Practical Engineering

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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 Whats.That.Infrastructure@gmail.com. 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!