Diary of a Network Geek

With videos, not math!

Not so many months ago, my wife and I were talking about a plumbing problem in our house. It was relatively small and has long since been fixed, but our discussion hinged on water pressure. Specifically, in this case, water pressure in the house and how that meant that there was always water in the horizontal pipes. Honestly, I hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but, of course, the pipes have to be filled with water the whole time, and under pressure, for water to be forced out of a shower on the second floor. Not enough pressure to fill the pipes with water means that there’s not enough force to create a flow. Makes total sense when you think about it, right? But, have you ever wondered how that pressure is created before it makes it to your house? That process is due to the miracles of civil engineering.
It’s also explained via helpful videos for the curious on the Practical Engineering YouTube Channel. In fact, water towers and the hydrosystems that allow us to enjoy showers, instead of having to use a hand-pump to fill a bath, are covered in the playlist titled Public Works; Season 1. But, they also explain concrete, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and more! It’s definitely a video destination where you can waste hours and hours of time watching videos about the miracles of the modern world.
And, it’s educational, in case you need an excuse to watch these instead of doing your actual work on a Friday afternoon!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words, as so many of them have on Fridays.

Science is cool.

Okay, let’s be real here; some science is cooler than others.
Seriously, all that stuff about finding faster-than-light particles is awesome, but, it’s mostly invisible to us.  As a kid, one of my favorite places in the entire world was the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.  I loved it because it animated science and taught the principles and ideas in such a creative way that many of them have stuck with me as an adult.
One of the coolest exhibits was around soap bubbles.  Well, soap bubbles filled with natural gas.  From this exhibit, I learned that bubbles are round, no matter what shape the tool used to create them is, because they’re an equalization of pressure inside and outside the bubble, which always forms a sphere.  I also learned that natural gas bubbles explode when they hit a flame.
What can I tell you?  I’ve always loved fire and this museum played to that.

So, in partial homage to that exhibit, here is a bubble display of a slightly different kind: Bubbles and ferromagnetic liquid.
They don’t explode, but it is pretty damn amazing to watch.
Besides, it’s Friday and if you’re reading this, it’s not like you have anything else to do, so go ahead and check it out!