Department
Tech
Machines, inventions and engineering. 240 case files (102 cross-filed from other departments).
DID YOUKNOW?Dragon DronesDD-757
Dragon Drones
Dragon drones are drones, typically modified first-person-view (FPV) types, that release burning thermite over positions; Ukrainian forces used them in the Russo-Ukrainian war, and they were first widely documented in 2024. Thermite burns at temperatures above 2,200 degrees Celsius, producing showers of molten metal. The footage, credited to HowThingsWork_, shows a drone dropping burning thermite over a field and buildings.
DID YOUKNOW?Vertical ParkingDD-755
Vertical Parking
Before the robot could fetch a bike in seconds, someone had to decide to bury the bike rack. Giken designed the ECO Cycle to end messy, illegal bike parking around busy train stations, under a simple idea: keep only a compact entrance booth on the sidewalk and put the parking underground. The bikes sit in racks arranged around a round shaft, with a rotating elevator in the middle, and the shaft is built to withstand a quake of Japanese seismic intensity 6-upper. The first unit opened at Kochi University of Technology in June 1998.
DID YOUKNOW?Temperature TilesDD-754
Temperature Tiles
The Space Shuttle's thermal protection system used about 24,300 tiles, mostly silica-fiber ceramic, to shield the orbiter during reentry. The highest-temperature tiles were rated for about 1,260 degrees Celsius, and because the material is largely empty space it conducts heat so poorly that a tile glowing hot in the middle can be held at the edges moments after leaving a furnace. The footage, credited to asgardia_space, shows a tile being heated and then held by hand.
DID YOUKNOW?Gravity, or Lunavity?DD-007
Gravity, or Lunavity?
A University of Tokyo team built a 16-fan wearable drone that makes jumping feel like you're on the Moon.
DID YOUKNOW?Print PrecisionDD-005
Print Precision
An inkjet printhead fires drops measured in picoliters, trillionths of a liter. Home printers go down to about 1–1.5 pL, and some lab heads go below 1. Thermal ('bubble jet') heads flash-boil a speck of ink so that a vapor bubble kicks a drop out. Piezo heads flex a crystal to squeeze it out. Drops fly at roughly 5–15 m/s, and Epson heads can fire up to 50,000 times a second. The best industrial heads land each drop within about a micron of its target.
DID YOUKNOW?Spray Foam FunDD-750
Spray Foam Fun
Spray polyurethane foam is mixed on site from an isocyanate side (polymeric MDI) and a polyol blend containing catalysts, surfactants and fire retardants. Open-cell foam is blown mainly by water and expands about 150 times. Closed-cell foam is blown mainly by HFC-type agents and expands about 35 to 50 times, so the 'more than 100 times' claim applies only to open-cell foam. Both types seal air well. Both are combustible and usually need a thermal or ignition barrier, and installers must manage isocyanate exposure.
DID YOUKNOW?(Z) Pinch MeDD-741
(Z) Pinch Me
In a Z-pinch, current flowing along the axis of a plasma or a metal target creates a circular (azimuthal) magnetic field, and the resulting Lorentz force drives the material inward. Sandia's Z machine stores up to 22 MJ and discharges it as a pulse of about 100 nanoseconds, with currents of about 26 million amps (up to about 30 MA). That gives magnetic pressures of about 100 Mbar at a 1 mm radius. On Z, the targets are usually wire arrays or metal liners that vaporize into plasma. The Reel's footage is credited to Zap Energy, a company developing a different, sheared-flow Z-pinch approach to fusion.
DID YOUKNOW?Hefei FusionDD-738
Hefei Fusion
On June 27, 2026, the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei (ASIPP) completed and accepted a toroidal field superconducting magnet for CRAFT, China's Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology. The magnet weighs 582.4 t, measures 21 × 12 × 3.3 m, operates at 98 kA and stores 120 GJ. Sixteen such coils would produce 6.5 T at the plasma center and a 14.5 T peak. ASIPP says it has 1.3 times the volume and three times the stored energy of an ITER TF magnet, making it the world's largest fusion-reactor superconducting magnet.
DID YOUKNOW?Shoot-and-ScootDD-736
Shoot-and-Scoot
The NORA-B52 is a 155 mm, 52-caliber self-propelled gun-howitzer made by Serbia's state-owned Yugoimport-SDPR, mounted on 8x8 truck chassis (KAMAZ and MAN). According to the manufacturer, ranges are 32.5 km with ERFB rounds, 41.5 km with base-bleed rounds and up to 52 km with V-LAP rounds, at up to 4 rounds per minute. The newest NG ('Perun') variant, shown in 2023, is operated from the cab and has a fully automatic loader holding 30 rounds plus 6 more on the vehicle. The M21 variant on a MAN chassis has 12 rounds in its autoloader, plus 24 stowed.
DID YOUKNOW?Volar eVTOLDD-734
Volar eVTOL
Bellwether Industries, founded in London in 2019, is developing the Volar, a wingless lifting-body eVTOL with ducted fans hidden inside its body. In November 2021, a half-scale, remotely piloted two-seat prototype called Antelope made eight free flights in Dubai, up to about 4 m high and about 40 km/h. The company's targets for the final aircraft are 4 to 5 seats, a width of 3.2 m, about 220 km/h and a 600 kg maximum takeoff weight. In 2023 it announced a propulsion partnership with Schubeler for its next prototype, Oryx. None of these targets has been demonstrated at full scale.
DID YOUKNOW?WHRGs 2026DD-023
WHRGs 2026
The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games ran Aug 22–26, 2026 at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, with 2,056 robots from 666 teams in 16 countries. That's about four times as many robots as the 2025 Games. The rules now required full autonomy in most competitive events, and the job-style 'scenario' events moved into real factories, hotels and model homes.
DID YOUKNOW?Ocean-3DD-022
Ocean-3
Ocean-3 is Panthalassa's series of wave-powered, floating AI computing nodes. Each one is an 85 m plate-steel structure shaped like a golf ball on a tee. As it bobs, seawater is driven up an internal tube to spin a turbine, which powers onboard GPUs. The nodes have no anchor and no power cable. They steer themselves, and they send results to shore by satellite. Pilot units were planned for the northern Pacific in 2026, with commercial deployments targeted for 2027.
DID YOUKNOW?Cherenkov GlowDD-020
Cherenkov Glow
Cherenkov radiation is light given off when a charged particle moves through a medium like water faster than light travels in that medium, which in water is about 75% of its vacuum speed. Nothing beats light in a vacuum. The particle's wake of polarized molecules builds into a cone-shaped 'shockwave' of light, much like a sonic boom. In reactor pools, high-energy electrons make the water glow blue. The glow isn't radioactive itself, and inspectors use it to check spent fuel.
DID YOUKNOW?Shrinking CircuitsDD-018
Shrinking Circuits
The first integrated circuits (1958–60) had just one to four transistors. Intel's 4004 microprocessor (1971) had 2,300 on a 12 mm² die built with a 10-micrometer process. Today a single chip such as NVIDIA's GH100 packs 80 billion transistors onto 814 mm², thanks to decades of shrinking features. Even so, modern node names like '5 nm' are generation labels, not literal transistor sizes.
DID YOUKNOW?Modern MahjongDD-017
Modern Mahjong
Automatic mahjong tables hide a rotating drum under the felt. Players push the used tiles in, and the machine shuffles them, uses magnets to turn each tile face-down, and stacks the four walls. The real trick is that they use two sets of tiles: one is shuffled and stacked inside while the other is in play, so the next hand rises up almost instantly. Fully automatic tables appeared in Japan around 1980, replacing the hand 'washing' and wall-building that went before.
DID YOUKNOW?TeraFabDD-016
TeraFab
TeraFab is the AI-chip complex that SpaceX and Tesla plan to build in Grimes County, Texas. It would make, package and test logic and memory chips under one roof. Texas announced the first phase on Aug 6, 2026: more than $16.8 billion, 3,000 jobs and a 100-million-square-foot facility. Tax filings sketch four phases worth up to about $119 billion, but the later phases aren't committed.
DID YOUKNOW?National NEODD-731
National NEO
In 1983, Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic) aired a TV ad for National 'Neo Hi-Top' batteries, titled 'Because the Building Is There' (そこにビルがあるからだ篇). A battery-powered toy firefighter climbs a long ladder up a 33-story building, about 140 m, and at the top puts out a cigarette butt with its hose. Tetsuo Hashimoto, the Hakuhodo creative director behind it, later explained that the first idea was rock climbing, and that a Panasonic staffer redrew the toy's original cat face as a firefighter. The ad is widely reported to have won a gold award at Cannes.
DID YOUKNOW?AndurilDD-727
Anduril
Anduril Industries was incorporated on April 20, 2017, by Palmer Luckey (creator of the Oculus Rift), Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, Joe Chen and Brian Schimpf (now CEO). It's based in Costa Mesa, California. Its Lattice software fuses data from Anduril's own and third-party sensors and is the core of its products, which range from Sentry surveillance towers used on the U.S.–Mexico border to Ghost and Altius drones, Roadrunner and Barracuda interceptors and missiles, Ghost Shark autonomous submarines and the Fury (YFQ-44A) collaborative combat aircraft, first flown on October 31, 2025. Unlike traditional contractors paid to develop to a Pentagon requirement, it builds products on its own money and then sells them. A $5 billion raise in May 2026 valued it at $61 billion, and 2025 revenue was reported at about $2.2 billion. It also has critics: the WSJ reported test setbacks, including a Navy exercise in which more than a dozen Lattice-controlled drone boats failed, and civil-liberties groups have criticized its border towers.
DID YOUKNOW?AlgaeculturalDD-724
Algaecultural
Microalgae are grown in open ponds or in closed photobioreactors (glass or plastic tubes and panels) that supply light, CO2 and nutrients. The footage is credited to Jongerius ecoduna of Bruck an der Leitha, Austria. The company says its patented system uses vertical glass modules, moves the culture hydrostatically rather than with pumps, and runs continuously year-round in a 1-hectare plant that opened in 2018. The company's founders originally aimed at biodiesel but concluded algae were too valuable to burn, and the plant targets food, supplements and cosmetics. Algae biofuel is still not commercially competitive: ExxonMobil ended its algae program in 2022-23 after about $350 million.
DID YOUKNOW?Footstep PowerDD-014
Footstep Power
Starting in 2006, JR East tested a 'power-generating floor' at Tokyo Station's ticket gates. Piezoelectric discs inside the floor turn the pressure and vibration of passengers' footsteps into electricity. The best trials made up to about 940 kilowatt-seconds a day. That's only about a quarter of a kilowatt-hour, enough for displays or a ticket gate but not for the station. In 2008 Soundpower tested a similar mat at Shibuya Station that lit a holiday display. The Reel's glowing tiles look like Pavegen's, which work differently: they use electromagnetic generators, not piezo crystals.
DID YOUKNOW?Rapid Liquid Printing (RLP)DD-013
Rapid Liquid Printing (RLP)
RLP stands for Rapid Liquid Printing, a 3D-printing method developed at MIT's Self-Assembly Lab. Instead of stacking thin layers in air, a nozzle on a robot or CNC machine draws liquid rubber, foam or plastic freely in 3D inside a tank of granular gel. The gel holds the wet material in place until it cures. Then the part is lifted out and rinsed with water. Prints take seconds to minutes rather than hours, and they can be as big as furniture.
DID YOUKNOW?Quantum InfrastructureDD-012
Quantum Infrastructure
The gold 'chandelier' in photos of quantum computers is really a refrigerator. Superconducting qubits are so easily disturbed that the chip sits on the bottom plate of a dilution refrigerator. Each stage of the fridge is colder than the one above, and the bottom plate is held around 10–15 millikelvin by a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4. That is more than 180 times colder than the 2.7 K of deep space.
DID YOUKNOW?RoboClassicalDD-722
RoboClassical
In and around Carrara, Italy, studios such as Robotor use large multi-axis industrial robots to carve marble from 3D scans or digital models. Software turns the model into toolpaths and the robot removes stone. Bloomberg described a 4.5-ton robot working along nine axes. Robotor's co-founder Giacomo Massari told 60 Minutes the robots are about 10 times faster than hand carving, and says they do about 99% of the work. Skilled artisans still hand-finish the surfaces and details the machine can't reach, which can take months. Some Carrara sculptors object that robot-made work isn't true sculpture.
DID YOUKNOW?Big Boy 4014DD-720
Big Boy 4014
Big Boy No. 4014 is one of 25 4-8-8-4 'Big Boy' articulated steam locomotives that the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) built for Union Pacific. It was delivered in December 1941. Big Boys normally hauled freight between Ogden, Utah, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, across the Wasatch range. No. 4014 made its last revenue run in July 1959 and was retired in December 1961 after 1,031,205 miles. It was then displayed in Pomona, California, until Union Pacific reacquired it in 2013. After a restoration that included converting it from coal to oil, it returned to service in May 2019 and is now the world's largest operating steam locomotive. In 2026 it made a 14-state coast-to-coast America250 tour.
DID YOUKNOW?The FlockDD-030
The Flock
Flock Safety, an Atlanta company, makes automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. Each one snaps still images of passing cars, using infrared at night. Machine learning turns each image into searchable data: the plate, whether full, partial or missing, plus make, color, damage, bumper stickers and roof racks, which Flock calls a 'Vehicle Fingerprint'. It also records time and place. Matches against police hotlists trigger alerts. By the end of August 2026, more than 80% of the 137,000-plus ALPR cameras mapped across the U.S. were Flock's, according to crowdsourced data cited by the Congressional Research Service. That scale, and warrantless searches across agencies, has drawn privacy scrutiny.
DID YOUKNOW?Data CentersDD-029
Data Centers
Data centers are the buildings where the internet physically lives: racks of servers, storage and network gear, plus the power and cooling plant that keeps them running around the clock. In 2024 they used about 415 TWh of electricity, roughly 1.5% of the world's total, according to the IEA. In the U.S. they used 4.4% in 2023, and that share could reach 6.7–12% by 2028, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. AI is the main driver of the growth, and the hottest AI chips now draw more than 1,000 W each, which is pushing operators toward liquid cooling.
DID YOUKNOW?EKV: Exoatmospheric Kill VehicleDD-011
EKV: Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle
The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) is the business end of America's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. A three-stage Ground-Based Interceptor rocket lofts it out of the atmosphere. There it separates, picks out the warhead with a multi-color infrared sensor and its own computers, and steers with divert thrusters into a head-on collision. It carries no explosive warhead. Telling warheads from decoys has always been its hardest problem. A planned replacement kill vehicle was cancelled in 2019, and Lockheed Martin is now building the Next Generation Interceptor.
DID YOUKNOW?Vertical Parking IIDD-009
Vertical Parking II
Giken's ECO Cycle is a robotic bike park buried in a cylinder under the pavement. Above ground there's only a small entrance booth. You push your bike onto a slot and press a button, and a rotating elevator stores it in a ring of racks underground. A standard unit holds about 200 bikes. To get your bike back, you tap an IC card, and it returns in about 13–15 seconds on average. The first unit opened in 1998, and they now sit beside busy stations in Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
DID YOUKNOW?RoboWeavingDD-716
RoboWeaving
Braiding has been central to soft robotics since the McKibben artificial muscle, an inflatable bladder inside a braided sleeve. When pressurized, the muscle shortens and thickens, and the braid angle sets how far. Researchers have since braided many thin McKibben muscles together into bundles for musculoskeletal robots, 3D-printed braided sleeves, and used braiding with water-soluble fibers to make actuators that twist. Varying the braid pattern along the length lets one structure combine extension, contraction and twist. The footage shows a braiding machine and a braided robotic hand, but the Reel doesn't name the lab or project.
DID YOUKNOW?2026DD-714
2026
Metropolis, the German silent science-fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou, premiered in Berlin on January 10, 1927. Its city is split between a privileged elite above ground and workers who live and labor below. The year 2026 doesn't appear in the film. Von Harbou's novel says the story happens 'at no particular place or time'. The date comes from the 1963 Ace Books paperback, whose title page reads 'The World of 2026 A.D.' It was repeated in later writing on the film and in Giorgio Moroder's 1984 re-scored version. Film historians Lotte Eisner and Paul M. Jensen placed it around 2000 instead. Footage long thought lost was found in Buenos Aires in 2008 and restored for a 2010 re-release.
DID YOUKNOW?Gassed Up...Way UpDD-711
Gassed Up...Way Up
Aerial refueling moves fuel from a tanker to another aircraft in flight. The first successful transfer took place on June 27, 1923, over Rockwell Field in San Diego. Two US Army Air Service DH-4B biplanes used a 50-foot hose to pass about 75 gallons, according to the National Museum of the US Air Force. Today there are two main methods. With probe and drogue, the tanker trails a hose ending in a basket and the receiver flies its probe into it. The US Navy, the Marine Corps, many allied air forces and helicopters use this method. With the flying boom, a boom operator on the tanker steers a rigid telescoping tube into a receptacle on the receiver. That's the standard for US Air Force aircraft. Some tankers carry both.
DID YOUKNOW?Probe IVDD-002
Probe IV
Ford's 1983 Probe IV concept car (built with Ghia) had a drag coefficient of about 0.15.
DID YOUKNOW?Marangoni MotionDD-024
Marangoni Motion
When surface tension varies across a liquid, the stronger-pulling (higher-tension) region drags the surface toward itself. Fluid then streams from low surface tension to high. This is the Marangoni effect, named after Carlo Marangoni, who published on it in 1865. James Thomson first explained it in 1855 using 'tears of wine'. It's why a drop of soap or alcohol makes water rush away, why wine climbs the glass, and why sulfur traces change the shape of a weld pool. Chip makers use it to dry silicon wafers without spots.
DID YOUKNOW?Offshore OilDD-033
Offshore Oil
Offshore oil and gas uses two kinds of structures. Fixed platforms are steel jackets pinned to the seabed with piles, compliant towers, and similar designs that sit over a field for decades. Mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs) move from well to well. Jack-ups stand on legs lowered to the seabed in water up to about 450 ft. Semi-submersibles float on flooded pontoons and are held by anchors or thrusters, and drillships work in 2,000–10,000 ft of water using dynamic positioning. The Reel's own footage shows red-hulled jack-ups bridged to production platforms, a type it never names.
