Engineerguy videos & audio

How a Lead-Acid Battery Works

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 04:26:34 PDT

Bill details how a microwave oven heats food. He describes how the microwave vacuum tube, called a magnetron, generates radio frequencies that cause the water in food to rotate back and forth. He shows the standing wave inside the oven, and notes how you can measure the wavelength with melted cheese. He concludes by describing how a magnetron generates radio waves. You can learn more about the microwave oven from the EngineerGuy team's new book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories http://www.engineerguy.com/elements

What Keeps Nuclear Weapons from Proliferating

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 04:48:48 PDT

Bill explains that the hardest step is making the proper type of uranium. Weapons and power plants require uranium that contains a greater amount of the isotope uranium-235 than found in natural uranium, which is mostly uranium-238. He outlines the key difficulty in separating the two isotope: They have nearly identical properties. He explains the two key methods for separation: Gas diffusion and centrifuges.

How an Atomic Clock Works

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 05:31:05 PDT

Bill shows the world's smallest atomic clock and then describes how the first one made in the 1950s worked. He describes in detail the use of cesium vapor to create a feedback or control loop to control a quartz oscillator. He highlights the importance of atomic team by describing briefly how a GPS receiver uses four satellites to find its position. You can learn more about atomic clocks and the GPS system in the EngineerGuy team's new book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories http://www.engineerguy.com/elements

How a Laser Works

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 05:03:46 PDT

Bill shows how the three key characteristics of laser light - single wavelength, narrow beam, and high intensity - are made. He explains the operation of a ruby laser - the first laser ever made - showing how electronic transitions create stimulated emission to give coherent light, and then how the ends of the ruby cavity create a narrow wavelength highly collimated beam. You can learn more about laser in the EngineerGuy team's new book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories

Anodizing Aluminium (or The Beauty of Corrosion)

Tue, 29 May 2012 07:28:10 PDT

Bill describes how metals like aluminum and titanium are made resistant to corrosion by growing an oxide layer into the metals. These is the same process used on many Apple products. This video is based on a chapter in his book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories.

How a Smartphone Knows Up from Down

Tue, 22 May 2012 05:13:03 PDT

Bill takes apart a smartphone and explains how its accelerometer works. He also shares the essential idea underlying the MEMS production of these devices

CCD: The Heart of a Digital Camera

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:06:12 PDT

Bill takes apart a digital camera and explains how its captures images using a CCD (charge coupled device). He also shares how a single CCD is used with a color filter array to create colored images. This video is based on a chapter from the EngineerGuy team's latest book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories (Learn more at http://www.engineerguy.com/elements)

Fiber optic cables

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:46:50 PDT

Bill uses a laser pointer and a bucket of glycol to show how fiber optic cables works, and how engineers use them to transmit signals across the ocean.

Cell phone design

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:49:05 PDT

Bill uses a pile of cell phones to illustrate the seven design criteria that shape a mobile device. He outlines the seven basic constrain

Hard drive teardown

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 06:30:39 PDT

Bill tears down a hard drive to show how it stores data. He explains how smooth the disk surface must be for the device to work, and he outlines the mathematical technique used to increase data storage.

LCD Monitor

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 04:01:16 PDT

Bill tears down an LCD monitor to show how it works. He describes how liquid crystals are used, the structure of the glass panes, and the thin film transistor (TFTs) that allow for active matrix addressing.

How smoke detectors work

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 05:33:25 PST

Bill takes apart a smoke detector and shows how it uses a radioactive source to generate a tiny current which is disrupted when smoke flows through the sensor. He describes how a special transistor called a MOSFET can be used to detect the tiny current changes.

Light Bulb Filament

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:29:38 PST

Bill takes apart an incandescent light bulb to how how the filament is made. He shows extreme close-ups of the filament, and he discusses the materials processing need to make the ductile tungsten

Why the other line is likely to move faster

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:36:23 PST

Bill reveals how "queueing theory" - developed by engineers to route phone calls - can be used to find the most efficient arrangement of cashiers and check out lines. He reports on the work of Agner Erlang, a Danish engineer who, at the opening of the 20th century, helped the Copenhagen Telephone Company provide the best level of service at the lowest price.

How a quartz watch works

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 05:40:45 PST

The amazing everyday wristwatch: We never think about it, but only because engineers have made it so reliable and durable that we don't
need to. At its heart lies a tiny tuning fork made of the mineral quartz. In this video Bill takes apart a cheap watch and shows extreme
close-ups of the actually tunings fork. He explains how the piezoelectric effect of quartz lies at the heart of the watch's
operation.

How the first transistor worked

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 05:11:46 PST

Bill shows how a transistor works by examing a replica of the first one ever build: The Bardeen-Brattain point contact transistor.

