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The Engineering Challenges of Renewable Energy
Crash Course Engineering - S1 - E30
This week we are looking at renewable energy sources and why we need them. We’ll explore hydropower, wind, geothermal, and solar power, as well as some of the challenges, and how engineers are working to make their use more widespread.
Crash Course Engineering: Season 1 - 46 Episode s
1x1 - What is Engineering?
May 17, 2018
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 engineering.
1x2 - Civil Engineering
May 24, 2018
We’re beginning our engineering journey with a tour through the major branches. Today Shini explains the facets of civil engineering, including structural and construction engineering, city planning, transportation, and sanitation.
1x3 - Mechanical Engineering
May 31, 2018
Today we continue our tour through the major fields of engineering with a look at mechanical engineering, beginning with the steam engine. We’ll discuss aircraft, the development of aerospace engineering, and take a look into the future of robotics and biomechanics.
1x4 - The History of Electrical Engineering
June 7, 2018
Next stop on our tour of engineering’s major fields: electrical engineering. In this episode we’ll explore the history of telecommunications, electric power and lighting, and computers. We’ll introduce topics like magnetism, electrical conduction, telegraphy, lighting, and computers.
1x5 - The History of Chemical Engineering
June 14, 2018
Today we’ll cover the fourth and final of our core disciplines of engineering: chemical engineering. We’ll talk about its history and evolution going from soda ash competitions to oil refineries and renewable energies. We’ll also discuss some newer and emerging fields like biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.
1x6 - Biomedical & Industrial Engineering
June 21, 2018
We’ve discussed the four main branches of engineering but there are so many other fields doing important work, so today we’re going to explore a few of them. In this episode we’ll explore some of the history and fundamentals of industrial engineering, biomedical engineering, and bioengineering.
1x7 - The Law of Conservation
June 28, 2018
Today Shini explains the law of conservation, beginning with simple, steady-state systems. We’ll discuss conversion and yield, accumulation, and how generation and consumption can affect how much accumulation there is in a system.
1x8 - Reversibility & Irreversibility
July 5, 2018
How do we design the most efficient machines and processes? Today we’ll try to figure that out as we discuss heat & work, reversibility & irreversibility, and how to use efficiency to measure a system.
1x9 - The First & Zeroth Laws of Thermodynamics
July 12, 2018
n today’s episode we’ll explore thermodynamics and some of the ways it shows up in our daily lives. We’ll learn the zeroth law of thermodynamics, what it means to reach a thermal equilibrium, and define the first law of thermodynamics. We’ll also explore how stationary, adiabatic, and isochoric processes can make our lives as engineers a little easier.
1x10 - Why We Can't Invent a Perfect Engine
July 19, 2018
We’ve introduced the 0th and 1st laws of thermodynamics, so now it’s time to move on to the second law and how we came to understand it. We’ll explain the differences between the first and second law, and we’ll talk about the Carnot cycle and why we can never design a perfectly efficient engine.
1x11 - Heat Engines, Refrigerators, & Cycles
August 2, 2018
Cycles are a big deal in engineering. Today we’ll explain what they are and how they’re used in heat engines, refrigerators, and heat pumps. We’ll also discuss phase diagrams and the power of using renewable energy resources
1x12 - Stress, Strain & Quicksand
August 9, 2018
Today we’re talking all about fluid mechanics! We’ll look at different scales that we work with as engineers, mass and energy transfers, the no-slip condition, stress and strain, Newton’s law of viscosity, Reynold’s number, and more!
1x13 - Fluid Flow & Equipment
August 16, 2018
Today we’ll dive further into fluid flow and how we can use equipment to apply our skills. We explain Bernoulli’s Principle and the relationship between speed and pressure in certain flowing fluids. We’ll also discuss how to apply the principle with Bernoulli’s Equation and try to use it in real-world examples.
1x14 - Heat Transfe
August 23, 2018
Today we’re talking about heat transfer and the different mechanisms behind it. We’ll explore conduction, the thermal conductivity of materials, convection, boundary layers, and radiation.
1x15 - How Not to Set Your Pizza on Fire
August 30, 2018
Today we’re going to explain how exchangers...exchange heat. We’ll look at concentric tubes, finned tubes, plate heat exchangers, and shell-and-tube heat exchangers. And we’ll look at some equations to help us sort through heat transfer and decide what heat exchangers are best suited for our designs.
1x16 - Drugs, Dyes, & Mass Transfer
September 6, 2018
Today we’re talking about mass transfer. It doesn’t just apply to objects and fluids as a whole, but also to the individual molecules and components that make them up. We’ll see that transfers of mass need their own driving force, discuss diffusion, and use Fick’s Law to help us model mass transfer.