DID YOUKNOW?Guizhou SolarDD-032
Guizhou Solar
Guizhou, in southwest China, is a land of karst peaks. Its thin soils erode easily, leaving bare rock, a problem known as 'rocky desertification'. Since the 2010s the province has covered those barren hills with solar panels. The first gigawatt-scale base, at Guanling, connected its first 1,050 MW phase to the grid on December 29, 2023, on about 20,000 mu (roughly 1,300 hectares) of deeply desertified land. Puding followed with a 600 MW project in 2025. Many sites are 'agrivoltaic': chilies, herbs, taro and vegetables grow in the shade beneath the panels.
DID YOUKNOW?The LineDD-031
The Line
The Line was announced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in January 2021 as the centerpiece of NEOM in Saudi Arabia's Tabuk Province. It was pitched as two mirrored skyscrapers 500 m tall and 200 m apart, running 170 km from the Red Sea coast into the mountains. The plan promised 9 million residents, no cars or streets, and an underground train covering the full length in 20 minutes. Reality fell far short. Costs ballooned, and the first phase was cut to about 2.4 km. Construction was suspended in September 2025 with only foundation work done, and in May 2026 Semafor reported the project was on hold until after 2030.
DID YOUKNOW?USS Gerald R. FordDD-710
USS Gerald R. Ford
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is the lead ship of the US Navy's newest class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. It was delivered on May 31, 2017, and commissioned on July 22, 2017, at Naval Station Norfolk. According to the Congressional Research Service, its two A1B reactors give it about three times the electrical generating capacity of a Nimitz-class carrier. The class is designed for a sortie rate about 33% higher than the Nimitz class, with about 700 fewer shipboard crew. New systems include EMALS electromagnetic catapults, Advanced Arresting Gear and electromagnetic weapons elevators. Pentagon testers and the GAO have reported reliability problems and delays with several of them. The ship's first full deployment came in 2023.
DID YOUKNOW?Lingshan LiftDD-707
Lingshan Lift
The Reel mixes up two different Lingshans. The footage shows the new cliffside escalator at Lingshan Scenic Area in Shangrao, Jiangxi Province, a national 4A scenic area of granite peaks whose highest point, Tianti Peak, reaches 1,496 m. According to the scenic area as reported by Chinese media, the escalator line is 1,236 m long with a vertical rise of about 256 m, built as 10 sections in 5 groups. It can carry about 3,600 people per hour each way, turning a climb of 3-4 hours on foot into about 30 minutes. It went into trial operation in August 2025, and international outlets reported it open in October 2025. The 'Grand Buddha at Lingshan' and Taihu Lake belong to a different place: the Lingshan Scenic Area in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, where an 88 m bronze Buddha completed in the 1990s stands on the north shore of Lake Tai. The escalator in the footage doesn't serve that Buddha or overlook Taihu Lake.
DID YOUKNOW?Battling BarnaclesDD-705
Battling Barnacles
Barnacles are crustaceans that cement themselves to hard surfaces, including ship hulls, as part of 'biofouling' along with slime, algae and other organisms. A 2007 study by Michael Schultz of the US Naval Academy, modeling a mid-sized naval frigate, predicted that heavy calcareous fouling such as barnacles and tubeworms raises the shaft power needed at cruising speed by up to 86%. Even slime films brought significant penalties. Hulls are protected with antifouling coatings and cleaned in dry dock or in the water by divers and robots. In-water cleaning has its own risks. The IMO's 2023 Biofouling Guidelines warn it can damage coatings and release invasive species and toxic coating debris. They say heavier fouling should be removed with systems that capture the debris.
DID YOUKNOW?EkranoplanDD-704
Ekranoplan
The Project 903 Lun was a Soviet wing-in-ground-effect craft from Rostislav Alexeyev's design bureau, built as a fast anti-ship missile carrier. Only one, MD-160, was completed. It was about 73.8 m long with a 44 m wingspan, weighed about 380 tonnes at takeoff, and carried six P-270 Moskit (SS-N-22) anti-ship missiles in pairs on its back. Eight Kuznetsov NK-87 turbofans on forward pylons blew air under the wings for takeoff. Published maximum speeds are about 500 to 550 km/h (about 310 to 340 mph). A CIA assessment quoted by The Aviationist gave about 250 knots. It entered trial service in the late 1980s or 1990, sources vary, and sat unused at Kaspiysk from the late 1990s. On July 31, 2020, it was towed to Derbent, Dagestan, for a planned Patriot Park display.
DID YOUKNOW?New York Hot TubDD-702
New York Hot Tub
After the January 25, 2026 winter storm and days of below-freezing temperatures, the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) started eight snow melters on January 27, 2026, its first use of them since 2021. Officials call the machines 'hot tubs'. Dump trucks haul piled snow to fixed melter sites in all five boroughs, where front-end loaders tip it in half-ton buckets into heated water. DSNY says each machine melts 60 to 120 tons an hour. The water is kept at about 38 °F, enough to melt snow while controlling flow, and drains into sewers the city's Department of Environmental Protection approved. In DSNY's own words: 'We bring snow to the melters – NOT the melters to the snow.'
DID YOUKNOW?Torque ConversionDD-075
Torque Conversion
A torque converter sits between the engine and an automatic transmission and lets the car idle in gear without stalling. The engine-driven impeller (pump) flings automatic transmission fluid outward into the turbine, which turns the transmission input shaft. The stator sits between them on a one-way clutch. When the turbine is turning much slower than the impeller, as when pulling away from a stop, the stator turns the returning fluid so it helps the impeller instead of fighting it. That multiplies torque by up to about 2.5:1 at stall. As speeds even out, the stator freewheels and the unit acts like a plain fluid coupling. Because constant slip wastes energy as heat, virtually all modern automotive converters add a lock-up clutch that mechanically joins the impeller and turbine at cruise.
DID YOUKNOW?HoloFans IIDD-700
HoloFans II
'Hologram fans' are persistence-of-vision (POV) displays. A rotor carrying strips of LEDs spins fast while a controller switches each LED on and off at exact angles, painting one slice of the picture at a time. Because the eye blends these rapid flashes, the viewer sees a steady image that seems to float, especially against a dark background where the blur of the blades disappears. They aren't holograms in the physics sense. True holography records and rebuilds light waves using interference, usually with lasers. A fan draws a flat (2D) image, and the 3D look comes from the artwork's shading and the invisible frame. HYPERVSN, the brand formerly known as Kino-mo, describes its units as four LED rays spinning at about 670 rpm, and several units can be synced into a larger 'wall'.
DID YOUKNOW?Drone De-icingDD-699
Drone De-icing
Ice on power lines adds weight and can snap conductors or topple towers, as China's grid saw in the severe winter storms of early 2008. In January and February 2026, State Grid units in several Chinese provinces publicized drone-based de-icing during cold waves. In Shanxi, drones carrying insulating rods knocked ice off ultra-high-voltage lines (Xinhua). In Zhejiang, a DJI FC30 heavy-lift drone placed a robot on an overhead ground wire, where it broke ice by impact, knocking and rolling (China Daily). In Hubei, a 'flying de-icing robot' used vibration plus rotating blades on a ±800 kV line (ChinaNews). In Anhui, a drone-placed robot cleared about 20 m of iced wire in about a minute (CGTN). Utilities say the methods reduce the need for crews to climb towers or knock ice off by hand.
DID YOUKNOW?Liquid LightsDD-073
Liquid Lights
A liquid's electrical conductivity depends on how many ions it holds and how fast they move. Perfectly pure water isn't ion-free: it splits slightly into hydrogen and hydroxide ions, about 10⁻⁷ mol/L of each at 25 °C, which gives a theoretical conductivity of 0.055 µS/cm. Water left open to air absorbs carbon dioxide, which raises that to about 1 µS/cm. Strong electrolytes such as table salt, hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide split completely into ions and conduct well. Weak ones such as acetic acid and ammonia split only partly and conduct far less. Seawater conducts about a million times better than ultrapure water.
DID YOUKNOW?Sending EMALSDD-025
Sending EMALS
Carrier jets don't have room for a runway, so a catapult does the work. A shuttle in the deck hooks the launch bar on the jet's nose gear and drags the plane to flying speed in about two seconds. The Nimitz-class fleet still uses C-13 steam catapults, which push the shuttle with steam-driven pistons. The new Ford class (USS Gerald R. Ford, CVN 78, and the carriers after it) uses EMALS, the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System from General Atomics. It replaces the steam with a linear induction motor fed by energy stored in spinning generator rotors.
DID YOUKNOW?Rocket Stage ReleaseDD-697
Rocket Stage Release
Stage separation is how a multistage rocket discards empty stages to save mass and reach orbit. Separation systems use explosive bolts or frangible joints, pneumatic pushers or springs, and sometimes small gas thrusters to push the spent stage away; the next stage then ignites its engine as the old stage falls away. The footage, credited to aerospacefanclub, shows an onboard view of a stage separating above Earth.
DID YOUKNOW?Piston PumpsDD-072
Piston Pumps
A piston diaphragm (membrane) pump is a reciprocating positive-displacement pump. In most designs a crank-driven piston doesn't push the diaphragm directly: it moves a sealed hydraulic fluid, and that fluid flexes the diaphragm. On the suction stroke the pump chamber expands, the inlet check valve opens and liquid flows in. On the discharge stroke the diaphragm pushes into the chamber, the inlet valve closes and the outlet valve opens. Only the diaphragm, chamber and check valves touch the pumped liquid, so the pumps are used for slurries, acids and shear-sensitive products. Large mining models handle slurries of up to 85% solids at up to 250 °C.
DID YOUKNOW?Gas BlastingDD-070
Gas Blasting
Carbon dioxide blasting was conceived around 1924–25 by three southern Illinois coal men, a chemist, an electrical engineer and a mine operator. They wanted a non-explosive way to break coal that would be at least as safe as permissible explosives and produce less fine coal. The Safety Mining Company took over the patents in 1927 under the trade name Cardox. A reusable high-strength steel tube is filled with liquid CO₂ at a charging plant and then placed in a drill hole. An electrically fired chemical heater turns the CO₂ supercritical almost instantly, and a rupture disc bursts at a set pressure, adjustable from about 1,200 to 2,800 bar. Mechanized mining made it rare in coal mines, but it's used again where explosives are restricted: in some coal mines, urban construction, frozen ground and concrete demolition.
DID YOUKNOW?Golf BallingDD-695
Golf Balling
When a driver hits a golf ball, the ball flattens noticeably for a fraction of a millisecond and then springs back. The coefficient of restitution (COR) measures how much speed survives that collision: 1 means a perfectly elastic bounce and 0 means none. Because a livelier ball goes farther, golf's governing bodies cap it. In the USGA/R&A Initial Velocity test, a ball is fired at a rigid barrier at 143.8 ft/s. Its initial velocity is calculated from its COR and contact time, and a sample fails if four or more of 24 balls exceed 255 ft/s. Balls must also meet the 317-yard Overall Distance Standard. From January 2028, that test will be run at a 125 mph clubhead speed instead of 120 mph, which the USGA expects to cut the longest hitters' drives by about 13 to 15 yards.
DID YOUKNOW?Static SprayDD-051
Static Spray
Powder coating is a 'dry paint'. Polymer resin, curatives, pigments and flow additives are melt-mixed, cooled and ground into a powder as fine as baking flour. In electrostatic spray deposition, the most common method, a spray gun charges the particles and an electric field pulls them onto a grounded part, where the charge holds them until the part goes into a curing oven. At about 325–450 °F (163–232 °C) the powder melts, flows and chemically cross-links into a tough finish. Because there's no solvent, the process virtually eliminates volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and overspray can be recovered for reuse. Grounding matters: the path from the part to ground must stay under one megohm.
DID YOUKNOW?Airborne Wind TurbinesDD-050
Airborne Wind Turbines
The footage shows the helium-filled aerostats of Beijing-based SAWES Energy Technology (Linyi Yunchuan). The S1500 prototype flew at 1,500 m in Hami, Xinjiang, on September 19–23, 2025. The S2000 is a 60 × 40 × 40 m ducted airship of nearly 20,000 m³ carrying 12 turbines. On January 5, 2026, in Yibin, Sichuan, it climbed to 2,000 m in about 30 minutes, generated 385 kWh and fed it into the local grid through its tether, which the company calls a world first. Because wind power rises with the cube of wind speed, steadier high-altitude wind promises more energy from lighter hardware. The S1500's 1.16-tonne generating system compares with more than 10 tonnes for a conventional turbine. The company rates the S2000 at up to 3 MW; that figure is a claim, not yet a measured output.
DID YOUKNOW?Peristaltic PumpsDD-689
Peristaltic Pumps
A peristaltic pump is a positive-displacement pump. Rollers or shoes on a rotating head squeeze a flexible tube against a curved track, trapping 'pillows' of fluid and pushing them forward, while the tube springs back behind them to draw in more. The fluid only touches the inside of the tube, so the pump suits sterile, corrosive, shear-sensitive or hygienic fluids, and changing the tube is all it takes to switch fluids. The Reel gets one thing backwards, though. Peristaltic flow naturally pulses as each roller lifts off the tube. Manufacturers reduce pulsation with more rollers, offset or out-of-phase tube channels, dampers or compliant tubing, but don't eliminate it. The tube itself is the part that wears out. The design dates back at least to an 1855 US patent, and roller pumps later became standard for moving blood in medical equipment.
DID YOUKNOW?Counter CraneDD-687
Counter Crane
A crane tips over when the overturning moment (the load's weight times its distance from the tipping line, plus wind and slope effects) exceeds the stabilizing moment from the crane's own weight and counterweight. Counterweights sit behind the slewing center to add stabilizing moment. On mobile cranes they're usually stackable cast-iron or steel slabs, like the '10 t' plates in the footage. Tower cranes often use concrete blocks. Counterweight isn't free stability, though. With the boom raised steeply and no load, too much counterweight can tip a crane backward, so standards such as ISO 4305 require backward-stability checks. Outriggers widen the support base. A crane's safe capacity comes from the manufacturer's load chart for its exact counterweight, boom length, radius and outrigger setup, and capacity falls fast as the load moves farther out.
DID YOUKNOW?Lux or LuxorDD-686
Lux or Luxor
Luxor Las Vegas opened on October 15, 1993, as a 30-story, 350 ft (106.7 m) pyramid clad in dark glass. Circus Circus Enterprises built it. At opening the pyramid held 2,526 rooms. Guests reach them by 'inclinators', elevators that run diagonally up the pyramid's corners at a 39-degree angle, around what Luxor promotes as one of the world's largest atriums. Two 22-story ziggurat-shaped hotel towers added in 1997 brought the resort to about 4,400 rooms, so not all of Luxor's rooms are in the pyramid. The sphinx at the entrance is a stylized, roughly 10-story version, taller than the Great Sphinx at Giza. At the apex, the Luxor Sky Beam shines straight up and has been promoted as the strongest beam of light in the world, which may be the 'lux' in the title.
DID YOUKNOW?YonshakudamaDD-680
Yonshakudama
Yonshakudama means '4-shaku shell'. A shaku is an old Japanese unit of about 30 cm, so the shell is about 120 cm across. It's the showpiece of the Katakai Fireworks Festival in Ojiya, Niigata, held on September 9-10 each year as an offering to Asahara Shrine. According to the festival, the shell weighs about 420 kg, climbs to about 800 m and bursts into a sphere about 800 m wide. Katakai first launched one successfully on September 10, 1985, and Guinness recognized it as the largest aerial firework shell at 418 kg. That record has since passed to a 4-shaku shell launched at the Kounosu festival in Saitama on October 11, 2014. It weighed 464.826 kg, reached 907 m at the top of its burst and spread 748 m wide.
DID YOUKNOW?ATL Air TrafficDD-678
ATL Air Traffic
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) was again the world's busiest airport by passengers in 2025, with 106.3 million passengers. That was down 1.6% from 2024, and Dubai (95.2 million) and Tokyo Haneda (91.7 million) were closing the gap, according to Airports Council International. ACI says four of the five US airports in the top 20 are mainly domestic hubs, with 80-95% domestic passengers, which describes ATL's traffic. By aircraft movements, though, Chicago O'Hare ranked first in 2025. ATL has five parallel runways and two terminals, the Domestic Terminal and the Maynard H. Jackson Jr. International Terminal, with seven concourses linked by an underground train. It's Delta Air Lines' main hub and is named after two Atlanta mayors, William B. Hartsfield and Maynard Jackson.
DID YOUKNOW?Hydrant HygieneDD-677
Hydrant Hygiene
Fire hydrants are opened outside emergencies for three main reasons. First, inspection: checking that the hydrant opens, drains and is serviceable. Second, flushing: moving water fast enough to scour sediment, rust and stale water out of mains. Third, flow testing: measuring static and residual pressure and flow to rate a hydrant and model the network. Who does the work varies by city. In New York, the FDNY inspects hydrants twice a year (spring and fall), opening each one and flushing its barrel, while the Department of Environmental Protection carries out hydrant flow tests. New York State rules for water corporations require hydrants to be inspected and tested at least every three years, with methods from the AWWA M17 manual. The brown water often seen in videos is sediment and iron stirred up from the pipes. Flushing can briefly discolor tap water nearby.
