There is a wonderful YouTube channel called practical engineering. You might like that. It's primarily about hidden in plain plain infrastructure and the engineering behind it.
You should watch more of Practical Engineering! The dude is super knowledgeable, has great graphics and physical experiments he uses to show his point, and every video is fascinating.
This guy is doing a public service. He admittedly loves public infrastructure and civil engineering and does an amazing job of balancing the technical details and gist of the underlying physics and engineering constraints with the context of the real world applications.
Sometimes the topics are almost comically mundane, but I jumped into them and found it thoroughly interesting. One example is his 10-minute explainer "What is a Culvert"[1]. It's the perfect debunking of something seeming "trivial" to the casual observer. In another video he comments on why on construction sites you see so many folks "just standing around".
He has videos you can watch with your kids about things you might ordinarily just wave your hands about, like "How Water Towers Work"[2]. And then bigger more much involved explanations on topics you certainly have heard of but never bothered to look into, like "What Really Happened During the 2003 Blackout?"[3].
lol I feel like I sound like a advertisement but I really just love his work and thoroughly recommend having this channel in your repertoire. He's also just earnest, not unnecessarily dire or animated, and often gives what feel like fair and balanced perspectives on some of the social issues surrounding these topics.
Sebastian Lague does some of the best programming videos I've ever watched: https://www.youtube.com/@SebastianLague He is pretty light on the actual code (it's all open to see but he doesn't spend long going over it) and is focused on the outcome, which is huge for me.
Engineerguy's youtube channel is a real gem, and I wish he made more videos. Every topic he's picked has made the subject matter interesting, even about the really mundane things like baby diaper design. My substitute channels in the meantime have been Practical Engineering and Applied Science, but those two don't really have the level of depth or polish (respectively) as Engineerguy.
It is interesting that Practical Engineering is an often-cited channel on HN. Not surprising, but rather a good indication of its content, quality, and value.
Practical Engineering is a fantastic channel, but it's fascinating seeing the news citing an analysis from a youtuber instead of doing the research themselves. I wonder if they interviewed him directly, or are just quoting his video.
Those are incredibly well done videos. Without realizing it, I just spent 30 minutes watching engineering videos. They are done in a way that anyone could understand.
The videos they do are very interesting too, though I prefer the write-up for more thoughtful consumption. I would love to see more behind the scenes tours of interesting commercial or industrial sites by their engineers. Anyone have a good collection of these?
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