1x17 - Mass Separation
September 13, 2018
It can be really important to separate out chemicals for all kinds of reasons. Today we’re going over three different processes engineers use to achieve that separation: distillation, which separates substances based on their different boiling points; liquid-liquid extraction, which uses differences in solubility to transfer a contaminant into a solvent; and reverse osmosis, which filters molecules from a solvent by pressurizing it through a semipermeable barrier.
1x18 - Reaching Breaking Point: Materials, Stresses, & Toughness
September 20, 2018
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, creep strength, and fatigue strength.
1x19 - Metals & Ceramics
September 27, 2018
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 the applications of our materials with microelectromechanical systems and accelerometers.
1x20 - The Polymer Explosion
October 4, 2018
We’re continuing our look at engineering materials with third main type of material that you’ll encounter as an engineer: polymers. They’re made of long, repeating chains of smaller molecules known as monomers and today we’ll explore their strange history of polymers and the things that contributed to how we use them today.
1x21 - Electrical Power, Conductors, & Your Dream Home
October 18, 2018
Today, we'll explore the materials electrical engineers work with. We'll look at high-conductors, insulators, and how low-conductivity conductors can be used to generate light and heat.
1x22 - Silicon, Semiconductors, & Solar Cells
October 25, 2018
Today we’re looking at silicon, and how introducing small amounts of other elements allow silicon layers to conduct currents, turning them into semiconductors. We’ll explore how putting two different types – N and P semiconductors – together gives us electrical components like diodes, transistors, and solar cells.
1x23 - The Mighty Power of Nanomaterials
November 1, 2018
Just how small are nanomaterials? And what can we do with stuff that small? Today we’ll discuss some special properties of nanomaterials, how some can change at different sizes, and the difference between engineered nanomaterials and ones that occur naturally. We’ll also talk about some of the future research that’s needed on the use of nanomaterials.
1x24 - Biomaterials
November 8, 2018
We’ve talked about different materials engineers use to build things in the world, but there’s a special category of materials they turn to when building things to go inside our bodies. In this episode we’ll explore the world biomaterials like titanium and their coatings, the special chemistry of polyurethane, and the cross-linked structure of hydrogels. We’ll also look at the importance of safety & research, as well as the enormous future potential of biomaterials.
1x25 - Cheese, Catastrophes, & Process Control
November 15, 2018
Engineering, like life, could really use a lot more cheese. This week we are looking at a cheese factory in Toronto and what it can teach us about process control systems. We’ll explore feedforward and feedback systems, and see how integrating them both with the final check of cascade control creates a system made to handle uncertainty the world throws its way.
1x26 - Skyscrapers, Statics, & Dynamics
November 29, 2018
What if you were on a high floor of a skyscraper and the building started swaying? Today we’ll explore statics and dynamics, and what they mean for the structures we design. We look at the idea of static equilibrium, forces, and torques, and how free body diagrams can help us make sense of it all.
1x27 - Engineering Ethics
December 6, 2018
We’ve talked about many important concepts for engineers, but today we’re going to discuss a hugely important one that you might not even realize is an engineering concept: ethics. We’ll talk about what a Code of Ethics is. We’ll explore engineering ethics and the ethical theories of utilitarianism, rights ethics, and duty ethics. We’ll also take a look at a few different real life examples of ethical problems in engineering.
1x28 - Flirting With Disaster - The Importance of Safety
December 13, 2018
As engineer, sometimes lives will be in your hands, so this week we’re exploring safety and its impact on engineering. We’ll discuss the difference between occupational safety and public safety and how to analyze and review a process for any potential dangers with things like HAZOP. We’ll learn the dangers of having too many alarms and look at how important it is to adopt a good mindset of safety culture.
1x29 - Preventing Flint - Environmental Engineering
December 20, 2018
A lot of work goes into managing our impact on the environment and its impact on us. That work is the work of environmental engineers. In this episode we’ll explore water quality, air quality, noise pollution, waste management, and more.
1x30 - The Engineering Challenges of Renewable Energy
January 3, 2019
This week we are looking at renewable energy sources and why we need them. We’ll explore hydropower, wind, geothermal, and solar power, as well as some of the challenges, and how engineers are working to make their use more widespread.
1x31 - The Future of Clean Energy
January 10, 2019
This week we are exploring alternative energy sources. We'll look at how biomass can be burned as a fuel source, how hydrogen can be used in a fuel cell to generate electrical power, and how nuclear fission provides power to the grid. We'll also discuss how nuclear fusion might someday do the same without any radioactive waste.