DID YOUKNOW?XB-70 ValkyrieDD-048
XB-70 Valkyrie
North American Aviation designed the B-70 in the late 1950s as a six-engine, delta-winged nuclear bomber that would cruise its whole mission at Mach 3 and about 70,000 feet, too fast and high for the Soviet interceptors of the day. Soviet surface-to-air missiles, which shot down Gary Powers's U-2 in 1960, and the rise of ICBMs undercut that idea, and President Kennedy canceled the bomber in March 1961. Two XB-70A prototypes were completed as research aircraft. AV-1 first flew on September 21, 1964. The aircraft rode its own shock wave for 'compression lift', drooped its wingtips up to 65° at speed, and reached Mach 3.08 and 74,000 ft. On June 8, 1966, AV-2 was lost after an F-104 chase plane collided with it during a GE publicity photo flight. NASA pilot Joe Walker and USAF Maj. Carl Cross were killed. AV-1 flew research missions until 1969 and is now at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
DID YOUKNOW?CIPPDD-676
CIPP
Cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) is a trenchless way to rehabilitate sewer, storm, water and other pipes. A flexible tube of felt or fiberglass is soaked in thermosetting resin (polyester, vinyl ester or epoxy). It's either inverted into the host pipe with water or air pressure, or pulled in and inflated. The resin is then cured with hot water, steam or, for glass-fiber liners, UV light. The result is a jointless pipe-within-a-pipe, usually a few millimeters to a few centimeters thick. Engineer Eric Wood first used the method in London in 1971, and it was commercialized as Insituform. A 2012 US EPA retrospective found sampled municipal sewer liners generally in good condition after years in service. Researchers at Purdue (2017) reported that steam-cured installations release a mix of chemical vapors, including styrene, which raised worker- and public-exposure concerns. Service connections have to be reopened from inside, usually by robotic cutters.
DID YOUKNOW?MandelbulbsDD-047
Mandelbulbs
The Mandelbrot set is drawn by repeatedly squaring a complex number and adding a constant, then coloring the points whose values never escape to infinity. Fractal hobbyists spent years looking for a true 3D version. The obstacle is that there's no three-dimensional number system that works like the complex numbers, so there's no canonical 3D Mandelbrot. Rudy Rucker imagined the idea in the 1980s, and Daniel White published a spherical-coordinate formula on Fractal Forums in 2007. In 2009 Paul Nylander raised the power, usually to 8, and the result, the Mandelbulb, showed buds on buds at every zoom level. It's computed by iterating v → vⁿ + c in spherical coordinates and keeping the points whose orbits stay bounded. The power n sets the number of lobes. Mandelbulb interiors appear in Disney's Big Hero 6 (2014) and Annihilation (2018).
DID YOUKNOW?EllisonDD-069
Ellison
Larry Ellison was born in New York City in 1944 and adopted as a baby by relatives in Chicago. He left the University of Illinois and later the University of Chicago without a degree. In 1977 he co-founded Software Development Laboratories with Bob Miner and Ed Oates, colleagues from Ampex, where they had worked on a CIA-funded mass-storage project code-named ORACLE. The company released the first commercial SQL relational database in 1979 and later took the Oracle name. Ellison was CEO from 1977 until September 2014 and is now Oracle's executive chairman and chief technology officer; Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia have been co-CEOs since September 2025. He owns roughly 40% of Oracle, and his fortune moves with its stock: Forbes put it at $167.2 billion on Oct. 17, 2026, after he briefly topped $400 billion in September 2025.
DID YOUKNOW?Point CurieDD-669
Point Curie
The Curie point, or Curie temperature, is named after Pierre Curie. His 1895 thesis, 'Propriétés magnétiques des corps à diverses températures' (Magnetic properties of substances at various temperatures), showed how magnetism changes with temperature. In a ferromagnet such as iron, a quantum effect called exchange interaction lines up the atoms' magnetic moments within small regions called domains. Above the Curie temperature, heat scrambles that alignment. The material loses its spontaneous magnetization and becomes paramagnetic: it's only weakly attracted to a magnet, and only while a field is applied. The Curie temperature is about 770 °C for iron, 358 °C for nickel and about 1,115 °C for cobalt. That's why a red-hot piece of iron stops sticking to a magnet and is attracted again as it cools. Being below the Curie point doesn't automatically make something a permanent magnet. In an ordinary iron nail the domains point in different directions and cancel out, which is why the nail isn't a magnet until it's magnetized. Antiferromagnets have a similar transition called the Néel temperature. The footage shows a torch heating a small metal piece until it glows, while a magnet on a rod hangs above it.
DID YOUKNOW?Photon FilmDD-067
Photon Film
In 2020, Edoardo Charbon's AQUA lab at EPFL and Canon unveiled MegaX, the first megapixel camera built from single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs), pixels sensitive enough to register one photon at a time. It records up to 24,000 frames per second, but it can also open its pixels for gates just nanoseconds long and shift them in steps of picoseconds (trillionths of a second). Repeating a laser pulse and stepping the gate let the team rebuild a laser pulse flying past optics, slowed down hundreds of millions of times. The 'trillion frames per second' figure the Reel uses belongs to other projects: MIT's 2011 femto-photography and Caltech's 2018 T-CUP, which reached 10 trillion frames per second.
DID YOUKNOW?Digital IDDD-667
Digital ID
The Reel blends two separate UK projects. The first is GOV.UK Wallet, announced on January 21, 2025. It's an optional app for storing government-issued documents on a phone, starting with the HM Armed Forces Veteran Card and with a digital driving licence planned. The government said every government-issued credential should be available digitally by the end of 2027, alongside the physical versions. Its technical documents say credentials are tied to the user's GOV.UK One Login account and device, can't be moved to another device, and can be revoked by the issuer. The second project is a national digital ID. On September 26, 2025, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a free digital ID for citizens and legal residents. The government said it would be mandatory for right-to-work checks by the end of the Parliament, to curb illegal working, and would make it easier to use public services. Critics including Big Brother Watch and a coalition of 13 NGOs warned of mission creep, surveillance, data-security risks and exclusion. A parliamentary petition against digital ID cards gathered more than 2.9 million signatures and was debated on December 8, 2025. In January 2026, the government dropped the plan to require the digital ID itself for right-to-work checks, saying other digital documents such as eVisas and e-passports could be used. It published a consultation in March 2026. In May 2026, the Home Affairs Committee called the original announcement 'rushed' and 'poorly thought through'. On July 21, 2026, the government cancelled the national digital ID programme; Reuters reported the decision as one of new Prime Minister Andy Burnham's first moves. In its September 2026 response to the committee, the government said GOV.UK One Login, GOV.UK Wallet and digital credentials such as the Veteran Card and driving licence will continue as separate projects. Employers must still carry out right-to-work checks, but won't be required to do them digitally.
DID YOUKNOW?Walking FloorsDD-665
Walking Floors
A moving-floor trailer unloads itself through the back doors without tipping. The floor is made of long slats, usually aluminum, split into three interleaved groups and driven by hydraulic cylinders under the trailer. All the slats slide rearward together, carrying the load a short distance. Then the groups pull forward one at a time. Because two-thirds of the floor is always holding still, friction keeps the load from sliding forward with the moving third. Repeating the cycle 'walks' the cargo out the back. 'WALKING FLOOR' is a trademark of KEITH Manufacturing of Oregon. Its founder, Keith Foster, introduced the first commercially viable all-hydraulic moving floor for semi-trailers in 1973, and other makers sell similar 'moving floor' or 'live floor' systems. Because the trailer never tips, it can unload under low roofs or on uneven ground. It's widely used for wood chips, bark, biomass, waste, scrap, recycling and farm produce.
DID YOUKNOW?Atomic Stop-motionDD-663
Atomic Stop-motion
IBM Research released 'A Boy and His Atom' on April 30, 2013, and Guinness World Records certified it as the world's smallest stop-motion film. Scientists at IBM's Almaden lab in San Jose used a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to drag carbon monoxide molecules across a copper surface, one frame at a time. The microscope ran at about -268 °C (5 K), cold enough to hold the molecules in place, and magnified the surface more than 100 million times. Each CO molecule shows up as a dot. The team made 242 frames, each 45 by 25 nanometers, and Guinness says they did it between January 29 and February 6, 2013. Four researchers worked 18-hour days for about two weeks, using a few dozen molecules. Guinness describes the animation as 60 seconds long; the YouTube upload runs 1 minute 33 seconds with titles and credits. The film was outreach for IBM's atomic-scale data storage research, which in 2012 stored one bit of data in 12 atoms.
DID YOUKNOW?ProsperiTreeDD-659
ProsperiTree
The Tree of Prosperity is a free kinetic show in the Rotunda of Wynn Macau, on the Macau peninsula. It isn't at Wynn Palace, the company's newer resort in Cotai. Macao's tourism office and Wynn describe an 11 m (about 38 ft) tree with 60 main limbs, more than 2,000 branches and 98,000 leaves made of 24-karat gold leaf and brass leaf, so the leaves aren't solid gold. During each show, a Chinese zodiac ceiling opens like an iris to reveal a 20 m LED screen and a crystal chandelier, and the tree rises from below the floor and turns to music while lights cycle through the seasons. A 2008 trade report credits mechanical engineering to McLaren Engineering, fabrication to Show Canada in Montreal and automation to Stage Technologies. The show's integrator dates the Tree of Prosperity show to 2006 and says a Dragon of Fortune show was added in 2010; the two alternate in the Rotunda. I found no source naming a designer 'Kevin McCurdy' or giving a cost of 'HKD 2 billion'.
DID YOUKNOW?Buoyancy Bridge IIDD-658
Buoyancy Bridge II
The Shiziguan floating bridge, nicknamed 'Langqiao Yimeng' after the Chinese title of 'The Bridges of Madison County', is in the Shiziguan Scenic Area, Zhushan Town, Xuan'en County, Enshi Prefecture, Hubei. It sits on water held back by the Shiziguan hydropower project, which since 2002 has dammed the Hongjia River (Hongjiahe), between steep hills. The deck has no fixed foundation. Pine joists and treated wooden planks sit on plastic floats and are held in place by underwater anchoring. Construction began in early 2015 and it opened in 2016. Scenic-area material gives its length as 400 m, while the official accident investigation gives 318 m, with a 4.5 m width and a 20 km/h speed limit. On May 16, 2023, a nine-seat van carrying eight people skidded through the railing on a bend and fell into the water, and five people died. Investigators found the van was going over the speed limit on a wet deck and that the scenic area had let vehicles above its size limit onto the bridge. The scenic area closed and reopened on December 28, 2024, after upgrades.
DID YOUKNOW?Vertical FarmingDD-657
Vertical Farming
In aeroponics, plant roots hang in the air inside a closed chamber and are sprayed or misted with nutrient solution. Aeroponic towers stack plants up a vertical column, with a pump lifting the solution to the top so it sprays or trickles down over the roots. NASA worked with AgriHouse on aeroponic research for space crops. A 2006 NASA Spinoff article reported up to 98% less water, 60% less fertilizer and no pesticides compared with soil growing, and yields 45-75% higher. Those figures come from NASA and the company, not independent field trials. Towers like those in the footage do best with leafy greens and herbs. The big catch for indoor vertical farms is energy for lighting and climate control, according to the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT). Several heavily funded companies have struggled: AeroFarms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023, and Bowery Farming shut down in November 2024.
DID YOUKNOW?Solar SailingDD-039
Solar Sailing
Light has no mass but does carry momentum. When photons bounce off a mirror-like sail, they push it twice: once when they arrive and again when they reflect. The force (solar radiation pressure) is tiny, so sails have to be huge and spacecraft light. In the vacuum of space, though, the push never stops. Japan's IKAROS first flew a solar sail between planets in 2010. The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 showed a CubeSat could raise its orbit with sunlight, and NASA's ACS3 (launched April 23, 2024) is testing lightweight carbon-fiber booms for an 80 m² sail. By tilting the sail, a craft can speed up, slow down or 'tack' to change its orbit.
DID YOUKNOW?UV FaceDD-654
UV Face
A UV camera records ultraviolet light bouncing back from a scene. Sunscreen filters stop most of that UV from reaching the skin and bouncing back, so covered skin looks dark and bare skin looks lighter. A 2016 study by Cole and colleagues measured the mineral filters zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. Despite the old 'physical blocker' label, they reflected only about 4-5% of UV, and the rest of their protection came from absorption. Above their absorption edge, in long UVA and visible light, they mainly reflect, which is why thick mineral sunscreen can look white. Organic ('chemical') filters also absorb UV. The camera's look has a practical use. In a 2017 University of Liverpool study, UV imaging of 57 people showed sunscreen was missed on about 14% of the eyelid region, compared with about 7% of the rest of the face. Under UV light, skin pigmentation such as freckles also shows up more strongly.
DID YOUKNOW?Blood WatchDD-649
Blood Watch
Intravital microscopy means looking at living tissue inside a living animal, and blood flow was one of the first things it revealed. In 1661, Marcello Malpighi used a microscope on a frog's lung and described capillaries, the tiny vessels linking arteries and veins. In 1839, Rudolph Wagner watched white blood cells roll slowly along vessel walls in a frog's webbed foot. Thin, transparent tissues such as a frog's web, a tadpole's tail or a fish's fin let ordinary bright-field microscopes show red blood cells streaming through capillaries in real time. Plasma, the liquid part of blood, is transparent, so it can't be seen directly. Researchers make it visible by injecting fluorescent tracers, such as FITC-dextran, that stay in the bloodstream and light up the vessels. Modern intravital imaging relies on fluorescence. Labeled antibodies, dyes or genetically encoded fluorescent proteins mark particular cells, and confocal and two-photon microscopes take sharp optical sections. Two-photon microscopy reaches deeper into tissue with less light damage, which is why it's widely used to film immune cells in living mice. In mammals, the small cells that help blood clot are platelets. Fish, amphibians and birds have nucleated thrombocytes instead, and their red blood cells also keep a nucleus. The footage shows transparent tissue with dark pigment cells and branching vessels where blood cells can be seen moving. The source doesn't identify the animal.
DID YOUKNOW?Three GorgesDD-643
Three Gorges
The Three Gorges Dam crosses the Yangtze at Sandouping, near Yichang in Hubei province, China. By installed capacity it's the world's largest power station: 22,500 MW from 32 main 700 MW generators plus two 50 MW units that power the plant itself. The concrete gravity dam is about 2.3 km long, 2,309.5 m along its axis or 2,335 m by another measure. Its maximum height is 181 m, and its crest sits at 185 m above sea level, which is where the Reel's '185 m' comes from. The reservoir normally holds water at 175 m. Construction formally began in December 1994. The dam body was finished in 2006, and Guinness dates the last main generator to July 4, 2012. The whole project wasn't certified complete until 2020, after the ship lift and other works. Output depends on river flow. The design target is 88.2 TWh a year, and in 2020 it set a world record of 111.8 TWh for a single hydropower plant. Besides power, the project is meant for flood control and navigation, through a five-step double ship lock and a ship lift that raises vessels up to 113 m. According to Reuters, about 1.3 million people were relocated to make way for the reservoir.
DID YOUKNOW?Paint RemoversDD-642
Paint Removers
Methylene chloride (dichloromethane) was long the main ingredient in fast-acting paint strippers. It is a small, very volatile molecule that soaks into a paint film, swells and softens it, and loosens it from the surface so it can be scraped off. It's also acutely dangerous. Its vapor builds up quickly in enclosed spaces, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has documented dozens of deaths, many of them workers refinishing bathtubs. EPA put the figure at at least 88 people since 1980. EPA banned methylene chloride in consumer paint and coating removers from November 22, 2019. On April 30, 2024, it finalized a ban on all consumer uses and most industrial and commercial uses under the Toxic Substances Control Act, with consumer uses phased out within about a year and most commercial uses within two years. EPA also lists liver harm and several cancers among the risks. Acetone is a different kind of solvent. It evaporates very fast and dissolves some finishes, such as lacquers, many adhesives and nail polish, but it doesn't lift tough cured coatings as well, which is why it's often mixed with other solvents. It's highly flammable. The footage shows stripper being brushed onto painted metal and the paint bubbling off.
DID YOUKNOW?UV CuringDD-640
UV Curing
UV curing is photopolymerization. A UV-curable ink, coating or adhesive is a liquid mix of small reactive molecules (monomers and oligomers) plus a few percent of photoinitiator. When the photoinitiator absorbs UV light, it breaks apart into reactive species that link the molecules into a solid, crosslinked network, often within a fraction of a second to a few seconds. There are two main chemistries. Free-radical systems, mostly acrylates, form radicals and stop curing almost as soon as the light goes off, and oxygen in the air can slow them at the surface. Cationic systems, mostly epoxies, form a strong acid and can keep curing after the light is gone, which is called 'dark cure'. The light source matters. Traditional mercury-vapor lamps emit a broad spectrum that includes a lot of infrared heat. UV LEDs emit a narrow band, often near 365-395 nm, and produce much less heat, but the formula has to include a photoinitiator that absorbs at that wavelength. Because there's little or no solvent to dry off, UV curing is fast and usually uses less energy than heat drying. The trade-off is that the light has to reach the material, which is why UV-cured pipe liners need translucent glass-fiber tubes (see CIPP).
DID YOUKNOW?Earth Movers IIDD-639
Earth Movers II
Bagger 293 is a bucket-wheel excavator built by TAKRAF of Leipzig, Germany. It went into service on July 7, 1995, at RWE's Hambach open-pit lignite (brown coal) mine near Cologne. Guinness World Records lists it as the largest and heaviest land vehicle, meaning the biggest machine that moves under its own power. Guinness gives 14,196 tonnes, 220 m long and 94.5 m tall, while other sources give about 14,200 t, 225 m and 96 m. The 21.6 m wheel carries 18 buckets. As it turns, the buckets cut into the mine face and dump onto conveyor belts that carry the earth away. Guinness puts each bucket at 6,600 liters (6.6 m³), but other sources say about 15 m³. It can move 240,000 cubic meters of earth a day. That's a volume, not a weight: at typical soil densities it's well over 200,000 tonnes. It mostly digs overburden, the soil and rock above the coal. It runs on about 16.5 MW of outside electricity through a cable, crawls on 12 caterpillar tracks at a few meters a minute, and needs a crew of five.
DID YOUKNOW?Concrete ReefsDD-632
Concrete Reefs
Concrete is one of the most widely used artificial-reef materials, both as purpose-built reef modules and as recycled rubble such as old culverts, pipes and bridge pieces. In the U.S., the National Fishing Enhancement Act of 1984 led to a National Artificial Reef Plan, first adopted in 1985 and revised in 2007. It judges reef materials on function, compatibility with the environment, durability and stability. Concrete scores well on durability, but fisheries guidelines say it should be clean and well cured, because fresh concrete is strongly alkaline at first. Hollow cinder blocks, like those dumped from a barge in the footage, are generally considered a poor choice on their own. They are light and break easily, and storms can scatter or bury them. Once sunk, hard surfaces are colonized by algae, sponges, barnacles and, in warm waters, sometimes corals, and fish gather around them. A 2020 meta-analysis of 39 studies found that artificial reefs can support fish communities comparable to natural reefs, but results depend heavily on location and design. Scientists still debate how much artificial reefs produce new fish and how much they simply attract fish from elsewhere, which can make them easier to catch.
