SciShow
How Tall Can Skyscrapers Get?
Get an engineeer's-eye-view of the tallest buildings in the world, to learn what challenges they face as they reach for the sky and wonder, how tall can we build?
TED Talks
TED: The architectural mastermind behind modern Singapore | Liu Thai Ker
Cities designed like families can last for generations. Skeptical? Look to master architect Liu Thai Ker, who transformed Singapore into a modern marvel with his unique approach to sustainable urban design. Liu shares creative wisdom and...
TED Talks
TED: Community investment is the missing piece of climate action | Dawn Lippert
There's been explosive investment in new technologies aimed at decarbonizing the planet. But climate investor Dawn Lippert says something key is missing from this strategy: investment in the local people these solutions would affect...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Could we build a wooden skyscraper? | Stefan Al
Towering 85 meters above the Norwegian countryside, Mjøstårnet is the world's tallest wooden building, made almost entirely from the trees of neighboring forests. But as recently as the end of the 20th century, engineers thought it was...
TED Talks
Jessica Green: We're covered in germs. Let's design for that.
Our bodies and homes are covered in microbes -- some good for us, some bad for us. As we learn more about the germs and microbes who share our living spaces, TED Fellow Jessica Green asks: Can we design buildings that encourage happy,...
TED Talks
Jessica Green: Are we filtering the wrong microbes?
Should we keep the outdoors out of hospitals? Ecologist and TED Fellow Jessica Green has found that mechanical ventilation does get rid of many types of microbes, but the wrong kinds: the ones left in the hospital are much more likely to...
TED Talks
TED: The breakthrough science of mRNA medicine | Melissa J. Moore
The secret behind medicine that uses messenger RNA (or mRNA) is that it "teaches" our bodies how to fight diseases on our own, leading to groundbreaking treatments for COVID-19 and, potentially one day, cancer, the flu and other ailments...
TED Talks
Thomas Heatherwick: Building the Seed Cathedral
A future more beautiful? Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. Some are remakes of the ordinary: a bus, a bridge, a power station ... And one is an extraordinary pavilion, the...
MinuteEarth
TRANSPARENT Solar Panels?!
Infinitesimally small quantum dots can turn a window into a see-through solar panel!
TED Talks
Xavier Vilalta: Architecture at home in its community
When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of...
SciShow
Bone Cities, Ash Towers, and 4 Other Futuristic Buildings
Right now, the construction industry heavily relies on concrete, but it isn't great for the earth. Many scientists are looking for ways to replace it in the future, and some of their ideas are so off the wall that they just might work.
TED Talks
Liz Diller: A new museum wing ... in a giant bubble
How do you make a great public space inside a not-so-great building? Liz Diller shares the story of imagining a welcoming, lighthearted -- even, dare we say it, sexy -- addition to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. (From The Design...
PBS
9 NASA Technologies Shaping YOUR Future
NASA is really good at going to space, amongst other things, but did you know that part of their mission is to work also for the public good!? It's part of NASA's doctrine that they must release the patents on the stuff they work on,...
TED Talks
Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?
MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits works on self-assembly -- the idea that instead of building something (a chair, a skyscraper), we can create materials that build themselves, much the way a strand of DNA zips itself together. It's a big...
SciShow
Are We Overdue for a Megaquake?
If you live in the U.S. you may have heard that the Pacific Northwest is supposedly overdue for an earthquake of colossal, devastating proportions. If that’s true, how can we better understand the threat and be prepared for the day it...
TED Talks
Peter Haas: When bad engineering makes a natural disaster even worse
What did the world learn from the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010? That shoddy buildings and bad planning can make a terrible situation even worse. "Haiti was not a natural disaster," says TED Fellow Peter Haas. "It was...
TED Talks
Robert Neuwirth: The hidden world of shadow cities
Robert Neuwirth, author of "Shadow Cities," finds the world's squatter sites -- where a billion people now make their homes -- to be thriving centers of ingenuity and innovation. He takes us on a tour.
Crash Course
What is space and how do we study it Crash Course Geography
Today we're going to talk about SPAAAAAACE, but not like stars and satellites and stuff. Instead, we're going to talk about geographic space. In geography, we can look at the world and the places and spaces we inhabit with four distinct...
TED Talks
TED: Victims of the city | Mark Raymond
Architecture can bring people together, or divide them -- witness the skyscraper, costly, inefficient, and only serving small portions of the community. At TEDxPortofSpain, Mark Raymond encourages city governments to let go of their old...
SciShow
Science on Trial in Italy
Hank has some thoughts on the news that several Italian scientists who were convicted of 29 counts manslaughter for making an "inadequate risk-assessment" before an earthquake.
SciShow
The Nuclear City Lost Under Ice | Camp Century
Hidden beneath Greenland’s ice and powered by a nuclear reactor, Camp Century made for an interesting US military base. But life under the ice came with unique struggles; and although it wasn’t mainly constructed for science, the base...
TED Talks
TED: Buildings that blend nature and city | Jeanne Gang
A skyscraper that channels the breeze ... a building that creates community around a hearth ... Jeanne Gang uses architecture to build relationships. In this engaging tour of her work, Gang invites us into buildings large and small, from...
SciShow
The Science of Parkour
Traceurs, or parkour athletes, seem superhuman in their ability to scale up walls and drop down from rooftops without injury. But it turns out that there’s a fair amount of biomechanics at play behind these powers.
SciShow
The Strange Scourge of Light Pollution
Light pollution -- it's not just the bane of light sleepers and frustrated astronomers. It also is tinkering with the biological cycles of all kinds of living things, including us! SciShow takes you behind the glare to understand the...