warning if something is going wrong. Engineers keep an eye on strain, vibrations, temperature, pressure, tilt, flow rate, and more to make sure that structures behave like they were designed and to keep people safe from disaster.
On September 13, 2018, a pipeline crew in the Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts was hard at work replacing an aging cast iron natural gas line with a new polyethylene pipe. By the end of the day, over a hundred structures would be damaged by fire and explosions, several homes would be completely destroyed, 22 people (including three firefighters) would be injured, and one person would be dead.
Many cities across the world maximize the use of valuable land on earth’s surface by taking advantage of the space underneath for bypassing floods. This video discusses some of the challenges and solutions to these massive projects.
Unlike NASA, which spends years in planning and engineering, SpaceX uses rapid development cycles and full-scale tests to work toward its eventual goals. They push their hardware to the limit to learn as much as possible, and we get to follow along. They’re betting it will pay off to develop fast instead of carefully. This video compares the Stage 0 launch pad to the historic pad 39A.
It might surprise you to learn that there are more than 18,000 desalination plants operating across the globe. But, those plants provide less than a percent of global water needs even though they consume a quarter of all the energy used by the water industry. The oceans are a nearly unlimited resource of water with this seemingly trivial caveat, which is that the water is just a little bit salty. It’s totally understandable to wonder why that little bit of salt is such an enormous obstacle.
Tanker truck fires at bridges happen rarely, but when they do, they often lead to a collapse or at least a replacement. How do engineers characterize bridge fires, and should bridges be better protected against them?
Current doesn’t flow to the ground; it flows through the ground and back up. If there is electricity moving into the ground from an energized conductor, go back to the source of that conductor and see what’s happening. For the grid, it’s probably a transformer or electrical generator, in either case, a simple coil of wire. And, the electrical current flowing out of the coil has to be equal to the electrical current flowing into it, whether that current is coming from one of the other phases, a neutral line, or an electrode buried in the ground.
It takes a lot of big tools to build the roads, dams, sewage lift stations, and every other part of the constructed environment. To me, there’s almost nothing more fun than watching something get built, and that’s made all the better when you know what all those machines do.
I'm on location to document the construction of a new wastewater lift station!
One statistician famously said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” And even something as simple as the flow of water into the soil has so many complexities to keep track of. Like most answers to simple questions in engineering and in life: the answer is that it’s complicated.
I'm on location to document the construction of a new wastewater lift station!
In the 19th century, railway engineering was all about how to build railroads. Modern rail engineering focuses on getting the most out of the system. It might not look like much when you see a train passing by, but a huge amount of research, testing, and engineering went into the shape of those rails and wheels.
I'm on location to document the construction of a new wastewater lift station!
Original Title: Why There's a Legal Price for a Human Life Comparing costs and safety is an enormous challenge. On one side, you have dollars, and on the other, you have people. Sometimes you need a conversion factor. It sounds morbid, but it’s necessary for good decision-making to put a dollar price on the value of a human life.
The series finale of the new wastewater lift station. Hope you've enjoyed the ride!
A lot of the engineering decisions that get made in railroading have to do with energy.
Despite the hazard they pose, trains have to coexist with our other forms of transportation. Next time you pull up to a crossbuck, take a moment to appreciate the sometimes simple, sometimes high-tech, but always quite reliable ways that grade crossings keep us safe.
It is a challenging endeavor to put any tunnel below the sea, and this monumental project faced some monumental hurdles. From complex cretaceous geology, to managing air pressure, water pressure, and even financial pressure, there are so many technical details I think are so interesting about this project.
A single modern diesel freight locomotive can deliver upwards of 50 tons of forward force (called tractive effort) into the rails, but it’s somehow able to do that through the tiny contact patches between two smooth and rigid surfaces. It’s just slick on slick.
All of our lives benefit in some way from this enormous control over Earth’s freshwater resources. But those benefits come at a cost, and the price isn’t just the dollars we’ve spent on the infrastructure but also the impacts dams have on the environment. This kind of balancing act is really at the heart of what a lot of engineering is all about.