DID YOUKNOW?Construction CoversDD-631
Construction Covers
In crowded Chinese cities, some building and excavation sites are now covered by huge air-supported domes, sometimes called 'soft pillows' or 'giant airbags'. Fans on the ground keep pumping air in, so the slightly higher pressure inside holds up a membrane, often PVDF-coated fabric, usually reinforced with steel cables. The main goal is to keep dust and noise from reaching the neighbors. Local officials say a nearly 9,000 m² dome over a renovation site in Guangzhou's Yuexiu District blocks up to 99% of dust. CGTN reported that it keeps construction noise below 60 decibels. A dome in Shenzhen stands 40 m tall over more than 12,000 m². Officials say such domes can be reused and taken down without leaving construction waste. A related design is used on contaminated land. In 2016, a soil-cleanup project at Beijing's former Shougang steelworks built what researchers called China's first negative-pressure membrane yard. There the air pressure is kept slightly lower inside, so fumes and dust can't leak out, and exhaust is filtered before release. The footage shows a white dome between towers and a Gothic-style church, but the Reel doesn't name the site.
DID YOUKNOW?HoloFansDD-630
HoloFans
'Holographic fans' are rotating LED displays. Each blade, or 'ray', carries a strip of LEDs. As the rotor spins, a controller switches every LED on and off at exact angles, so each sweep paints the picture one slice at a time, and the eye blends the flashes into a steady image. In a dark room the blur of the blades nearly disappears, so the picture seems to float. Single fans use hundreds of LEDs rather than thousands. HYPERVSN's Solo M has four rays of 168 LEDs each (672 in all) spinning at about 670 rpm, and its newer SmartV Solo M lists 216 LEDs per ray and a 1080 x 1080 picture. Displays only reach thousands of LEDs when several fans are synced into a wall. Despite the name, these aren't holograms. Holography, which Dennis Gabor invented in 1947 and won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics for, records and rebuilds light waves using interference. A fan draws a flat image on the plane of its blades, and the 3D look comes from the artwork's shading. This Reel is Part I of a pair. HoloFans II (DD-700) explains the same mechanism, so this case focuses on hardware numbers and the holography history.
DID YOUKNOW?Chip ChangeDD-626
Chip Change
Replacing a chip on a circuit board is called rework, and the industry's guide to it is the IPC-7711/7721 standard. With a surface-mount chip, every joint has to melt at the same time, or the part can't come off cleanly. A hot-air rework station does this by blowing controlled hot air through a nozzle sized to the part. Many setups also warm the whole board from below with a preheater. Flux goes on first to help the solder flow. Once all the joints are molten, the chip is lifted with tweezers or a vacuum pickup. The bare pads are then cleaned with fresh flux and solder wick, braided copper that soaks up old solder. Too much heat or scrubbing can tear a pad off the board. The new part is lined up, tacked in place and reflowed, then checked for bridges (solder shorting two leads), cold joints and lifted pads. Many chips on modern motherboards are ball grid arrays (BGAs). They have no pins: rows of solder balls sit hidden underneath, so they are usually reworked with special equipment, and their joints can't be checked by eye.
DID YOUKNOW?Pipeline BlastingDD-625
Pipeline Blasting
On pipeline projects, blasting is mostly used to break up bedrock so crews can dig the trench for new pipe. The footage shows that kind of blast: a line of charges lifting mud and rock along a slope. Crews try machines first, such as bulldozer-mounted rippers and rock hammers. Pipeline blasting plans filed with U.S. regulators call for explosives only where rock can't be dug economically any other way. The work is tightly controlled. A contractor has to write a site-specific blasting plan and follow state and local explosives rules. Typical plans call for surveys of buildings, wells and utilities within 150 ft before blasting, plus vibration and air-blast monitoring and blasting mats to hold down flying rock. They also require warning signals and inspections afterward. Charges are loaded into drilled holes and fired in sequence a few milliseconds apart, which keeps ground shaking down. FERC also requires a schedule of planned trenching or blasting for each waterbody wider than 10 ft. The Reel says blasting is used to remove old pipelines, but none of the sources I found support that as a normal method.
DID YOUKNOW?RaytheonDD-621
Raytheon
Raytheon is one of RTX Corporation's three business segments, alongside Collins Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney. The company began in 1922 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the American Appliance Company, founded by Laurence K. Marshall, Vannevar Bush and Charles G. Smith. Its first hit product was a gas-filled rectifier tube, named Raytheon ('light from the gods'), that let radios run on household current instead of batteries. The company took the tube's name and grew through radar and microwave work, including the first microwave ovens. In April 2020, Raytheon Company merged with United Technologies to form Raytheon Technologies, which renamed itself RTX in 2023. Today the Raytheon segment makes air and missile defense systems such as Patriot, the AN/SPY-6 family of naval radars, missiles and sensors. RTX reported Raytheon's 2024 net sales at $26.7 billion, with growth from Patriot, NASAMS and counter-drone programs. Raytheon's own site lists more than 52,000 employees, and in 2024 it sold its cybersecurity, intelligence and services business. RTX as a whole has a backlog of about $218 billion. The footage is corporate promotional video: control rooms, a missile launch, lab work and a Raytheon sign.
DID YOUKNOW?Mercedes StadiumDD-617
Mercedes Stadium
Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta opened on August 26, 2017, replacing the Georgia Dome as home of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and MLS's Atlanta United FC. It is owned by the state of Georgia through the Georgia World Congress Center Authority and operated by the Falcons' parent company, AMB Group. Its construction cost was estimated at $1.6 billion in 2016. The architects, HOK, designed it from the top down. The roof has eight translucent ETFE "petals", each about 220 feet long. They appear to rotate like a camera aperture but actually slide in unison along 16 straight tracks, and HOK says they open in eight minutes and close in seven. Its circular opening was inspired by the oculus of Rome's Pantheon. The roof wasn't finished when the stadium opened. At a July 2018 demonstration, about 11 months after the first event, it opened in 8 minutes 10 seconds, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Below it hangs the Halo, a ring-shaped video board 58 feet tall and 1,100 feet around. The master plan set a regular capacity of 71,000, expandable to 75,000 for events such as the Super Bowl. On November 15, 2017, it became the first professional sports stadium to earn LEED Platinum certification, with 88 points. The stadium credits that to 4,000 solar panels producing about 1.6 million kWh a year, a 680,000-gallon rainwater cistern and a 2.1-million-gallon stormwater system. It hosted Super Bowl LIII in 2019. The footage looks up through the open roof from the field, then pans around the seating bowl and the Halo board.
DID YOUKNOW?Shape MemoryDD-616
Shape Memory
Shape-memory alloys can be bent out of shape when cool and then spring back when warmed. The best known is nitinol, an alloy of roughly equal parts nickel and titanium. Its name comes from Nickel, Titanium and the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, where William J. Buehler's team discovered it in 1959. According to ASME, the team was looking for materials for tools to dismantle mines. Wikipedia recounts that, at a 1961 meeting, someone heated a folded strip of it with a pipe lighter and it snapped back to its original shape. The effect comes from a reversible change in crystal structure. Below its transformation temperature, nitinol is in a monoclinic martensite phase that deforms easily and holds its new shape. Heated above that temperature, it converts to a cubic austenite phase and returns to its original form. The remembered shape isn't automatic. ASME says the part must be shape-set by clamping it in a mold, heat-treating it at about 500 °C and cooling it quickly. Composition and heat treatment adjust the transformation temperature. Above that temperature, nitinol is also superelastic, recovering from strains of about 8%. The shape-memory effect was first seen in a gold–cadmium alloy in 1932 by the Swedish chemist Arne Ölander. Shape-memory polymers became commercially available in the late 1990s. Nitinol is now used in stents, orthodontic wires and eyeglass frames. The footage shows a bent wire and a coil over a red heating element, straightening and contracting as they warm.
DID YOUKNOW?On A GlideDD-615
On A Glide
The Space Shuttle orbiter came home without engine power. NASA's Glenn Research Center explains that once the external tank was gone, the main engines had no propellant, so the shuttle returned as an unpowered glider. It had a low lift-to-drag ratio because it had to slow from about 17,300 mph to about 250 mph. About an hour before landing, a deorbit burn dropped it out of orbit. It entered the atmosphere nose-first at a 40° angle of attack to limit heating, and computers controlled its speed with a series of banking roll reversals. NASA's Kennedy Space Center fact sheet says commanders took manual control for the final approach during subsonic flight, usually about 22 miles (35 km) from touchdown. The initial approach glide slope was 20 degrees, more than six times steeper than an airliner's 3 degrees. Because the orbiter was unpowered, it had no go-around capability. It touched down at 213 to 226 mph. From 1991, orbiters were fitted with a 40-foot drag parachute, deployed as the nose came down, plus carbon brakes. Of 133 successful landings, 78 were at Kennedy's 15,000-foot Shuttle Landing Facility, 54 at Edwards Air Force Base in California and one, STS-3, at White Sands in New Mexico. The program flew 135 missions between April 12, 1981, and July 21, 2011, when Atlantis made the final landing. The footage shows an orbiter gliding over Florida wetlands, touching down and rolling out with its drag chute.
DID YOUKNOW?NVIDIA's BlueDD-614
NVIDIA's Blue
Blue is a small, Star Wars-inspired robot from Disney Research, part of the company's BDX droid family. It joined NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang onstage during his GTC 2025 keynote in San Jose on March 18, 2025. TechRadar quotes Huang as saying, "Blue has two Nvidia computers inside." Disney Research's Moritz Bächer told TechRadar that each BDX droid has four actuators in the head and neck, five in each leg, and two NVIDIA Jetson computers. The droids learn to move in character through reinforcement learning in simulation. At the same keynote, NVIDIA announced Newton, an open-source physics engine for robotics built on its Warp GPU framework and OpenUSD. NVIDIA's announcement describes Newton as co-developed with Google DeepMind and Disney Research, and says Disney Research would be the first to use it for its robotic characters. Newton was not yet available at GTC. On September 29, 2025, the three organizations contributed it to the Linux Foundation, and it was released in beta under open governance. Disney had already shown BDX droids at GTC 2024. The Reel's footage shows the droid walking on a dark stage in front of a desert backdrop.
DID YOUKNOW?KarpDD-062
Karp
Alex Karp studied at Haverford College and Stanford Law School, where he met Peter Thiel, and earned a doctorate from Goethe University Frankfurt. Palantir was founded in 2003, and Forbes dates Karp's start to 2004; he has been CEO since. Early funding included an investment from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture arm. Its clients include the U.S. Department of Defense, the FBI and foreign police agencies. Palantir went public through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 30, 2020. Fortune reported in February 2025 that Karp had sold about $1.88 billion of stock since the start of 2024 under preset trading plans. Forbes estimated his net worth at $19.9 billion on Oct. 17, 2026.
DID YOUKNOW?Self-Made ModularDD-061
Self-Made Modular
Self-reconfigurable modular robots are machines built from many units that can rearrange how they connect, to change shape for new tasks or to repair themselves. The idea of applying a common connector to a whole robot dates to Toshio Fukuda's CEBOT in the late 1980s. About 30 systems had been built by the time of the Wikipedia survey, but demonstrations have topped out around 50 units, and the promised robustness and low cost haven't been shown. The footage isn't one of those systems. It shows GITAI's Lunar Rover and three Inchworm robots with grapple ends building a 5-meter communications tower in a desert simulating the Moon. GITAI and KDDI announced the demo in December 2023 and March 2024. The robots then attached an antenna, connected power and took the tower apart again.
DID YOUKNOW?Laser IgnitionDD-610
Laser Ignition
Light can set off a gas mixture in several ways. A 2013 review in Optics Express by Geoff Dearden and Tom Shenton lists four mechanisms. In thermal initiation, the laser heats the gas or a surface. In non-resonant breakdown, a tightly focused pulse ionizes the gas into a tiny plasma spark. Resonant breakdown is a variant that relies on the gas absorbing specific wavelengths. In photochemical ignition, single photons split molecules, which usually requires ultraviolet light. Chlorine is a classic example of the photochemical route. Harvard's lecture-demonstration notes give the Cl–Cl bond energy as 243 kJ/mol, matching a photon of about 2.51 eV, or 492 nm. Photons at 405–450 nm carry about 2.8–3.1 eV, so they are energetic enough. Once a photon splits a chlorine molecule, a chain reaction (Cl + H₂ → HCl + H; H + Cl₂ → HCl + Cl) can turn explosive in a hydrogen–chlorine mixture. Energy alone isn't enough, though. Harvard's demo uses colored LEDs and only the UV one sets off the tube, and oxygen inhibits that chain. Engine laser ignition, reviewed by Dearden and Shenton and by Morsy (2012), works differently. Engine tests have typically used nanosecond pulses from near-infrared Nd:YAG lasers (1064 nm) focused into a plasma spark. They've been studied as a replacement for spark plugs in high-compression engines, and Wikipedia notes proposed uses in rocket engines. The footage shows a blue laser triggering a fireball and black soot in a flask, then liquids poured to make a yellow-green gas that appears to contain chlorine. A solid is added, and the laser fires again.
DID YOUKNOW?FloatovoltaicsDD-608
Floatovoltaics
Floating solar, also called floating photovoltaics (FPV) or floatovoltaics, puts solar panels on pontoons or purpose-built floats on reservoirs, lakes, ponds and other calm water. According to the World Bank's 2019 market report, the first FPV system was built in 2007 in Aichi, Japan. The first commercial installation was a 175 kWp array on a winery's irrigation pond in Napa Valley, California, in 2008. The report says the platform is held in place by anchoring and mooring to the bank, to the bottom, to piles, or a combination. Besides saving land, the report lists possible benefits: reduced evaporation from reservoirs, better energy yield because water cools the panels and there's less dust, and the option of using existing power lines at hydropower dams. It also notes that the size of these performance gains has yet to be confirmed by larger installations across multiple regions and over time. Wikipedia reports installed capacity grew from about 3 GW in 2020 to 13 GW in 2022. It cites a World Bank estimate of 6,600 large bodies of water suitable for floating solar, with more than 4,000 GW of technical capacity if 10% of their surface were covered. Some footage shows panels on fixed posts over shallow water, a closely related approach that is included as illustration.
DID YOUKNOW?The Iron DomeDD-606
The Iron Dome
Iron Dome is a mobile short-range air defense system built by Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with Israel Aerospace Industries. According to Wikipedia, it is designed to intercept rockets and artillery shells fired from about 4 to 70 km away. A battery has three parts. The EL/M-2084 radar, built by Elta, detects a launch and tracks its path. A battle-management center, built by mPrest, predicts where the rocket will land and fires only at those headed for populated or protected areas. Three or four launchers each hold 20 Tamir interceptors, which carry electro-optic sensors and steering fins. Rafael says the Tamir has a special warhead that detonates the target's warhead in the air. In a 2015 drone test, some targets were destroyed by the proximity warhead and others by a direct hit. Iron Dome was declared operational near Beersheba on March 27, 2011, and made its first interception on April 7, 2011. The United States contributed $1.6 billion from 2011 to 2021 and approved another $1 billion in 2022. Success rates are disputed. Rafael says more than 90%. Israeli military figures reviewed by Michael Armstrong (2018) were about 85% in 2012 and about 90% in 2014. Those rates count only rockets the system chose to engage. Critics, including MIT's Theodore Postol and Richard Lloyd, argued from video and damage analysis that far fewer warheads were destroyed. Armstrong reports that proponents dispute those methods. Rafael has also offered a naval version, C-Dome, unveiled in 2014.
DID YOUKNOW?Northrop GrummanDD-604
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman is a US aerospace and defense company based in Falls Church, Virginia. Its 2025 annual report (Form 10-K) says the company began in 1939 in Hawthorne, California, as Northrop Aircraft Incorporated, founded by Jack Northrop. Northrop Corporation was a principal developer of flying-wing designs, which, according to the company's heritage page, led to the B-2 stealth bomber. In 1994 it acquired the Grumman Corporation, which built the Apollo Lunar Module, and the combined company was renamed Northrop Grumman. The heritage page lists more than 20 companies it has since absorbed, including Westinghouse's defense electronics business (1996), Litton (2001), TRW (2002), Scaled Composites (2007) and Orbital ATK (2018). The 10-K reports 2025 sales of $41.954 billion, about 84% of them to the US government, and about 95,000 employees. It lists the B-21 Raider long-range strike bomber for the US Air Force and support for the B-2 Spirit among its key programs. For NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, launched on December 25, 2021, Northrop Grumman was the prime contractor. It designed and built the deployable sunshield, provided the spacecraft and integrated the whole observatory. NASA describes the sunshield as five layers of Kapton coated with reflective metal, each thinner than a human hair, about the size of a tennis court. The Reel uses company footage, including a hangar with aircraft, a holographic globe, an underwater drone, a cleanroom and a satellite.
DID YOUKNOW?Sheep DippingDD-602
Sheep Dipping
Sheep scab is an intensely itchy skin disease caused by the mite Psoroptes ovis. The UK's National Animal Disease Information Service (NADIS) says the mites' droppings trigger an allergic reaction that leads to rubbing, wool loss, scabs and rapid weight loss. In severe cases it can kill. NADIS says compulsory treatment was enforced in Britain from 1928. Eradication failed and control was deregulated in 1992, but England and Wales still legally require infected flocks to be treated, and Scotland made the disease notifiable again in 2010. According to the UK sheep-parasite group SCOPS, there are now only two treatments for scab in the UK: plunge dips containing the organophosphate diazinon, and injectable macrocyclic lactones. Organophosphate dips work only as a proper plunge dip, never through jetters or showers. NADIS says dips kill scab mites within 24 hours, keep working for several weeks, and also control blowfly, lice, keds and ticks. Synthetic pyrethroid (cypermethrin) dips were once the other option. NFU Scotland reported in 2010 that the Veterinary Medicines Directorate suspended them in 2006 over water pollution and manufacturers then stopped making them. Organophosphates are highly toxic to people too. The UK Health and Safety Executive requires anyone buying OP dip to hold a certificate of competence and sets rules for protective clothing, storage and disposal. NFU Scotland notes that concerns have been raised about effects on human health. The footage shows sheep being pushed through a dip, with a metal tipping cradle and frame over the swim bath. The country isn't identified.