1x32 - Why It's So Hard To Make Better Batteries
January 17, 2019
There are batteries powering so many parts of our everyday lives, so today we’re going to talk about how they work and how we can make them better. We’ll explain how they provide power by discharging ions between a cathode and an anode, and how reversing that process gives us a way of charging them. We’ll also look at how that batteries deliver voltage differently over time, leading to discharge curves, and some of the work being done to improve the properties of batteries for portable electronics.
1x33 - How Engineering Robots Works
January 24, 2019
In this episode we looked at robots and the engineering principles of robots. We learned how robots use sensors to interpret their environment, how actuators and effectors allow a robot to manipulate the objects around it to accomplish a task, and how computers coordinate the efforts of the two.
1x34 - To The Moon & Mars - Aerospace Engineering
January 31, 2019
This week we’re exploring aerospace engineering and its two main fields: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. We’ll explore life & buoyancy, propulsion systems, and the challenges of managing the human body in space.
1x35 - Computer Engineering & the End of Moore's Law
February 7, 2019
This week we’re exploring a field of engineering that is essential to how you’re watching this video: computers and computer engineering. We’ll explain differences between hardware and software, how engineers are working on making computers smaller and more energy efficient, and how computer aided processes such as CAD and CAM make it easier for engineers to design and manufacture parts needed in machines and products.
1x36 - How to Engineer Health - Drug Discovery & Delivery
February 14, 2019
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 synthetic biology. We’ll also look at how important good disease detection is and why we need more targeted drug delivery systems.
1x37 - Smart Tattoos & Tiny Robots
February 21, 2019
This week we are exploring biodevices and the part they play in the healthcare world. We’ll look at the challenges of implantable biodevices, like biocompatibility, power and connectivity, packaging, structural design, delivery systems, and device management. We’ll also dive into some of the latest research, like smart tattoos, and just what the future of biodevices might hold.
1x38 - Changing the Blueprints of Life - Genetic Engineering
February 28, 2019
Can we change the blueprints of life? This week we are exploring that question with genetic engineering. We’ll discuss how selective breeding can improve agricultural practices, and the potential DNA-level engineering could have on other fields of engineering. We’ll also look at how optogenetics and CRISPR have opened up new ways for genetic engineers to change the DNA inside living cells.
1x39 - Mass-Producing Ice Cream with Food Engineering
March 7, 2019
In this episode, we looked at food engineering. We explored how food’s capacity to spoil makes it a unique challenge from an engineering viewpoint. We saw how many branches of engineering come into play to process ingredients, ensure safety for consumers, and package food, as well as how thermodynamics is involved in the different stages of food production.
1x40 - How the Leaning Tower of Pisa Was Saved
March 14, 2019
This week we’re going underground to explore geotechnical and seismic engineering. We’ll look at how structures connect to the ground and transmit loads through their foundations, and how those foundations need to provide a high bearing capacity. We’ll see how properties of the soil, like shear strength, affect bearing capacity. We’ll also consider happens when the ground experiences stress from seismic activity and how seismic engineers work to counteract those effects.
1x41 - Why Moving People is Complicated
March 28, 2019
Transportation is a big part of our world and engineers play a big role in making it happen. Today we’ll explore how transportation systems are designed and some things transportation engineers have to take into consideration, like signaling, user behavior, and traffic flow. And, of course, we’ll talk about some of the ways that transportation engineers are trying to improve the systems we already have.
1x42 - YouTube Couldn't Exist Without Communications & Signal Processing
April 4, 2019
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 noise, to how we arrived at the digital age.
1x43 - How Seawater Sabotages Ships
April 11, 2019
This week we’re headed out to sea for some marine engineering. How do we design ships to handle aquatic environments? How do we deal with marine life and corrosion and all of the other problems that come with engineering in the ocean? How can large maritime structures be built on land and transferred into water?
1x44 - Building a Desalination Plant from Scratch
April 18, 2019
An essential part of engineering is engineering design. Today we’ll see how design synthesis helps you put together the components of a process and decide what techniques are needed to solve your problem. We’ll explain the need test things on a smaller scale before ramping up to full production, and how to continually incorporate feedback from design flaws to improve your designs.
1x45 - How To Become An Engineer
April 25, 2019
Hopefully this course has gotten you excited about all the things we can do with engineering. If so, today we’re going to try to help you answer a very important question: how do you become an engineer? What are the steps? What kinds of careers can you pursue?
1x46 - The Biggest Problems We're Facing Today & The Future of Engineering
May 2, 2019
In our final episode of Crash Course Engineering we are going to take all the tools and ideas we’ve discussed throughout this series and try to imagine where we’re headed. We’re going to explore some of the biggest problems that today’s engineers are trying to solve and make some guesses about what the future of the field might look like.