Drawing the line between what’s worth the investment and what’s just gilding the electric lily is tough on such a small scale, multiplied by several islands, and with such a quickly growing portfolio of renewable energy sources.
Everyone has a different perspective about what it means for humanity to live harmoniously with all the other life we share the planet with. I think it’s fascinating how those ideas and endeavors trickle down through engineering into the real world.
We’re in the growing pains stage right now, working out the bugs that these new types of energy generation create, but if you pay attention to what’s happening in the industry, it’s mostly good news. A lot of people from all sides of the industry are working really hard on these engineering challenges so that we’ll soon come out with a more reliable, sustainable, and resilient grid on the other end.
An overview of vessel collision design with help from Road Guy Rob.
Geomagnetic storms aren’t the only thing that can make the grid behave in funny ways. There are devices even in your own home that force the grid to produce power and move it through the system, even though they aren’t even consuming it.
This is a crazy case study of how common sense can fall through the cracks of strained budgets and rigid oversight from federal, state, and city staff. And the lessons that came out of it aren’t just relevant to people who work on bridges. It's a story of how numerous small mistakes by individuals can collectively lead to a tragedy.
Bridge substructures are among the strongest engineered systems on the planet. And yet, bridge foundations are built in some of the least ideal places for heavy loading.
Natural gas is one of the most important resources on the planet right now. It’s driven countless innovations that benefit nearly everyone in a huge variety of ways. And so, even if you had never heard of New London, Texas before now, you can feel fairly confident that, all these decades later, you’ve also benefited in some way from the hard lessons learned there in 1937.
Whether you’re trying to protect a multi-million dollar structure or just keep your basement dry, subsurface drains get the water out without getting the soil out too.
Massive highway interchanges are a nice reminder of our capacity for grand designs and ambitious projects, even if they might not always be the best solutions.
Of course, we have a lot of room for improvement in how we think about and manage solid waste in this world. Landfills seem like an environmental blight, but really, properly designed ones play a huge role in making sure waste products don’t end up in our soil or air or water.
Digital systems interact with every aspect of our daily lives and basic needs: water, electricity, sanitation, public health, transportation, and more can all be seriously disrupted by someone or some group, anywhere in the world, if we let our guard down. With great computer power comes great computer responsibility. And just because many of these industrial control systems are only used or understood by a small number of people, security through obscurity just isn’t realistic anymore.
There’s a lot changing in the construction industry, and a lot of growth in the need for materials like sand and gravel. But I don’t think it’s fair to say the world is running out of those materials. We’re just more aware of all the costs involved in procuring them, and hopefully taking more account for how they affect our future and the environment.
An overview of the Taum Sauk pumped storage facility, the failure of its upper reservoir in 2005, and the rebuilding process.
In a world full of straight lines and right angles, I love that every once in a while, it just makes good engineering sense to use curvy shapes to accomplish a really important job.
The grid is not only mechanically and electrically complicated; it’s financially complicated, too. We don’t really participate in all that complexity - we just pay our bill at the end of every month. But it does affect us in big ways, so I think it’s important at least to understand the basics.
Baseplates are the structural shoreline of the built environment: where superstructure meets substructure. And even understanding just a little bit of the engineering behind them can tell you a lot of interesting things about the structures you see in your everyday life.
I hope y'all can put up with a bit of self-aggrandizement today. There's a teaser at the end of this video for the first Practical Engineering video. Again, thank you so much for being a subscriber and watching the stuff I make. If you have any ideas for future videos, let me know! Looking forward to this new chapter.
We're nearing 1E5 subscribers, so I thought I'd mark the occasion with a Q&A. Put your question in the comments and I'll get to my favorites when we reach 100 kiloSubscribers (should be about a week). Thanks for watching!
For those of you who can bear to listen to me babble on for 10 minutes about myself, here are the answers to (most of) your questions. I can't say enough how much I appreciate your viewership and support. Here's to 1E5 more!