DID YOUKNOW?Hypersonic MissilesDD-059
Hypersonic Missiles
The Congressional Research Service defines hypersonic weapons as maneuvering weapons that fly at Mach 5 or faster, roughly a mile per second. They come in two types: glide vehicles boosted by a rocket, and cruise missiles powered by air-breathing scramjets. Ballistic missile warheads also exceed Mach 5. What sets hypersonic weapons apart is maneuvering and a lower, flatter flight path, which ground radars may not detect until late. CBO concluded they probably wouldn't be more survivable than ballistic missiles with maneuverable warheads unless those faced highly effective long-range defenses. Heat is the main engineering challenge: GAO says surfaces can exceed 2,000 °F, and CBO cites sustained temperatures as high as 3,000 °F. Russia reportedly fielded its first hypersonic weapons in December 2019, and China likely by 2020. The DOD's FY2026 request for hypersonic weapons was $3.9 billion, down from $6.9 billion in FY2025.
DID YOUKNOW?Octopus Robo-GripDD-601
Octopus Robo-Grip
In February 2020, researchers from Beihang University, Harvard's Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS, and the automation company Festo published a study in Soft Robotics on octopus arm-inspired tapered soft actuators with suckers. Zhexin Xie and August Domel were co-first authors, and Katia Bertoldi and Li Wen were co-senior authors. The team measured how much octopus arms taper and found that a cone-shaped silicone actuator bends into a wider range of curvatures than a cylindrical one. A steeper taper curls less tightly but pushes with more force. The researchers added suction cups modeled on those of the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris), shrinking from base to tip, and all linked to a single vacuum line. The arm runs on two valves: one pressurizes it to bend, and one applies vacuum to the suckers. Harvard's press release says it gripped thin plastic sheets, mugs, test tubes, eggs, smartphones, exercise balls and even live crabs, and could reach into narrow openings. Xie is also co-inventor of the Festo Tentacle Gripper, a commercial prototype of the idea. In 2023, a Beihang-led team with Li Wen and Cecilia Laschi reported a sensorized soft octopus arm (E-SOAM) in Science Robotics that bends and elongates to reach and grasp. The footage shows a robot arm whose multi-tentacle gripper curls around a ball, a box, a hat and a plant, a demonstration of the same tapered, suction-cup design.
DID YOUKNOW?Deluge DaysDD-594
Deluge Days
NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi tests rocket engines and stages by bolting them to giant stands and firing them in place. Because the hardware doesn't move, the exhaust, which NASA says can reach 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 3,300 degrees Celsius), pours into the same flame deflector for the whole test. Water keeps it from melting. Stennis's high-pressure industrial water system draws on a 66-million-gallon reservoir. For the Space Launch System core stage's Green Run tests in 2020 and 2021, the B-2 stand could receive 335,000 gallons a minute at 300 psi, enough to fill an Olympic pool in about two minutes. Most of it cooled the exhaust through the deflector, and about 87,000 to 92,000 gallons a minute formed a curtain of water to damp noise and vibration. A typical 500-second RS-25 engine test uses about 5 million gallons. Launch pads use water too. At Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39B, the ignition overpressure and sound suppression system dumps about 400,000 gallons in under 30 seconds, peaking around 1.1 million gallons a minute. NASA says SLS produces about 176 decibels at liftoff. The footage looks like a pad water-flow test, with columns of water erupting in front of a steel launch structure.
DID YOUKNOW?Smart PlasticsDD-057
Smart Plastics
In October 2022, chemists Adrian Rylski and Zachariah Page at the University of Texas at Austin reported in Science a way to make one polymer that is hard in some places and soft in others. They start with a liquid industrial monomer, cis-cyclooctene, and add two ruthenium catalysts. Where blue LED light shines, one catalyst switches on and builds trans-polyoctenamer, a stiff, opaque, semicrystalline plastic. In the dark, the other slowly builds cis-polyoctenamer, a soft, stretchy rubber. Because both regions are the same material, the boundary between them is seamless. The light sets the pattern while the plastic forms; it doesn't switch a finished part back and forth.
DID YOUKNOW?DugaDD-592
Duga
Duga, Russian for 'arc', was a Soviet over-the-horizon radar system that formed part of the USSR's early-warning network against ballistic missiles. Over-the-horizon radar bounces shortwave signals off the ionosphere to see far beyond the line of sight. After an experimental Duga near Mykolaiv proved the idea, two operational systems were built: Duga-1 in what is now northern Ukraine, then the Ukrainian SSR, and Duga-2 in eastern Siberia near Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Duga-1 split its transmitter and receiver about 60 kilometers apart. The giant receiving array stands in the closed town of Chernobyl-2, a few kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and the transmitters were near Liubech. From July 1976 to December 1989, its pulses, at up to about 10 megawatts, swept across the shortwave bands as a sharp tapping, usually 10 times a second. Listeners worldwide called it the 'Russian Woodpecker', and it disrupted broadcasts, amateur radio and aviation communications, drawing thousands of complaints. NATO reportedly gave it the reporting name STEEL WORK or STEEL YARD. The Chernobyl antenna is about 700 meters long and 150 meters high. The signals faded in the late 1980s and stopped in 1989; the reasons were never made public. The abandoned array, inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, is now a listed monument in Ukraine. The footage shows its rusting steel towers and antenna elements.
DID YOUKNOW?Pulse JarDD-586
Pulse Jar
A pulse jet engine burns a fuel-air mixture in rapid, repeated pulses. Jar versions improvise the idea: a small opening lets air in, a flammable vapor such as alcohol is added, and ignition makes the burning gas build pressure and rush out of the opening, often pulsing. The Reel itself calls this a highly dangerous experiment. The footage, credited to eurekahnb, shows a burning jar demonstration.
DID YOUKNOW?Flying BikeDD-584
Flying Bike
From the footage, I identify the machine as the de Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle, a one-man 'personal helicopter' built for the US Army in the mid-1950s. It grew out of work by Charles H. Zimmerman of NACA on kinesthetic control: with the rotors below the pilot, the craft could be steered by shifting body weight, much like riding a bicycle or a surfboard. The Aerocycle had a cross-shaped frame with the pilot standing on a platform in a safety harness, above two contra-rotating 15-foot rotors driven by a 40-horsepower Mercury outboard motor. A motorcycle-style twist-grip throttle sat on the handlebars, and airbags on each arm plus a central rubber float served as landing gear. It made its first tethered flight on November 22, 1954, and its first free flight in January 1955 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in New York. Early tests suggested untrained soldiers could learn to fly it in about 20 minutes, and the Army ordered 12. After testing moved to Fort Eustis, Virginia, in 1956, test pilot Capt. Selmer Sundby found it much harder to fly than expected. Two crashes, in which the rotors intermeshed and shattered, and the wider failure of the 'personal lifting device' concept ended the program. One HZ-1 survives at the US Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis.
DID YOUKNOW?Sprinkle Of TruthDD-581
Sprinkle Of Truth
The sprinkler in the footage is an impact sprinkler, the classic 'tick-tick-tick' design on farm risers. Water under pressure leaves the main nozzle as a jet. A spring-loaded drive arm sits in front of it with a small deflector, or spoon, that dips into the stream. The jet knocks the arm aside, the spring swings it back, and it strikes the sprinkler body. Each strike nudges the head around a few degrees, so the jet sweeps a circle (or an arc, with trip stops) in small, even steps. Breaking up the stream this way also spreads the water more evenly across the wetted area. Other rotary sprinklers use a turbine or gear drive instead, as the Reel says. Orton Englehart, a citrus grower in Glendora, California, built the horizontal-action impact drive sprinkler in his shed around 1932 to 1933. His neighbor Clem LaFetra urged him to patent it. The application was filed on December 18, 1933, and US Patent 1,997,901 was granted on April 16, 1935. Englehart preferred farming and sold the rights to Clem and Mary LaFetra, who began production in their family barn on October 13, 1935, under the name Rain Bird. In 1990, the American Society of Agricultural Engineers named the Rain Bird impact sprinkler a historic landmark of agricultural engineering, crediting it with helping sprinkler irrigation spread to more than 50 million acres worldwide. The footage shows an impact sprinkler on a tripod stand in a sandy field, its arm swinging as the jet sprays across the sand.
DID YOUKNOW?Uranium UralDD-579
Uranium Ural
Ural is a Project 22220 nuclear-powered icebreaker, the third ship of the class after Arktika and Sibir. It's operated by Atomflot, part of Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom, and registered in Murmansk. Baltic Shipyard in Saint Petersburg laid its keel on July 25, 2016, and it was launched on May 25, 2019. Its reactors had already been lifted aboard while it was on the slipway. Delivery was planned for 2020 but slipped to 2022 because of delays with its domestically made steam turbines. After sea trials in October 2022, its flag was raised on November 22, 2022, and on December 2 it left Murmansk on its first icebreaking mission, to the Kara Sea. The ship is 172.7 m long and 34 m wide. Two 175-megawatt RITM-200 pressurized-water reactors, fueled with uranium-235 enriched to up to 20%, make steam for two turbogenerators. Their electricity drives three 20-megawatt motors, each turning a 6.2 m four-bladed propeller, for 60 megawatts in total. At full power in deep water, the design calls for breaking level ice 2.8 m thick at a steady 1.5 to 2 knots. By taking on or pumping out ballast water, the crew can vary the draft between about 9 m and 10.5 m. That lets the same ship work the deep Northern Sea Route and the shallow estuaries of Siberian rivers such as the Yenisei. The name had been chosen once before, for the last Arktika-class icebreaker in 1989, which was renamed 50 Let Pobedy during construction. The footage shows Ural's red, white and blue superstructure and dark-blue hull, marked 'УРАЛ' and 'РОСАТОМФЛОТ', moving through snow-covered ice at dusk.
DID YOUKNOW?Berlin HeartDD-577
Berlin Heart
The Berlin Heart EXCOR Pediatric is a pulsatile, air-driven ventricular assist device (VAD) that keeps infants and children with severe heart failure alive, usually while they wait for a heart transplant. It's paracorporeal: one or two blood pumps sit outside the body on the chest wall, connected by cannulas (tubes) through the skin to the heart's atrium or ventricle and to the great arteries. Each pump is a clear chamber split by a flexible membrane. A driving unit pushes and pulls air behind the membrane, so blood is drawn in and pushed out, and valves keep it flowing one way. Pumps come in small sizes for babies. The device grew out of the German Heart Institute Berlin. In 1990, its surgeons kept an 8-year-old boy alive on an adult-sized 50 mL pump until a transplant, and in 1992 an infant system with a 10 mL pump was implanted there for the first time. On December 16, 2011, the US FDA approved the EXCOR Pediatric under a Humanitarian Device Exemption as a bridge to transplant, after a 17-hospital study led by Texas Children's Hospital. The approved system uses the stationary Ikus driver. The smaller, battery-powered EXCOR Active driver weighs about 15 kg and runs at least 5 hours on batteries. In the US it's still an investigational device used under an FDA-approved study that began in November 2022. A 2026 JACC report found no major device malfunctions among its first 40 study patients. The footage shows a red blood pump with its connectors and a clear pump chamber lying on a hospital blanket.
DID YOUKNOW?Food RecyclingDD-569
Food Recycling
The footage shows a Chinese plant processing expired packaged food. Workers shovel bags of snacks onto conveyors, a machine strips the wrappers, and the food comes out as an orange meal. Chinese manufacturers sell these de-bagging lines for expired packaged food. One maker says its line opens bags, separates food from plastic by air and screening, and sends the food on to feed processing. Chinese media report that feed factories buy expired or near-expiry stock such as biscuits and mooncakes by the ton. In a September 2026 report, a Hebei feed-plant worker said moldy or spoiled products are rejected. The food is crushed and dried, tested against feed standards and blended with corn and soybean meal. Restaurant and household kitchen waste is a separate stream with stricter rules. After African swine fever spread through China in 2018, the government banned feeding food waste to pigs. Reuters reported that the ban pushed waste processors toward options such as insect farms. Kitchen waste is mostly treated by anaerobic digestion for biogas, composting, or conversion into fuel and fertilizer, according to a review by the French research agency CIRAD. On April 29, 2021, China passed its Anti-Food Waste Law, which took effect the same day. In 2025, according to the Wilson Center's New Security Beat, China launched 20 city pilot programs to collect and treat food waste for animal feed, partly to cut its reliance on imported soybeans.
DID YOUKNOW?Commercial SupersonicsDD-568
Commercial Supersonics
Concorde was an Anglo-French supersonic airliner. A UK–France treaty of November 29, 1962 launched it, and it was developed and built by Sud Aviation (which became part of Aérospatiale in 1970) and the British Aircraft Corporation. The first prototype flew from Toulouse on March 2, 1969. Air France and British Airways began scheduled service on January 21, 1976, and New York JFK flights started on October 17, 1977. It had an ogival delta wing, a droop nose for landing visibility and four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets with afterburners. Its regular cruise was Mach 2.02, about 1,340 mph (2,150 km/h), with a maximum altitude of 60,000 ft. A New York–Paris flight took just under 3.5 hours, compared with about seven to eight hours on a subsonic jet. Its top speed was capped by heat: the aluminum skin could only tolerate about 127 °C. Only 20 were built, and Air France and British Airways were the only customers, with seven airframes each. Sonic booms kept supersonic flights over the sea. On July 25, 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed after takeoff from Paris, killing 113 people. It was Concorde's only fatal accident, and service resumed in November 2001. Both airlines retired the aircraft in 2003, citing rising maintenance costs, lower demand after the crash and the post-9/11 slump. Air France's last commercial flight was on May 30, 2003, and British Airways' was on October 24, 2003. Eighteen are preserved. No supersonic airliner has flown passengers since. On January 28, 2025, Boom Supersonic's XB-1 demonstrator broke the sound barrier over the Mojave Desert, a test for its planned Overture airliner. The footage shows a British Airways Concorde landing at night with its nose drooped.
DID YOUKNOW?Lens Crafter IIDD-566
Lens Crafter II
To fit glasses, an optician uses an edger machine that traces the specific frame, then grinds the prescription lens blank down to that shape, adjusting for the material; some lenses need specialized tools. The footage, credited to Eurekahnb, shows lenses being cut and ground in an edger.
DID YOUKNOW?BransonDD-053
Branson
Richard Branson, born July 18, 1950, started a mail-order record business in 1970 and launched the Virgin Records label in 1972. Virgin signed the Sex Pistols in 1977; the Rolling Stones came much later, in November 1991. In March 1992 he sold Virgin Music to Thorn EMI for about $1 billion. Virgin Atlantic flew its first flight on June 22, 1984. He was knighted in 2000 and founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, and on July 11, 2021, he flew to the edge of space on its Unity 22 flight. Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.8 billion on Oct. 17, 2026.
DID YOUKNOW?GatesDD-565
Gates
Bill Gates, born in 1955 in Seattle, co-founded Microsoft, which became the leading personal-computer software company. He stepped down as CEO in 2000 and left the board in 2020. The Reel puts his 2025 net worth at about $104.6 billion and highlights his philanthropy through the foundation he co-founded, which works on health, education and poverty and was renamed the Gates Foundation in 2024. The footage, credited to Leon - 4k Nature Film, shows scenic footage.
DID YOUKNOW?OTO 76/62DD-558
OTO 76/62
The OTO Melara 76 mm/62 is a compact, rapid-fire naval gun designed in Italy by OTO Melara (now part of Leonardo) and in service since 1964. Its automatic loading system and revolving magazine let it fire up to about 120 rounds a minute in the Super Rapid version, and it has been adopted by many navies for anti-air, anti-ship and shore-bombardment roles. The footage, credited to vexrmedia, shows the gun's loading mechanism and a mount firing at sea.
DID YOUKNOW?Laser WeederDD-557
Laser Weeder
The LaserWeeder from Carbon Robotics is a tractor-pulled implement that uses cameras and computer vision to identify weeds and kill them with high-powered lasers, with no herbicide or hand weeding. The Reel says it carries 30 industrial CO2 lasers and 42 high-resolution cameras, targets over 5,000 weeds a minute with submillimeter precision and covers up to 1.5 acres an hour; those are the maker's figures as quoted. The footage, credited to Carbon Robotics, shows the implement working a field.
DID YOUKNOW?BezosDD-556
Bezos
Jeff Bezos, born in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is an American entrepreneur who founded Amazon. After graduating from Princeton University in 1986 in electrical engineering and computer science, he worked on Wall Street, then launched Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore. It expanded into a vast e-commerce, cloud computing and media company. He also founded the space company Blue Origin. The footage, credited to Personal Finance Insider, NDTV Profit, CNET Highlights, Earth Explore TV, Mr Mozart, KIRO 7 News and Amazon, shows Bezos and Amazon operations.
DID YOUKNOW?AndreessenDD-555
Andreessen
Marc Andreessen, born July 9, 1971, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, co-created the Mosaic web browser while at the University of Illinois. Mosaic, the first widely used graphical browser, helped popularize the World Wide Web. In 1994 he co-founded Netscape Communications, whose Netscape Navigator dominated the early web. He later co-founded the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The footage, credited to a16z speedrun, shows Andreessen speaking.
DID YOUKNOW?ThielDD-554
Thiel
Peter Thiel, born in 1967 in Frankfurt, West Germany, is a German-American entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded PayPal and was its CEO until eBay acquired it in 2002, made a $500,000 investment as Facebook's first outside investor in 2004, later selling most of his stake for over $1 billion, and co-founded Palantir Technologies in 2003. He is also active in politics, the Reel notes. The footage, credited to Big Think, shows Thiel speaking.
