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All Episodes of Crash Course Engineering

Browse all episodes of Crash Course Engineering

All Episodes of Crash Course Engineering

Dr. Shini Somara returns to Crash Course for Crash Course Engineering!
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Season 1

  • What is Engineering?
    N/A/100 votes

    What is Engineering?

    Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 5/17/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Civil Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    Civil Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 5/24/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Mechanical Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    Mechanical Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 5/31/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The History of Electrical Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    The History of Electrical Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 6/7/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The History of Chemical Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    The History of Chemical Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 6/14/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Biomedical & Industrial Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    Biomedical & Industrial Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 6/21/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The Law of Conservation
    N/A/100 votes

    The Law of Conservation

    Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 6/28/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Reversibility & Irreversibility
    N/A/100 votes

    Reversibility & Irreversibility

    Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 7/5/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The First & Zeroth Laws of Thermodynamics
    N/A/100 votes

    The First & Zeroth Laws of Thermodynamics

    Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 7/12/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Why We Can't Invent a Perfect Engine
    N/A/100 votes

    Why We Can't Invent a Perfect Engine

    Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 7/19/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Heat Engines, Refrigerators, & Cycles
    N/A/100 votes

    Heat Engines, Refrigerators, & Cycles

    Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 8/2/2018

    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

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Stress, Strain & Quicksand
    N/A/100 votes

    Stress, Strain & Quicksand

    Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 8/9/2018

    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!

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Fluid Flow & Equipment
    N/A/100 votes

    Fluid Flow & Equipment

    Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 8/16/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Heat Transfe
    N/A/100 votes

    Heat Transfe

    Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 8/23/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • How Not to Set Your Pizza on Fire
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    How Not to Set Your Pizza on Fire

    Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 8/30/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Drugs, Dyes, & Mass Transfer
    N/A/100 votes

    Drugs, Dyes, & Mass Transfer

    Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 9/6/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Mass Separation
    N/A/100 votes

    Mass Separation

    Season 1 Episode 17 - Aired 9/13/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Reaching Breaking Point: Materials, Stresses, & Toughness
    N/A/100 votes

    Reaching Breaking Point: Materials, Stresses, & Toughness

    Season 1 Episode 18 - Aired 9/20/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Metals & Ceramics
    N/A/100 votes

    Metals & Ceramics

    Season 1 Episode 19 - Aired 9/27/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The Polymer Explosion
    N/A/100 votes

    The Polymer Explosion

    Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 10/4/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Electrical Power, Conductors, & Your Dream Home
    N/A/100 votes

    Electrical Power, Conductors, & Your Dream Home

    Season 1 Episode 21 - Aired 10/18/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Silicon, Semiconductors, & Solar Cells
    N/A/100 votes

    Silicon, Semiconductors, & Solar Cells

    Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 10/25/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The Mighty Power of Nanomaterials
    N/A/100 votes

    The Mighty Power of Nanomaterials

    Season 1 Episode 23 - Aired 11/1/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Biomaterials
    N/A/100 votes

    Biomaterials

    Season 1 Episode 24 - Aired 11/8/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Cheese, Catastrophes, & Process Control
    N/A/100 votes

    Cheese, Catastrophes, & Process Control

    Season 1 Episode 25 - Aired 11/15/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Skyscrapers, Statics, & Dynamics
    N/A/100 votes

    Skyscrapers, Statics, & Dynamics

    Season 1 Episode 26 - Aired 11/29/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Engineering Ethics
    N/A/100 votes

    Engineering Ethics

    Season 1 Episode 27 - Aired 12/6/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Flirting With Disaster - The Importance of Safety
    N/A/100 votes

    Flirting With Disaster - The Importance of Safety

    Season 1 Episode 28 - Aired 12/13/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Preventing Flint - Environmental Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    Preventing Flint - Environmental Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 29 - Aired 12/20/2018

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The Engineering Challenges of Renewable Energy
    N/A/100 votes

    The Engineering Challenges of Renewable Energy

    Season 1 Episode 30 - Aired 1/3/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The Future of Clean Energy
    N/A/100 votes

    The Future of Clean Energy

    Season 1 Episode 31 - Aired 1/10/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Why It's So Hard To Make Better Batteries
    N/A/100 votes

    Why It's So Hard To Make Better Batteries

    Season 1 Episode 32 - Aired 1/17/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • How Engineering Robots Works
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    How Engineering Robots Works

    Season 1 Episode 33 - Aired 1/24/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • To The Moon & Mars - Aerospace Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    To The Moon & Mars - Aerospace Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 34 - Aired 1/31/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Computer Engineering & the End of Moore's Law
    N/A/100 votes

    Computer Engineering & the End of Moore's Law

    Season 1 Episode 35 - Aired 2/7/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • How to Engineer Health - Drug Discovery & Delivery
    N/A/100 votes

    How to Engineer Health - Drug Discovery & Delivery

    Season 1 Episode 36 - Aired 2/14/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Smart Tattoos & Tiny Robots
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    Smart Tattoos & Tiny Robots

    Season 1 Episode 37 - Aired 2/21/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Changing the Blueprints of Life - Genetic Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    Changing the Blueprints of Life - Genetic Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 38 - Aired 2/28/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Mass-Producing Ice Cream with Food Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    Mass-Producing Ice Cream with Food Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 39 - Aired 3/7/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • How the Leaning Tower of Pisa Was Saved
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    How the Leaning Tower of Pisa Was Saved

    Season 1 Episode 40 - Aired 3/14/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Why Moving People is Complicated
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    Why Moving People is Complicated

    Season 1 Episode 41 - Aired 3/28/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • YouTube Couldn't Exist Without Communications & Signal Processing
    N/A/100 votes

    YouTube Couldn't Exist Without Communications & Signal Processing

    Season 1 Episode 42 - Aired 4/4/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • How Seawater Sabotages Ships
    N/A/100 votes

    How Seawater Sabotages Ships

    Season 1 Episode 43 - Aired 4/11/2019

    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?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • Building a Desalination Plant from Scratch
    N/A/100 votes

    Building a Desalination Plant from Scratch

    Season 1 Episode 44 - Aired 4/18/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • How To Become An Engineer
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    How To Become An Engineer

    Season 1 Episode 45 - Aired 4/25/2019

    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?

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown

  • The Biggest Problems We're Facing Today & The Future of Engineering
    N/A/100 votes

    The Biggest Problems We're Facing Today & The Future of Engineering

    Season 1 Episode 46 - Aired 5/2/2019

    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.

    Director: Unknown

    Writer: Unknown