Biofuels can provide energy without the reliance on environmentally harmful fossils fuels -- but scientists are still searching for a plentiful source. Craig A. Kohn demonstrates how cellulose, the naturally abundant tough walls of plant...

Engineers are problem solvers, and our own health is full of problems to be engineered. In this episode we discuss drug discovery and drug delivery. We’ll explore everything from classical and reverse pharmacology to the new field of...

Bill and Webb want to reach a button that is really high up on the wall, so Mister Brown teaches them how to use engineering and teamwork to make a high up button pusher! K-2 Next Generation Science Standards Science and Engineering...

Tribology: it's a funny-sounding word you might not have heard before, but it could change how you see and interact with the physical world, says mechanical engineer Jennifer Vail. Offering lessons from tribology -- the study of friction...

Would mathematics exist if people didn't? Did we create mathematical concepts to help us understand the world around us, or is math the native language of the universe itself? Jeff Dekofsky traces some famous arguments in this ancient...

Humans have relied on fertilizers to grow their plants for thousands of years. But the production of synthetic fertilizers also requires an immense amount of energy that comes primarily from fossil fuels and therefore contributes to...

In our first episode of Crash Course Engineering, Shini explains what engineering is, and gives a brief overview of its four main branches (civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical) as well as a look at some of the other fields of...

Today we’ll explore more about two of the three main types of materials that we use as engineers: metals and ceramics. We’ll discuss properties of metals, alloys, ceramics, clay, cement, and glass-ceramic materials. We’ll also look at...

So, there might not be just one solution to a problem. I know that may sound weird, but it's true. So, how do you come up with multiple solutions? In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Engineer Sabrina shows us how to do that.

This video is chapter 6 in my series on special relativity, and it covers the topic of relativistic addition of velocity: aka, how things that are moving relative to one inertial reference frame, which is moving relative to another...

As of 1989, mankind had successfully sent craft to every known planet in the solar system except one: Pluto. Located in an mysterious region called the Kuiper Belt, Pluto is a scientific goldmine, and could hold clues to the formation of...

Today, nearly 30% of all global ship traffic passes through the Suez Canal, totaling over 20,000 ships in 2021. The site of the canal had been of interest to rulers as far back as the second millennium BCE, but plans to construct a...

Our ability to mine great amounts of energy from uranium nuclei has led some to bill nuclear power as a plentiful, utopian source of electricity. But rather than dominate the global electricity market, nuclear power has declined from a...

Engineering helped make this video possible. This week we’ll look at how it’s possible for you to watch this video with the fundamentals of signal processing. We’ll explore things from Morse Code, to problems like bandwidth capacity and...

For centuries, billiard balls were made of ivory from elephant tusks. But when excessive hunting caused elephant populations to decline, they began to look for alternatives. John Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. In five years, he...

If we want to build a place for us to live, or to hang out, or do eat dinner with our friends, we're going to need a special kind of engineering called architecture. In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina gets us to help her build...

Bridges. Bridges don't deal well with temperature changes. In order to combat this, engineers have come up with some work arounds that allow bridges to flex as they expand or contract. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks...

This video was made in collaboration with the US Census Bureau and fact-checked by Census Bureau scientists. Any opinions and errors are my own. For more information, visit...

In our last episode, Sabrina talked about how Engineers define the problems they need to solve. But how do you know when you've actually solved a problem? What do you expect to happen that would equal success? In this episode, Sabrina...

Today we’re going to start thinking about materials that are used in engineering. We’ll look at mechanical properties of materials, stress-strain diagrams, elasticity and toughness, and describe other material properties like hardness,...

Water is refreshing, hydrating, and invaluable to your survival. But clean water remains a precious and often scarce commodity - there are nearly 800 million people who still don't have regular access to it. Why is that? And how can you...

Footnote to the main video here: https://youtu.be/HUti6vGctQM Feedback loops and spurious correlations! REFERENCES: Spurious correlations: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations Loopy by Nicky Case: http://ncase.me/loopy/...

In 1990, The Human Genome Project proposed to sequence the entire human genome over 15 years with $3 billion of public funds. Then, seven years before its scheduled completion, a private company called Celera announced that they could...

En este episodio tomamos un descanso de la física y hacemos un poco de matemáticas. Pero realmente no: ¡esto sí es relevante para la física! Y aquí lo explico: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak0YXnGA97E MinutoDeFísica proporciona una...