DID YOUKNOW?Machine's Best FriendDD-553
Machine's Best Friend
Spot, from Boston Dynamics, is a four-legged robot for autonomous navigation and data collection in difficult environments. Its sensors and cameras let it map surroundings, avoid obstacles, climb stairs and self-right after a fall. Modular payloads enable thermal imaging, acoustic inspection and remote communication in construction, energy and public safety. The footage, credited to Boston Dynamics, shows Spot walking.
DID YOUKNOW?Robot ParkourDD-552
Robot Parkour
Atlas is a humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics designed to show advanced mobility: running, jumping, vaulting and even backflips through parkour courses. The hydraulic Atlas was retired in April 2024 and replaced by an all-electric version with enhanced range of motion. The footage, credited to Boston Dynamics, shows Atlas running a parkour course.
DID YOUKNOW?AI Surgery IIDD-549
AI Surgery II
Robotic microsurgery systems assist surgeons with procedures on nerves, blood vessels and eye tissue. They use real-time imaging, motion scaling, which turns large hand movements into tiny instrument motions, and tremor filtering; some research systems add AI to assist or partly automate steps. The footage, credited to Innovology, shows a robotic arm operating at small scale.
DID YOUKNOW?Tesla BotDD-545
Tesla Bot
Optimus, also called the Tesla Bot, is a humanoid robot in development at Tesla to handle repetitive or unsafe tasks. Announced in 2021, it was specified at about 5 ft 8 in (173 cm) and 125 pounds (57 kg). Tesla showed Optimus Gen 2 in December 2023 with faster walking, less weight and more dexterous hands. The footage, credited to Tesla, shows Optimus walking and handling objects.
DID YOUKNOW?Rotor HydraulicsDD-543
Rotor Hydraulics
Helicopter flight controls change the pitch of main and tail rotor blades to manage lift, pitch, roll and yaw. In most larger helicopters, hydraulic actuators using pressurized fluid assist the pilot in moving the swashplate and linkages, which would otherwise be too hard to move under aerodynamic loads. The footage, credited to eurekahnb, shows a rotor head's linkages moving.
DID YOUKNOW?Traffic ControlsDD-540
Traffic Controls
Congestion pricing charges drivers a fee to enter or drive in busy urban areas, usually during peak hours, to cut traffic and emissions and encourage public transit. Systems typically use cameras that read license plates, with fees varying by time, location or vehicle type. New York City launched the first U.S. program in Manhattan on January 5, 2025, after long political and legal debate. The footage, credited to cinetrove, shows city traffic.
DID YOUKNOW?ZuckerbergDD-536
Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook in 2004 while a student at Harvard and remains CEO of its parent, renamed Meta Platforms in 2021. Under him the company acquired Instagram (2012), WhatsApp (2014) and Oculus (2014) and expanded into messaging and virtual reality. He has been central to debates over data privacy, misinformation, content moderation and social media's political impact. The footage, credited to TheProjectTV, shows Zuckerberg.
DID YOUKNOW?Stay PressedDD-531
Stay Pressed
Sunflower oil is extracted from seeds by pressing, solvent extraction or both. In cold pressing, a screw (expeller) press squeezes the seeds while keeping temperatures low, the Reel says below 50 °C, to preserve flavor and nutrients, yielding a natural, unrefined oil. Hot pressing and refining give higher yields. The footage, credited to explainingtheuniverse, shows oil flowing from a screw press.
DID YOUKNOW?Machine MotorsDD-530
Machine Motors
Precision electric motors such as servo motors, stepper motors and brushless DC (BLDC) motors use microcontrollers, sensors and feedback loops to control speed, torque and position very accurately, down to fractions of a degree. They are essential in robotics, CNC machining, medical devices and aerospace. The footage, credited to action.box, shows motors moving with precision.
DID YOUKNOW?StarlinkDD-529
Starlink
Starlink is a satellite internet service from SpaceX that provides broadband to underserved and remote areas. It uses a large constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit that communicate with user dishes and ground stations. Older satellite internet relied on geostationary satellites with high latency; Starlink's much lower orbits shorten transmission time. The footage, credited to Starlink, shows dishes and a Starship deploying satellites.
DID YOUKNOW?The Boring CompanyDD-528
The Boring Company
The Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk in 2016, digs tunnels intended to reduce urban traffic. Its Vegas Loop carries passengers in Tesla vehicles through tunnels under the Las Vegas Convention Center. The company aims to cut tunneling costs with its own boring machines. The footage, credited to CBS Mornings and The Boring Company, shows cars in tunnels and a tunnel boring machine.
DID YOUKNOW?NeuralinkDD-527
Neuralink
Neuralink, co-founded by Elon Musk in 2016, develops implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs): a small chip with ultra-thin electrode threads that records and can stimulate brain activity. Its near-term aim is helping people with paralysis control devices; its stated long-term goal is human-AI symbiosis. The first human implant was in January 2024. The footage, credited to Neuralink, ABC News and Royalty Free Content, shows the implant and animations.
DID YOUKNOW?Heat SinksDD-526
Heat Sinks
Heat sinks draw heat away from electronics through many thin fins that increase surface area. Fins can be made by extruding aluminum profiles, CNC milling, or skiving, in which a sharp blade slices thin fins up from a solid block of copper or aluminum. The footage, credited to yh1234581, shows fins being sliced into a metal block.
DID YOUKNOW?QuenchingDD-524
Quenching
High-frequency induction hardening heats the surface layer of a steel or cast iron part with alternating current in a coil, then rapidly quenches it in water, oil or a polymer solution. The result is a hard, wear-resistant surface over a tougher, more ductile core. The footage, credited to metalaworld, shows a glowing part being heated and quenched.
DID YOUKNOW?SpaceXDD-522
SpaceX
SpaceX is a private aerospace company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with the long-term aim of enabling Mars colonization. It developed the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, whose boosters land for reuse, and the Dragon capsule, the first commercial vehicle to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, in 2020. Its Starship is designed to be fully reusable for Moon and Mars missions. The footage, credited to Black Hole and SpaceX, shows launches, Dragon and Starship.
DID YOUKNOW?TeslaDD-520
Tesla
Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning; Elon Musk led its 2004 funding round, became chairman and later CEO. Its first car, the Roadster, arrived in 2008, followed by the Model S (2012), Model X, Model 3 and Model Y. The company also sells energy storage and solar products. The footage, credited to Tesla, shows Tesla vehicles.
DID YOUKNOW?Mk-II AuroraDD-508
Mk-II Aurora
The Mk-II Aurora is a small, remotely piloted, reusable suborbital spaceplane built by New Zealand-based Dawn Aerospace. It takes off and lands horizontally on ordinary runways and is designed to eventually exceed 100 km. Its first rocket-powered flights were on March 29-31, 2023, at Glentanner Aerodrome on New Zealand's South Island, reaching about 315 km/h (196 mph); in November 2024 it flew supersonic. The footage, credited to cora.a.harris, shows the spaceplane.
DID YOUKNOW?Old-Timey LaundryDD-507
Old-Timey Laundry
Wringer washers, sold by retailers such as Montgomery Ward in the early to mid-20th century, combined a tub agitated by a hand crank or electric motor with a wringer: two rollers that pressed water out of clothes before they were hung to dry. They were common in homes before automatic washers with spin cycles took over. The footage, credited to technology, shows a vintage wringer washer.
DID YOUKNOW?Going Up?DD-503
Going Up?
A space elevator is a theoretical structure carrying cargo and people to space on a cable anchored at the equator and extending past geostationary orbit, about 35,786 km (22,236 miles) up, to a counterweight. Earth's rotation keeps the cable in tension, with the outward centrifugal effect balancing gravity. No known material is yet strong enough to build one. The footage, credited to tradzak, shows an animated ride up the cable.
DID YOUKNOW?The Space PerspectiveDD-500
The Space Perspective
Space Perspective, a Florida company, developed Spaceship Neptune, a pressurized capsule lifted by a hydrogen balloon to about 100,000 feet (30 km), where passengers would see Earth's curvature without rocket G-forces; a trip was planned to last about six hours, at $125,000 a seat. An uncrewed test flight reached that altitude in September 2024. When this Reel was posted, the company had furloughed most staff; it was evicted from its Titusville base in March 2025 and acquired by Spain's Eos X Space in July 2025. The footage, credited to TheSpacePerspective, shows the balloon launch.
DID YOUKNOW?Retarred RoadsDD-494
Retarred Roads
Road resurfacing (re-tarring, as the title puts it) restores pavement by adding a new asphalt layer. Crews assess cracks and potholes, clean and repair the surface, spray a tack coat so the layers bond, then lay hot mix asphalt with a paving machine and compact it with rollers to the right density and smoothness. The footage, credited to techniquebuildings, shows a paver laying asphalt.
DID YOUKNOW?Lens CrafterDD-492
Lens Crafter
Contact lenses are made by cast molding, spin casting or lathe cutting; the Reel also mentions 3D printing. Rigid gas permeable (RGP) and custom lenses are often lathed from a solid disc to precise curvatures. Soft lenses are then hydrated, and all lenses are polished, inspected, sterilized and packaged in saline. The footage, credited to DamnThatsInteresting, shows lenses being machined.
DID YOUKNOW?The Cities of TomorrowDD-489
The Cities of Tomorrow
Smart cities use connected sensors (the Internet of Things), data analytics, artificial intelligence and automation to manage infrastructure, transportation, energy and public services. Examples include adaptive traffic signals, automated waste collection, energy-efficient buildings and transit that adjusts to demand. The footage, credited to Real Image Production, shows a futuristic city.
DID YOUKNOW?Levels to ThisDD-485
Levels to This
Automated parking systems move cars with mechanical lifts, shuttles or robotic platforms and stack them on multiple levels. With no ramps or driving lanes, they fit more vehicles into a smaller footprint, which suits dense cities. The footage, credited to Sharing Travel, shows cars being lifted into a parking tower.
DID YOUKNOW?Black HawkDD-480
Black Hawk
The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift utility helicopter introduced by the U.S. Army in 1979 and used by many allied forces. Roles include troop transport, medical evacuation, air assault and logistics. This Reel was posted a week after a U.S. Army Black Hawk collided with an American Eagle airliner over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., on January 29, 2025. The footage shows a Black Hawk in flight.
DID YOUKNOW?Capsule CoreDD-478
Capsule Core
Most automatic fire sprinkler heads are held closed by a glass bulb filled with a heat-sensitive liquid, or by a fusible metal link. When the surrounding air reaches the rated temperature, typically around 57-74 °C (135-165 °F), the liquid expands and shatters the bulb, or the link melts, releasing water only from the heads that are hot. The footage, credited to xplainingtheworld, shows a red sprinkler bulb bursting and water spraying.
DID YOUKNOW?Go for a SpinDD-474
Go for a Spin
SpinLaunch is a U.S. company developing a kinetic launch system: a vacuum-sealed centrifuge spins a payload on an arm to hypersonic speed and releases it upward, aiming to cut fuel use and cost. A small rocket stage would still be needed to reach orbit. It has run suborbital test flights from a smaller accelerator in New Mexico. The footage, credited to SpinLaunch, shows a test launch.
DID YOUKNOW?One World Trade CenterDD-473
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541 meters) including its spire, a nod to 1776. It is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex after the original Twin Towers were destroyed on September 11, 2001. Its structure was completed in 2013 and it opened in November 2014. The footage, credited to EarthCam, shows the tower from the air.
DID YOUKNOW?The Backbone of Modern ElectronicsDD-469
The Backbone of Modern Electronics
Integrated circuits are built on silicon wafers. In photolithography, a wafer is coated with a light-sensitive photoresist and exposed to ultraviolet light through a mask, transferring the circuit pattern; etching then removes unwanted material. The process repeats layer by layer before chips are tested and packaged. The footage shows wafers and chip close-ups.
DID YOUKNOW?Canadian Super ScooperDD-463
Canadian Super Scooper
The Canadair CL-415, nicknamed the Super Scooper, is an amphibious firefighting aircraft built by Canadair and later Bombardier. It scoops about 6,137 liters (1,621 U.S. gallons) of water while skimming a lake and can mix it with foam concentrate before a drop. The program later passed to Viking Air, now De Havilland Canada. The footage, credited to dailysci3nce, shows the plane scooping and dropping water.
DID YOUKNOW?Video Trickery IIDD-461
Video Trickery II
A camera records a series of still frames at a set frame rate. If a helicopter's blades rotate by exactly one blade spacing, or a whole turn, between frames, each frame catches them in the same position and they appear frozen, a stroboscopic effect also called the wagon-wheel effect. Rolling shutter is a different effect that bends fast-moving blades. The footage shows a flying helicopter with apparently still rotors.
DID YOUKNOW?Alaska Airlines 261DD-455
Alaska Airlines 261
On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 flying from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, toward San Francisco and Seattle, crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Anacapa Island, California, killing all 88 people on board. The NTSB found the horizontal stabilizer's jackscrew assembly failed because of insufficient lubrication and excessive wear. The footage, credited to planesanity, shows a reconstruction of the flight.
DID YOUKNOW?Rotary WreckingDD-450
Rotary Wrecking
Chimney sweeps and relining crews remove old clay flue tiles and mortar with rotary tools lowered down the flue on rods or cables. A motor spins chains or carbide- or diamond-tipped heads that break or grind away the liner, clearing room for a new one. The footage shows a rotary tool breaking tiles inside a chimney.
DID YOUKNOW?Network EarthDD-449
Network Earth
Submarine communications cables carry the vast majority of international data, the Reel says about 95 percent. Hair-thin optical fibers carry data as light, wrapped in layers of protection; near shore the cables add steel wire armor, while in the deep ocean they can be as thin as a garden hose. Repeaters boost the signal every several dozen kilometers. The footage shows cable being laid from a ship.
DID YOUKNOW?Laser Rust RemovalDD-447
Laser Rust Removal
Laser rust removal uses short, intense laser pulses to heat and ablate rust, paint and grime, which absorb the light more than the bare metal beneath. It is non-contact, precise and avoids solvents and abrasive blasting, and is used in restoration, aerospace and manufacturing. The footage, credited to vilalaserofficial, shows a laser cleaning rusty steel.
DID YOUKNOW?Full-FlowDD-446
Full-Flow
Full-flow staged combustion is a rocket engine cycle in which all of the fuel and all of the oxidizer pass through separate preburners that drive the turbopumps, then enter the main combustion chamber as hot gases. Splitting the flow lets the turbines run cooler and supports high chamber pressures. SpaceX's Raptor was the first such engine to fly. The footage shows engine test firings.
DID YOUKNOW?Painting RubikDD-442
Painting Rubik
The Rubik's Cube, invented by Ernő Rubik in 1974, has 54 colored facets on its six faces. Classic cubes used colored vinyl stickers, which can peel and fade, while many modern cubes use tiles or stickerless colored plastic that lasts longer. The footage shows cubes being colored on a production line.
DID YOUKNOW?OverGrowth UnderPassDD-441
OverGrowth UnderPass
Cities cover concrete walls, pillars and underpasses with climbing plants, vertical gardens and green walls. Plants such as ivy and creeping fig tolerate shade and urban conditions, and the greenery can cool surfaces, trap dust and make infrastructure more pleasant. Some cities, such as Mexico City and Chengdu, have planted overpass pillars on a large scale. The footage shows overpasses covered in plants.
DID YOUKNOW?Print Your HomeDD-440
Print Your Home
Construction 3D printing uses large gantry or robotic-arm printers to extrude concrete or similar mixes layer by layer, building walls directly from a digital design. Printing the walls of a small house can take roughly 24 to 48 hours of print time, though roofs, windows, plumbing and finishing add more time. Supporters cite less labor and waste. The footage shows a printer laying concrete walls.
DID YOUKNOW?Articulated ProsthesisDD-438
Articulated Prosthesis
Articulated prosthetic hands have multiple jointed fingers to mimic a natural hand. Many are myoelectric: electrodes on the skin pick up electrical signals from muscles in the residual limb, and motors turn them into grips, pinches or pointing. The footage shows a prosthetic hand moving its fingers.
DID YOUKNOW?Drone SwarmsDD-437
Drone Swarms
A drone swarm is a group of drones that coordinate through algorithms and wireless links, sharing data in real time to keep formation, divide tasks or adapt to changes. Swarms are used for light shows, mapping and search and rescue, and are also developed for military use. The footage shows a dense swarm of drones flying in formation.
DID YOUKNOW?Garbage Water IIDD-434
Garbage Water II
Autonomous river-cleaning robots are small boats that navigate waterways on their own, using sensors, cameras and software to spot floating plastic and debris, scoop it into onboard bins and steer around obstacles and wildlife. Several cities and companies have tested them on rivers, canals and harbors. The footage shows a robotic boat collecting floating trash.
DID YOUKNOW?Desert ExpressDD-428
Desert Express
Railways across deserts such as the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula and the Australian outback carry freight and ore across arid regions but face blowing, abrasive sand. Lines may be built on raised ballast beds so sand blows across, sand fences and barriers are placed along exposed stretches, and crews clear drifts from the track. The footage shows the view from the front of a train as it runs over sand-covered rails.
DID YOUKNOW?Air Burst SortingDD-425
Air Burst Sorting
Optical sorters feed items along a belt or chute past cameras or sensors that judge color, shape or material. When an item matches the rejection rule, a precisely timed burst from an air jet knocks it into a separate stream. The method is used in recycling, food processing and mining. The footage shows mixed recyclables being sorted by air jets.
DID YOUKNOW?Hose GoalsDD-424
Hose Goals
Firefighters can use a wide fog pattern from a hose as a protective water curtain. Fine droplets absorb heat, especially as they turn to steam, cool nearby surfaces and block radiant heat, and the steam can dilute oxygen near the flames. Crews use it to advance on or retreat from fires. The footage shows firefighters advancing behind a water spray.