Black Box

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:54:27 PST

Bill opens up a vintage "black box" from a Delta airlines jetliner. He describes how the box withstands high temperatures and crash velocities because it is made from Inconel: A superalloy steels that is used in furnaces and others extreme environments. The flight data recorder he shows is a Sundstrand FA-542 and was likely used on a DC-9 in the 1970s, although it could have been used as late as 1988 on a Boeing 727.

Coffee Maker

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:46:30 PST

To engineer an object means to make choices. Bill illustrates how the choice of having a single heating element made an engineer find a creative way to pump water with no moving parts.

Pop Can Stay-on tab: An ingenious engineering design

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 05:27:37 PST

Bill uses slow motion video to show the ingenious engineering design of the apparently simple tab of a pop can. To create a tab with the least amount of material it changes from a 2nd to a 1st class lever while opening the can.

Whiffletree: A mechanical digital-to-analog converter

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 06:32:17 PST

Early calculating devices and computers used mechanical digital to
analogue converters. This video describes one based on an arrangement
of metal bars called a "whiffletree" - also sometimes called a
"whippletree." It shows, briefly, the whiffletree used in IBM's
revolutionary selectric typewriter and then illustrates the principles
of a whiffletree converter by showing the simplest one - one that
encodes digital impulses into two bits of information. (This videos is
an appendix to Bill Hammack's video about the operation of the
Selectric Typewriter.)

The IBM Selectric & its mechanical digital-to-analogue converter

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 06:29:55 PST

Using slow motion video Bill Hammack, the engineer guy, shows how
IBM's revolutionary "golf ball" typewriter works. He describes the
marvelous completely mechanical digital-to-analogue converter that
translates the discrete impulse of the keys to the rotation of the
type element. (This is the typewriter featured on the television series Mad Men.)

Concrete: A slightly tongue-in-cheek look

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:18:20 PDT

Bill moves a piece of sewer pipe into his office to show how important the ancient material concrete is to our modern world. It, of course, wreaks havoc on his office. The video also includes an index to all videos in the series and some outtakes.

Chairs: A seriocomical look at engineering design

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:32:33 PDT

Bill asks the question "Why a chair?" ... the answer reveals the human aspects of engineering design. He also answers the question, alas, "how many Bills does it take to talk about chairs."

VIDEO: A light-hearted take on matches and their importance

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:34:40 PDT

Bill reveals the importance of matches in the 19th century; he shares how adding phosphorous to them revolutionized life - in both good and bad ways.

A playful look at how the photocopier works

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:38:06 PDT

Bill uses power tools to take apart a photocopier. He shows how it works, and shares the story of its invention by Chester Carlson.

Garbage: What is really in a landfill? (video)

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:37:18 PST

Bill Hammack covers his office floor with trash to see what takes up space in a landfill. He digs through fast food containers and diapers to learn that what we really need is green design of our manufactured objects.

Copper: The miracle metal

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:47:54 PST

Using a pair of cutters to extract a copper pipe from the ceiling, Bill shows how copper is the "miracle metal" that gives us safe drinking water, and makes our electronic world possible.

Tantalum: Nutmeg of the west

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:50:25 PST

With his hammer Bill cracks up a cell phone to expose how our electronic gadgets rely on the mineral tantalum - mined as Coltan.

Why a thermostat fits into our world (video)

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:49:13 PST

Armed with a pair of wire cutters Bill shows how a common thermostat reveals how good industrial designers keep track of the dimensions of a human being.

What is inside a golfball and how did it get there? (video)

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:47:46 PST

To learn what's inside a golf ball - and to show how clever engineers are - Bill uses a special cutter to chop one open - well more than one.

Why does a cell phone look like it does? (video)

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:46:30 PST

Bill invades a cell phone store to show that the design of a mobile isn't arbritary. Engineers uses seven basic principles to create a useful phone.

The ice hotel (audio)

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:52:10 PST

In ths public radio piece Bill reveals the mysteries of the Ice Hotel. In January 2002 Bill visited the Ice Hotel with his wife Amy Somrak and their friends Allan and Pat Tuchman. Located in the arctic circle of Sweden, the hotel's owners rebuild the hotel every year. Temperatures outside the hotel can be as low as 40 degrees below freezing; inside the hotel temperatures are a comparatively warm 9 degrees fahrenheit. In this public radio piece Bill examines the hotel rooms, interviews its designer, and probes the hotel's appeal.

How plasmas affect our everyday lives (video)

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:31:14 PST

Bill cuts a fluorescent light out of his ceiling to show that plasmas and their products are all around us - they're essential in making circuit boards, lights, and even potato chip bags.