Cool Creator Spotlight: Practical Engineering

Remember when the cable TV education channels were actually educational, and not just reality shows or glorified advertisements? Good news! Lots of YouTube channels are picking up the slack. Practical Engineering is here if you want to learn how stuff is built, understand why various design choices are made, and follow analysis of what went wrong in accidents or disasters. But this channel isn't all about the salacious and sensational. This is solid education from an engaging host, and I recommend it highly.

Want to know how bridges are supported? Grady has your answers. I've done some basic truss calculations for transferring loads through a structure to these supports, but the site and its environment create far too many complicating factors. You want an engineer who can analyze the soil, wind shear, temperature fluctuations, and other considerations designing the piers and abutments.

Want to learn about drainage systems used in everything from home construction to dam spillways? I recommend including French drains in any foundation plan for new construction, and the principles can help manage landscaping issues, too.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, dams play a major role in irrigation and hydroelectric power, but fish also live in the rivers. Salmon migration is a major component of our regional ecosystem. So how do fish navigate these turbines and concrete obstacles?

When I was a kid, the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. I don't remember these events directly, but their aftereffects lingered in pop culture available as I grew up. I remember seeing survival manuals for surviving real fallout that were published long before the video game series or the Amazon show it spawned. Warnings of the effects of an EMP always accompanied these, because electronics would surely be absolutely destroyed far outside the range of the immediate bomb blast and path of the debris. Or would they? How would our modern grid handle an EMP, whether nuclear or solar?

And lastly for now, on a more practical front, how do paints and other coatings protect metal from corrosion? Let's see some serious tests and some in-depth analysis from real-world use cases.

This only scratches the surface, so for disaster deconstructions, design decisions, or less-alliterative lessons, browse Practical Engineering for more.