DID YOUKNOW?Rolling SteelDD-423
Rolling Steel
Plate rolling bends flat steel into curves and cylinders. In a common three-roll machine, two lower rollers support the plate while an upper roller presses down, and the plate is run back and forth as the pressure increases step by step. Adjusting roller position and pressure sets the curve for plates of different thicknesses. The footage shows a thick plate being rolled.
DID YOUKNOW?Turbine TroublesDD-421
Turbine Troubles
Before certification, jet engines go through destructive tests. In a fan blade-out test, a blade is released at full power with a small explosive charge, and the casing must contain the fragments and the engine must shut down safely. Other tests fire birds, ice and water into running engines. The footage shows engine tests on a test stand.
DID YOUKNOW?Insect Murder MeshDD-418
Insect Murder Mesh
A bug zapper uses a transformer to charge an inner wire grid to a high voltage. Ultraviolet light or bait attracts insects; when one bridges the gap between grid wires, current flows through it and kills it. An outer protective mesh keeps hands and larger objects away from the live grid. The footage shows insects being zapped.
DID YOUKNOW?Self-Parking ChairsDD-417
Self-Parking Chairs
In February 2016, Nissan showed the Intelligent Parking Chair, an office chair that rolls itself back to its place at a table when someone claps. Based on its cars' parking-assist technology, the system used four cameras on the walls to track each chair from above and steer motorized wheels. It was a promotional demonstration rather than a product. The footage shows the chairs returning to a conference table.
DID YOUKNOW?Pump CavitationDD-413
Pump Cavitation
Cavitation happens when local pressure in a pump falls below the liquid's vapor pressure, so vapor bubbles form. As the bubbles move into higher-pressure zones they collapse violently, sending out shock waves that cause noise, vibration, lost efficiency and pitting of gears, impellers and housings. The footage shows bubbles forming inside a transparent pump.
DID YOUKNOW?BafflingDD-410
Baffling
Baffle blocks are concrete blocks set in spillways, canals, chutes and stilling basins to break up fast flows. They create turbulence that dissipates the water's energy and slows it, reducing erosion and damage downstream. Their size and spacing are designed for the expected flow. The footage shows water churning over rows of baffle blocks.
DID YOUKNOW?SnowplowerDD-409
Snowplower
Railroads use several types of snow-clearing equipment. Wedge plows push snow to either side, rotary plows use a spinning bladed wheel to cut deep drifts and hurl snow away, and flangers clear snow and ice from the flangeways beside and between the rails. They keep lines open in heavy-snow regions. The footage shows a rotary plow throwing a plume of snow.
DID YOUKNOW?AI SurgeryDD-408
AI Surgery
Robot-assisted surgery systems such as the da Vinci Surgical System let a surgeon at a console control robotic arms that hold instruments and a 3D camera, scaling down hand movements for fine work through small incisions. Software and AI are being added for imaging, guidance and analysis, but in clinical use the surgeon directs the procedure. The footage shows robotic arms performing delicate tasks.
DID YOUKNOW?Enter SionDD-406
Enter Sion
Sion Airport (LSGS) lies in the Rhône Valley in Switzerland's canton of Valais, surrounded by high Alpine terrain. According to the Reel, its instrument approach to Runway 25 uses an instrument guidance system with an initial 6-degree glide slope that eases to 4 degrees, much steeper than the standard 3 degrees, and pilots need special authorization to fly instrument approaches there. The footage shows an approach into the valley.
DID YOUKNOW?Old-Timey LaundryDD-402
Old-Timey Laundry
Before electric washers spread in the 20th century, many households used hand-cranked or lever-operated machines with wooden tubs and internal paddles or dollies that agitated clothes. They still took real effort but were easier than scrubbing on a washboard. Electric washing machines appeared in the early 1900s. The footage shows an antique wooden washer being cranked.
DID YOUKNOW?Gassy Accidents IIDD-401
Gassy Accidents II
On the evening of January 1, 2024, gas leaked during the filling of a bulk truck at an LPG charging station in Pyeongchang County, Gangwon Province, South Korea, and exploded. Five people were injured, two with severe burns, 14 buildings and several vehicles were damaged, and the fire took about three hours to put out; nearby residents were evacuated. The Reel gives the date as January 24. The footage shows the explosion and fire.
DID YOUKNOW?A Little Off the TopDD-392
A Little Off the Top
Oil skimmers remove oil floating on water. Many use a belt, disc, drum or tube made of material that oil clings to more than water; as it moves through the surface the oil sticks, and a wiper scrapes it off into a container. Portable units handle small spills and industrial tanks. The footage shows a skimmer pulling oil from water.
DID YOUKNOW?A Look InsideDD-389
A Look Inside
Decapping removes the plastic or ceramic package from an integrated circuit such as a RAM chip to expose the silicon die. It is usually done with hot acids such as fuming nitric or sulfuric acid, or by milling or laser ablation. The exposed die can then be inspected under optical or electron microscopes for failure analysis, quality checks or reverse engineering. The footage shows a memory chip being opened and its die magnified.
DID YOUKNOW?UltrasonificationDD-386
Ultrasonification
Ultrasonic cleaners send high-frequency sound through water or a cleaning solution, creating microscopic bubbles that form and collapse, a process called cavitation. The collapses produce tiny jets and shock waves that loosen dirt and oils from rings and settings. Some gems, such as emeralds, opals and pearls, can be damaged and should not be cleaned this way. The footage shows jewelry in an ultrasonic tank.
DID YOUKNOW?The Nozzle KnowsDD-384
The Nozzle Knows
Soft gelato and soft-serve machines freeze and aerate the mix, then dispense it through a nozzle that sets the portion and shape. Nozzles are usually stainless steel for hygiene and can have decorative tips for swirls. The Reel describes the nozzle as part of the move from manual scooping to machines; I attributed that history to the Reel. The footage shows gelato being dispensed in shaped swirls.
DID YOUKNOW?Button BashingDD-383
Button Bashing
Buttons are made from plastic, metal, wood, shell or fabric. Plastic buttons are usually injection molded or cut from cast sheets, and metal buttons are stamped from sheet metal. Holes are drilled or molded, and the buttons are finished by polishing, painting or plating. The footage shows a factory punching and finishing buttons.
DID YOUKNOW?nICEDD-382
nICE
Commercial ice plants freeze large blocks in molds, lift them out with cranes or conveyors, and cut them with industrial bandsaws or cutting machines into smaller blocks, cubes or crushed ice. Some blocks are shaped or carved to order. The ice is rinsed, packaged and kept in cold storage. The footage, credited to kuramoto_ice_global, shows blocks of ice being sawed.
DID YOUKNOW?Quarrels With Quarrying?DD-376
Quarrels With Quarrying?
Decorative stones such as marble and onyx are quarried with diamond wire saws and other precision cutters to free large, undamaged blocks. Shale, used for cement and bricks, is broken out with heavy machinery or blasting and crushed. The method depends on whether the stone's appearance matters. The footage shows wire saws and machines working a quarry.
DID YOUKNOW?Delta IV HeavyDD-374
Delta IV Heavy
The Delta IV Heavy, built by United Launch Alliance, used three Common Booster Cores burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen. It could lift about 28,800 kilograms to low Earth orbit or about 14,200 kilograms to geostationary transfer orbit, and launched spy satellites, the Orion test flight and the Parker Solar Probe. It first flew in 2004 and made its final flight on April 9, 2024. The footage shows a Delta IV Heavy launch.
DID YOUKNOW?Gassy AccidentsDD-371
Gassy Accidents
Trucks carry natural gas either compressed (CNG) in high-pressure cylinders or liquefied (LNG) in insulated tanks at about minus 162 degrees Celsius. Tanks are built to withstand pressure and impacts, but collisions, equipment failures and leaks can release flammable gas that may ignite into fires or explosions. Regulations, maintenance and driver training reduce the risk. The footage shows a gas tanker fire and explosion.
DID YOUKNOW?Urban Flood ControlDD-369
Urban Flood Control
Urban flooding happens when heavy rain overwhelms a city's drainage. Impermeable surfaces such as concrete, asphalt and rooftops keep water from soaking into the soil, so runoff rushes into storm drains faster than they can carry it. Cities respond with larger drains, retention basins, permeable pavement and green spaces. The footage shows floodwater surging through city streets.
DID YOUKNOW?Cotton ConveyorsDD-368
Cotton Conveyors
Cotton module trucks carry large compressed modules of seed cotton from fields to gins. Their beds have built-in chain conveyors and tilt, so they can pick up a module from the ground and slide it off at the gin, cutting manual labor and limiting contamination of the fiber. The footage shows trucks loading and unloading cotton modules.
DID YOUKNOW?Garbage WaterDD-367
Garbage Water
Trash traps such as floating booms, trash racks and mesh screens are installed in rivers, canals, storm drains and outfalls to catch plastics and debris before they reach larger bodies of water. Racks block large items and finer screens catch smaller particles; the collected waste is removed by crews. The footage shows a floating boom collecting trash in an urban canal.
DID YOUKNOW?Helicopter ChainsawsDD-366
Helicopter Chainsaws
Aerial saws are rigs of about ten circular saw blades on a long vertical boom hanging below a helicopter. Pilots fly them along power line corridors and roads to trim branches, especially in remote or rugged terrain where ground crews struggle. The Reel calls them chainsaws, but the blades are circular saws. The footage shows a helicopter trimming a tree line.
DID YOUKNOW?Red Hot CalipersDD-365
Red Hot Calipers
Braking converts a car's kinetic energy into heat through friction between pads and rotors. In racing, repeated hard stops can heat rotors to well over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (about 540 degrees Celsius), hot enough to glow red or orange; much of the visible glow comes from the rotors, with heat soaking into the calipers. The footage, credited to NASCAR, shows glowing brakes on race cars.
DID YOUKNOW?Firefighting DronesDD-364
Firefighting Drones
Firefighting drones are uncrewed aircraft that give crews aerial views, use infrared and thermal cameras to find hotspots and map fire spread, and in some designs spray water, foam or retardant through tethered hoses or onboard tanks. They are useful for high-rise buildings and rugged terrain. The footage shows a drone spraying water at a burning building.
DID YOUKNOW?ThrustDD-360
Thrust
NASA's Space Shuttle, flown from 1981 to 2011, launched on two solid rocket boosters and three main engines. The Reel puts total liftoff thrust at about 7.8 million pounds: about 6.6 million from the boosters and 1.2 million from the main engines. The boosters burned for about two minutes before separating. The footage shows rocket launch imagery.
DID YOUKNOW?Earth Movers IDD-359
Earth Movers I
The Caterpillar 793F is an off-highway haul truck for mining and large construction projects, with a payload class of about 250 short tons (roughly 227 metric tons). Its large diesel engine and heavy-duty frame let it carry rock and dirt over rough haul roads. The footage, credited to timothyrinehart, shows a 793F at work.
DID YOUKNOW?Computer Wave ControlDD-356
Computer Wave Control
A standing wave forms when two waves of equal amplitude and frequency travel in opposite directions and interfere. Points that never move are nodes and points of maximum motion are antinodes. Computer-controlled wave generators in test tanks and wave pools can time their paddles precisely enough to build these patterns. The footage shows a pool with synchronized wave makers.
DID YOUKNOW?The Hyperion SledDD-355
The Hyperion Sled
Philip Bono, an engineer at Douglas Aircraft, proposed Hyperion in the 1960s as a reusable single-stage launcher. It would ride a rocket-powered sled along a long track to gain speed horizontally, saving propellant before climbing to orbit. It was never built. The footage shows rocket sled tests and an animation of a launch.
DID YOUKNOW?Supercar SpittingDD-353
Supercar Spitting
Flames from a car's exhaust come from unburned fuel igniting in the hot exhaust system. It happens most when a driver lifts off the throttle or shifts hard, and some performance cars and tunes deliberately add fuel or retard ignition timing to create pops, bangs and flames. The footage shows supercars shooting flames from their exhausts at night.
DID YOUKNOW?The HarvestDD-350
The Harvest
A combine harvester cuts crops such as wheat, corn and soybeans and separates grain from chaff, while forage harvesters chop whole plants. Trucks or tractor-drawn carts drive alongside, catching the crop from the spout so the harvester keeps working. Modern harvesters monitor yield as they go. The footage shows a harvester filling trucks in a field.
DID YOUKNOW?The Golden EllipseDD-348
The Golden Ellipse
Patek Philippe introduced the Golden Ellipse watch in 1968, with a case shaped between an oval and a rectangle based on the golden ratio. The Reel describes making its bracelet: designers sketch it to suit the case, prototypes test fit, precious metal is cut into strips and formed into links, and the links are assembled so the bracelet flexes on the wrist. The footage shows metal links being shaped and assembled.
DID YOUKNOW?Shatter & CollideDD-347
Shatter & Collide
A spinning disc is stretched by rotational stress that grows with speed. Polycarbonate CDs are built for drive speeds up to roughly 10,000 rpm; beyond their limits, or when cracked, they can shatter violently, and fast CD-ROM drives occasionally broke damaged discs. Many drives cap speed partly for this reason. The footage shows a CD on a motor spinning until it shatters.
DID YOUKNOW?Mach MadnessDD-346
Mach Madness
When a jet flies fast through humid air, air pressure and temperature drop over the wings and around the airframe, and water vapor condenses into a visible cloud, often called a vapor cone. It is common near the speed of sound but can form at subsonic speeds, and it is not itself the shock wave or proof of breaking the sound barrier. Engine contrails are a different effect. The footage shows fighter jets with vapor around the wings, often low over the sea.
DID YOUKNOW?A Step UpDD-341
A Step Up
Stairs began as steps cut into hillsides and rock. Romans built more elaborate stairs with stone and concrete; medieval castles used spiral staircases, which tradition says favored right-handed defenders; and Renaissance architects made grand decorative staircases. Steel and reinforced concrete later allowed floating and helical designs. The footage is a computer-generated sequence of staircases through the ages.
DID YOUKNOW?Boeing's Red RainDD-340
Boeing's Red Rain
The 747 Supertanker was a Boeing 747 converted into an aerial firefighting tanker. It could carry up to 19,200 U.S. gallons of water or fire retardant, the largest load of any firefighting aircraft, and fought fires in the U.S., Chile, Israel and Bolivia. The last one, the Global SuperTanker, ended operations in 2021. The footage is a computer-generated animation of the jet dropping red retardant.
DID YOUKNOW?Professional CappingDD-339
Professional Capping
The Reel describes crews putting out gas fires by lowering a heat-resistant steel dome over the flames with heavy machinery, cutting off oxygen so the leak can then be capped or vented. Firefighting for wells and gas lines also uses water, chemicals and, for large well fires, explosives, before a cap is fitted. The footage shows a dome being lowered onto a fire.
DID YOUKNOW?Count It UpDD-337
Count It Up
A banknote counter feeds bills one at a time through rollers past sensors that register each note, and many measure size or thickness to catch doubles. Higher-end models check ultraviolet and magnetic features to flag counterfeits and can sort mixed denominations. Machines like these count hundreds to more than a thousand notes a minute. The footage shows a counter riffling through a stack of bills.
DID YOUKNOW?Anatomy of a Combustion EngineDD-334
Anatomy of a Combustion Engine
In a four-stroke internal combustion engine, a piston draws in fuel and air, compresses it, and in gasoline engines a spark plug ignites it; diesel engines ignite the mixture by compression alone. The expanding gas pushes the piston down, turning the crankshaft, and the exhaust stroke clears the cylinder. The footage shows cutaway views of an engine and ignition in slow motion.
DID YOUKNOW?Coal WorldDD-331
Coal World
Coal dust blowing from loaded rail cars and stockpiles is a health, safety and maintenance problem. Railroads and mines use spray stations that coat coal with water or chemical binding agents, often called toppers, as trains roll through, forming a crust that reduces dust. Dust control also lowers the risk of coal-dust fires and explosions in enclosed spaces. The footage, credited to BNSF Railway, shows coal trains passing through a spray station.
DID YOUKNOW?The Secret of Compact DisksDD-329
The Secret of Compact Disks
A compact disc stores digital data along a spiral track of microscopic pits and flat areas called lands. A laser in the player shines on the track, and a sensor detects changes in the reflected light. In the CD format, each transition between a pit and a land represents a 1, and stretches without a transition represent 0s. The footage shows close-ups of a disc surface and its pits.
DID YOUKNOW?The Googol GearsDD-327
The Googol Gears
A googol is 1 followed by 100 zeros. Daniel de Bruin built a gear machine to make that number tangible: a chain of 100 gear stages, each reducing speed by a factor of ten, driven by a hand crank. The first gear spins freely, but the final gear would need a googol turns of the crank to rotate once, far longer than the age of the universe at any practical speed. The footage shows the long row of gears.
DID YOUKNOW?EctogenesisDD-324
Ectogenesis
Ectogenesis means growing an embryo or fetus outside the body. Research focuses on artificial wombs for extremely premature babies: in 2017 a Philadelphia team kept premature lambs alive for weeks in a fluid-filled 'biobag' that supplied oxygen and nutrients. No artificial womb has been used for human babies as of the Reel's posting. The footage, with rows of pods, comes from EctoLife, a 2022 concept video by Hashem Al-Ghaili; it is not a real facility.
DID YOUKNOW?Dredging Up the...Ground?DD-323
Dredging Up the...Ground?
Dredging ships remove sediment and debris from the bottoms of rivers, harbors and seas. They keep waterways navigable, deepen shipping channels and can reclaim land from the sea. They work with suction pipes, mechanical buckets or cutter heads. The footage shows a dredger's hopper and land reclamation; the on-screen credit is Eko Atlantic, a city being built on reclaimed land in Lagos, Nigeria.
DID YOUKNOW?To Break the IceDD-318
To Break the Ice
Icebreakers are ships built to clear paths through sea ice. Their sloped, reinforced bows let them ride up onto the ice so the ship's weight breaks it, and strengthened hulls protect them from damage. They keep polar shipping routes and research expeditions moving. The footage shows a red-hulled icebreaker pushing through pack ice.
DID YOUKNOW?Sharpening Your MindDD-317
Sharpening Your Mind
Before sharpeners, pencils were whittled with knives. The French mathematician Bernard Lassimone patented a pencil sharpener in 1828, and many hand-operated designs followed in the 19th century. Rotary sharpeners use gear-driven helical cutters that turn around the pencil, giving a long, even point. The footage shows an old mechanical sharpener being restored and tested.
DID YOUKNOW?A Prison for Your MindDD-305
A Prison for Your Mind
As of 2024, virtual prisons are a speculative idea, not a system any prison uses. The footage comes from 'Cognify', a concept video that Berlin-based filmmaker and science communicator Hashem Al-Ghaili posted on June 24, 2024. His concept goes further than the Reel's VR headsets: it imagines AI-generated artificial memories implanted into a prisoner's brain so that years of rehabilitation could be experienced in minutes, including seeing a crime from the victim's perspective. Al-Ghaili told Dazed he was motivated by problems such as overcrowding, false imprisonment and ineffective rehabilitation. Snopes reported in 2025 that no such technology exists; implanting false memories has only been shown in a basic form in mice. Commentators also raised ethical concerns about consent and the collection of prisoners' brain data. The footage shows a person in a headset strapped to a chair, with computer-generated scenes.
DID YOUKNOW?Getting to the (Ball)PointDD-304
Getting to the (Ball)Point
A ballpoint pen dispenses thick, oil-based ink over a hard ball, usually steel, brass or tungsten carbide, seated in a socket at the tip. As the ball rolls across the paper, it picks up ink from the reservoir on one side and lays it down on the other, while also acting as a cap that keeps the ink inside from drying out. John J. Loud patented a ballpoint on October 30, 1888, for marking leather, but it was too coarse for letters. Hungarian newspaper editor László Bíró, noticing that newspaper ink dried fast and didn't smudge, developed a pen with viscous ink and filed for a British patent on June 15, 1938. He and his brother György later moved to Argentina, where their pens went on sale. The footage shows close-ups of pen tips, the ball and a pen being machined.
DID YOUKNOW?Knuckle CouplingDD-303
Knuckle Coupling
The knuckle coupler, originally the Janney coupler, was patented by Eli H. Janney, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, in US patent 138,405 on April 29, 1873. Each coupler has a hinged knuckle; when two cars are pushed together, the knuckles swing closed and lock automatically, and a lever lets workers uncouple without stepping between the cars. Before that, link-and-pin couplers required a worker to stand between moving cars to drop a pin, and injuries were common. The Safety Appliance Act of 1893 required automatic couplers on US railroads. Railroads standardized on Janney's mating profile, and coupling accidents fell from 11,710 in 1893 to 2,256 in 1902 even as the workforce grew. Knuckle couplers remain standard in North America. The footage shows a coupler's knuckle opening and closing in close-up.
DID YOUKNOW?Video TrickeryDD-301
Video Trickery
Many CMOS image sensors use a rolling shutter: instead of capturing every pixel at the same instant, they read the frame out row by row, usually top to bottom. When something moves fast during that readout, or the camera itself moves, each row records it at a slightly different moment. The result is skew, wobble ('jello') or strange shapes, like propeller blades that look curved or detached, and flashes that light only part of a frame. A global shutter exposes all pixels at once and avoids this. The footage shows spinning blades and strings distorted on camera.
DID YOUKNOW?2-Billion Dollar B=2DD-295
2-Billion Dollar B=2
The Northrop B-2 Spirit is a US Air Force stealth bomber with a flying-wing shape designed to reduce its radar cross-section. It first flew publicly in 1989. By 1996, the program had produced 21 B-2s at a total cost of $44.7 billion, an average of $2.13 billion per aircraft when research and development are included. The cost of building each additional aircraft, without development, has been estimated at about $737 million in 1997 dollars. Plans for 132 aircraft were cut back as the Cold War ended, which raised the per-plane share of development costs. The B-2 is being succeeded by the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider. The footage shows a B-2 in flight and close-ups of its wing.
DID YOUKNOW?An MRI's SkeletonDD-290
An MRI's Skeleton
The machine in the footage is almost certainly a CT (computed tomography) scanner with its covers off, not an MRI. In a CT scanner, an X-ray tube and detector array are mounted on a ring-shaped gantry that spins rapidly around the patient, and a computer turns the measurements into cross-sectional images. An MRI works differently and has no spinning parts. A strong static magnet lines up hydrogen nuclei in the body, radio-frequency pulses tip them, and stationary gradient coils briefly vary the magnetic field so the signals can be located in space. The nuclei give off radio signals as they relax, and a computer builds images in which tissues differ by how fast they relax. The Reel's description of magnets, radio waves and gradient fields fits MRI; only the 'spinning' parts and the footage belong to CT.
DID YOUKNOW?OVER 0DD-284
OVER 0
Mechanical calculators divide the way people do long division: by subtracting the divisor over and over and counting the subtractions. With a divisor of zero, each subtraction takes nothing away, so the count never ends. Some machines simply keep cycling, carriage and counters spinning, until the operator stops them by hand. Others jam or trip a stop. That behavior is a physical version of why division by zero is undefined in arithmetic: no number multiplied by zero gives a nonzero result, so there's no answer to find. Desktop mechanical calculators were common office tools from the late 1800s until electronic calculators replaced them in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The footage shows a mechanical calculator's carriage and keys in motion, with a hand at the controls.
DID YOUKNOW?You're Spinning Me AroundDD-274
You're Spinning Me Around
A gyroscope is a spinning wheel or rotor mounted so its axis can point in any direction. While it spins, it resists changes to the direction of its axis because of the conservation of angular momentum, so it can balance at odd angles and keep its orientation as its base moves. The same principle is used in navigation instruments. The footage shows a toy gyroscope balancing in several positions.
DID YOUKNOW?Oxidized AluminumDD-271
Oxidized Aluminum
Aluminum is normally protected by a thin oxide layer. Mercury disrupts that layer by forming an amalgam, so the exposed aluminum oxidizes rapidly in air, growing white fibers of aluminum oxide in an exothermic reaction. The process weakens the metal, which is why mercury is kept away from aluminum structures such as aircraft. The footage shows mercury placed on an aluminum plate and the fibrous growth that follows.
DID YOUKNOW?Look Up, Can You See It?DD-258
Look Up, Can You See It?
The International Space Station is a modular space station in low Earth orbit, at about 400 km (250 miles), circling Earth about every 90 minutes. Its first module launched in 1998, and it has been continuously crewed since November 2000. It is a joint project of NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, JAXA and the Canadian Space Agency, and serves as a microgravity laboratory. Because it is large and reflective, it is often visible from the ground as a bright moving point shortly after sunset or before sunrise. The footage shows the station and its crews, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?It IS Rocket ScienceDD-257
It IS Rocket Science
The Space Shuttle was NASA's partly reusable launch system, flown from April 12, 1981, to July 21, 2011. Each stack combined a winged orbiter, a large external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters; the orbiter landed like a glider and was reused. The five orbiters that flew in space, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, made 135 missions, launching satellites and probes, deploying and servicing the Hubble Space Telescope, and building much of the International Space Station. Two orbiters and 14 astronauts were lost, in the Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) disasters. The footage shows shuttle launches, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Eyes in the SkyDD-255
Eyes in the Sky
Thousands of active satellites orbit Earth. Communications satellites relay TV, internet and phone signals; navigation constellations such as the U.S. GPS let receivers calculate their position; weather satellites track clouds and storms; and Earth-observation and science satellites study the climate, land, oceans and space weather. The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched in 1957. The footage shows animated Earth and satellites, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Harder Than BeforeDD-242
Harder Than Before
Steel is an alloy of iron with a small amount of carbon, usually less than 2%, and often other elements. Most steel is made by smelting iron ore with coke in a blast furnace and then refining the iron in a basic oxygen furnace; much of the rest is made by melting scrap in electric arc furnaces. The steel is cast, then rolled or forged into shapes, and finished with heat and surface treatments. According to the World Steel Association, world production was about 1.89 billion tonnes in 2023. The footage shows furnaces, casting and rolling mills, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Spinning a YarnDD-241
Spinning a Yarn
Textiles are made from natural fibers such as cotton, wool and silk, or synthetic fibers such as polyester and nylon. Fibers are cleaned and combed, then spun, which twists them into yarn. Yarn is woven on looms, knitted, or the fibers are bonded into nonwovens to make fabric. The fabric is then dyed or printed and finished. Polyester is now the most produced fiber worldwide. The footage shows spinning, weaving and dyeing in textile mills, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Let's Mix It UpDD-240
Let's Mix It Up
Concrete is a mix of cement, aggregates such as sand and gravel, and water. The cement reacts with water in a process called hydration, binding the aggregates into a hard mass; it hardens by this reaction rather than by drying, which is why it is kept moist while it cures. Strength depends on the proportions, especially the water-to-cement ratio, and on mixing and curing. Ready-mixed concrete is delivered in drum trucks and poured into formwork. It is the most widely used building material, with production commonly estimated at more than 10 billion tonnes a year. The footage shows concrete plants and construction, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?No.1 or No.2DD-239
No.1 or No.2
A wooden pencil's core is not lead but a mix of graphite and clay; more clay makes a harder lead. In the usual method, slats of wood, often incense cedar, are grooved, the leads are laid in and glued, and a second grooved slat goes on top to form a 'sandwich', which is cut into individual pencils. The pencils are shaped, painted and stamped with a brand and grade. In the U.S. the No. 2 grade, roughly HB, is the standard writing pencil. Commonly cited estimates put world output at 14 to 15 billion pencils a year. The footage shows pencil factories, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Future Is NowDD-238
The Future Is Now
Computer chips, or integrated circuits, are made on wafers of very pure silicon. Each wafer is coated with a light-sensitive photoresist and exposed to ultraviolet light through a mask in a step called photolithography, which prints the circuit pattern. Etching removes unwanted material, and the steps of deposition, doping, lithography and etching are repeated many times to build up billions of transistors. Finished wafers are tested and cut into individual dies, which are packaged into chips. The footage shows chip fabs and cleanrooms, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Haha Car Go BrrDD-237
Haha Car Go Brr
Mass car production begins with design and engineering, then sourcing materials such as steel, aluminum and plastics. Sheets of metal are stamped into panels, which robots weld into a body-in-white; parts are also molded and cast. The body is painted, then the powertrain, wiring, interior and trim are added on the assembly line by robots and workers. Finished cars go through inspections and road tests before shipping. Around 90 million motor vehicles were produced worldwide in 2023. The footage shows car factories and assembly lines, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?EnergizerDD-236
Energizer
Lithium-ion batteries power phones, laptops and electric vehicles. Making them starts with mining and refining materials such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. These become the anode (usually graphite) and cathode (a lithium metal oxide), which are coated onto foils, combined with a separator and electrolyte, and sealed into cells. Cells are charged for the first time, aged and tested, then assembled into modules and packs. China dominates production, with most of the world's cell manufacturing capacity in the early 2020s. The footage shows battery factories and assembly lines, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?It Better Be Boron!DD-209
It Better Be Boron!
Boron is element 5, a metalloid. It's an essential micronutrient for plants, needed for cell walls and growth. Adding boron oxide to glass makes borosilicate glass, which has low thermal expansion and resists thermal shock, so it's used for lab glassware and some cookware. Small amounts of boron improve the hardenability of steel, and boron carbide is one of the hardest known materials. Boron is used as a dopant in silicon semiconductors and in fiberglass, and borates such as borax are used in detergents and bleaches. The footage shows lab experiments, glassmaking and fields, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Yeah I DigDD-208
Yeah I Dig
Minecraft is a sandbox video game created by Markus 'Notch' Persson and developed by Mojang Studios, released in full in 2011. Its procedurally generated worlds are built from blocks that players can mine and place, letting them explore, survive and build almost anything. Microsoft bought Mojang in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, with more than 300 million copies sold by 2023. Players have built huge creations and use it in education. The footage shows Minecraft builds and gameplay, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Future of FinanceDD-188
Future of Finance
A cryptocurrency is a digital currency that uses cryptography to secure transactions and usually runs on a decentralized ledger called a blockchain rather than through a central bank. Bitcoin, launched in January 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, was the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Thousands of others, often called altcoins, have followed. Supporters point to lower barriers to access and to privacy; critics and regulators point to price volatility, fraud, and use in illegal activity. Regulation varies widely by country. The footage shows coin graphics and charts, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Quartz CrystalsDD-168
Quartz Crystals
Quartz is silicon dioxide (SiO2) and one of the most common minerals in Earth's continental crust. It forms hexagonal crystals and comes in many varieties; clear, colorless quartz is called rock crystal. Quartz is piezoelectric: mechanical stress produces an electric charge, and an applied voltage makes it flex. Quartz clocks and watches use this, driving a small crystal resonator, usually tuned to 32,768 Hz, and counting its vibrations to keep time. The footage shows quartz crystals, a demonstration spark and a watch movement, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Burj KhalifaDD-158
Burj Khalifa
The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is the world's tallest building at 828 m (2,717 ft). It was designed by Adrian Smith while at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), and it opened in January 2010. Its Y-shaped plan and spiraling setbacks are partly inspired by Islamic architecture and a regional desert flower, and they help 'confuse the wind' by stopping organized vortices from forming. The exterior is clad in reflective glass and aluminum and textured stainless steel panels. The footage shows the tower from the air and from below, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?SAMsDD-152
SAMs
A surface-to-air missile (SAM) is launched from the ground or a ship to destroy aircraft, helicopters, drones or other missiles. Guidance varies: some SAMs ride a radar beam or home on radar energy reflected from the target, some home on infrared (heat), and some combine methods. Systems range from shoulder-fired missiles such as the Stinger to long-range systems such as the Patriot and S-400. SAMs were first used in combat in the Second World War era and became widespread during the Cold War. The footage shows SAM launchers and launches, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?RailgunsDD-151
Railguns
A railgun is an electromagnetic launcher. A very large electric current runs up one rail, through a conductive projectile or armature, and back down the other rail; the magnetic field this creates pushes the projectile along the rails at very high speed. Conventional guns use chemical propellant instead. The US Navy researched railguns for years and tested prototypes, but paused its program in 2021. Japan's defense agency reported test-firing a railgun from a ship in 2023. Problems include rail wear and the huge power the guns need. The footage shows railgun tests and launches, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?HeloDD-150
Helo
Military helicopters fill many roles, including troop transport, reconnaissance, search and rescue, medical evacuation and close air support, because they can hover and land almost anywhere. The Boeing AH-64 Apache is a US attack helicopter that first flew in 1975 and entered service with the US Army in 1986; it is also flown by many other countries. A pinnacle landing is a standard helicopter technique for landing on a peak, ridge or other elevated spot where wind and limited space make the approach harder. It's taught to helicopter pilots generally, not only Apache crews. The footage shows Apaches and other military helicopters, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?SubsDD-149
Subs
A submarine controls its buoyancy with ballast tanks. Flooding the main ballast tanks with seawater makes the boat heavier than the water it displaces, so it submerges; blowing the water out with compressed air makes it lighter, so it surfaces. Smaller trim tanks and the boat's diving planes fine-tune its depth and balance underwater. Submarines are used by navies for patrol, reconnaissance and deterrence, and research submersibles explore the deep sea. The first submarine to sink an enemy warship was the Confederate H. L. Hunley, in 1864. The footage shows submarines surfacing and underway, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?TyphoonDD-148
Typhoon
The Eurofighter Typhoon is a twin-engine multirole fighter built by a consortium of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo. It first flew in 1994 and entered service in 2003. It uses a canard-delta layout, with small foreplanes (canards) ahead of a delta wing. The design is aerodynamically unstable, and a digital fly-by-wire system keeps it under control, which gives the aircraft high agility. It's flown by Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain and Austria, and also by Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar. The footage shows Typhoons in flight and on the ground, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?DestroyerDD-147
Destroyer
The Arleigh Burke class is a class of guided-missile destroyers in the US Navy. The lead ship, USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51), was commissioned in 1991, and more than 70 have been commissioned since, making it one of the longest-running destroyer production programs. The ships are built around the Aegis Combat System and its SPY-1 phased-array radar, and they're designed for air defense, anti-submarine warfare and land attack. The class is named after Admiral Arleigh Burke, a destroyer commander in the Second World War who later served as Chief of Naval Operations. The footage shows Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at sea, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?BlackbirdDD-117
Blackbird
The Lockheed SR-71 'Blackbird' is a retired long-range, high-altitude, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed in the 1960s by Lockheed's Skunk Works from the earlier A-12. It first flew in 1964 and was operated by the US Air Force. Its standard tactic against surface-to-air missiles was to accelerate and outrun them, and no SR-71 was lost to enemy fire. It set the absolute speed record for an air-breathing crewed aircraft, 3,529.6 km/h (2,193.2 mph), in 1976, which still stands. The Air Force retired it in 1998 and NASA flew its last in 1999. The footage shows SR-71s in flight and on the ground, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Now You Know Rocket LeagueDD-109
Now You Know Rocket League
In this talking-head Reel I talk about my own history with Rocket League: playing since undergrad, an estimated 6,000 hours, and why its learning curve hooked me. Every movement is manual, unlike sports games where players move on their own. Rocket League is a vehicular soccer game developed and published by Psyonix, released in July 2015 for PlayStation 4 and Windows, and later on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. Epic Games bought Psyonix in 2019, and the game went free-to-play in September 2020. Gameplay clips play under the talking-head section.
DID YOUKNOW?Ada All-TimeDD-095
Ada All-Time
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was an English mathematician who worked with Charles Babbage on his proposed Analytical Engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer. In 1843 she translated an article by Luigi Menabrea about the engine from French and added her own notes, which were longer than the article. Note G sets out an algorithm for computing Bernoulli numbers on the engine, often called the first published computer program. She also suggested the machine could act on things other than numbers, such as music. Historians debate how much credit belongs to her versus Babbage. The engine was never built. The footage shows portraits of Lovelace and Babbage, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?BioInspired RobotsDD-082
BioInspired Robots
Bioinspired robotics designs machines that copy how animals move and sense. Engineers have built flapping-wing drones modeled on insects and birds, robots that climb like geckos, and robotic fish that swim with flexible bodies. Copying these designs can make robots more agile and better suited to particular environments.