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Everyday Engineering: Understanding the Marvels of Daily Life

Season 1
Everyday Engineering: Understanding the Marvels of Daily Life is an indispensable guide to the way things work in the world around you. Conducting this eye-opening tour is Professor Stephen Ressler of the United States Military Academy at West Point, an award-winning civil engineer and a nationally honored leader in engineering education.
IMDb 6.8201536 episodesTV-PG
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Episodes

  1. S1 E1 - Engineering and Technology in Your World
    November 12, 2015
    31min
    TV-PG
    Begin by considering how engineering and technology influence your daily life - not just high-tech devices but also ordinary machines, buildings, and infrastructure that most people take for granted. In this series, you will learn to notice and understand these overlooked marvels.
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  2. S1 E2 - Your House as an Engineered System
    November 12, 2015
    28min
    TV-PG
    In the first of four segments on your house as a technological system, review the eight engineered subsystems that go into modern dwellings. Then discover the miracle of building codes, which ensure that every new house is safe, constructible, and reasonably economical without involving an engineer in each design.
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  3. S1 E3 - Three Structural Systems for Load Bearing
    November 12, 2015
    33min
    TV-PG
    Examine one of the most important aspects of modern building codes: the design of a house for structural load carrying. Focus on two of the three major approaches to this crucial function: bearing wall construction and heavy timber frame construction. Both have been used for thousands of years.
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  4. S1 E4 - Platform-Framed Housing Construction
    November 12, 2015
    35min
    TV-PG
    Turn to the third major technique for building a house: platform-framed construction, which is a flexible arrangement of lightweight modular floor platforms, wall panels, and roof trusses. This efficient approach has been widely used in the U.S. for over a century.
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  5. S1 E5 - The Building Envelope
    November 12, 2015
    29min
    TV-PG
    Now that your house is framed, it needs a building envelope that can shed rainwater and melting snow, and also keep precipitation from entering through the foundation. Learn about the five integrated layers of protection: shingles and cladding, drainage plane, insulation, vapor barrier, and drywall.
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  6. S1 E6 - Site Design and Storm Runoff
    November 12, 2015
    29min
    TV-PG
    What happens to the precipitation that falls on your house, your lot, and your neighbors' properties? Study the problem of site design, focusing on how storm runoff is directed away from homes and returned to a natural watercourse, without causing flooding along the way.
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  7. S1 E7 - Dam, Reservoir, and Aqueduct Design
    November 12, 2015
    33min
    TV-PG
    Now consider the water that you want in your house - for drinking, cooking, and bathing. Examine the technologies that collect water from a watershed and transport it to a municipality. Explore different designs for dams, and marvel at the Catskill Aqueduct that carries fresh water to New York City.
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  8. S1 E8 - Water Treatment and Distribution
    November 12, 2015
    29min
    TV-PG
    Learn how raw water from nature is treated to make it safe for drinking. Then trace the distribution system that supplies water under pressure to users. Professor Ressler demonstrates two crucial technologies in this system: the flocculation chamber and the water tower.
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  9. S1 E9 - Wastewater Disposal and Treatment
    November 12, 2015
    30min
    TV-PG
    What happens to the 150 gallons of water that the average person uses and then sends down the drain each day? Delve into wastewater disposal and treatment. Among the details you investigate are the S-shaped trap in a waste pipe and that most ingenious of plumbing fixtures: the toilet.
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  10. S1 E10 - Fossil Fuels: Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas
    November 12, 2015
    30min
    TV-PG
    Coal, oil, and natural gas power the vast majority of electrical generating plants in use today. Learn how fossil fuels are extracted from the earth and how new technologies such as longwall mining and fracking have revolutionized the industry. Also examine some of the environmental drawbacks of these endeavors.
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  11. S1 E11 - Power Generation from Coal
    November 12, 2015
    31min
    TV-PG
    Focus on the dominant source of electricity in the U.S. today: coal. Begin by reviewing concepts from thermodynamics that explain how power plants work. Then follow the processes that turn a hopper full of coal into abundant electrical power, extracting the maximum amount of energy along the way.
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  12. S1 E12 - Oil, Gas, and Nuclear Power
    November 12, 2015
    30min
    TV-PG
    Probe the tradeoffs of oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission for generating electrical power. For example, natural gas is plentiful and flexible, but it involves fracking and produces carbon dioxide emissions. By contrast, nuclear power produces essentially zero emissions but poses potentially catastrophic safety risks.
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  13. S1 E13 - Renewable Sources of Electricity
    November 12, 2015
    32min
    TV-PG
    Survey the three most important sources of renewable energy: hydropower, wind power, and solar power. Look at the inner workings of hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, solar-thermal power stations, and photovoltaic arrays to see how each takes a renewable energy source and converts it into electricity.
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  14. S1 E14 - Electrical Power Transmission: The Grid
    November 12, 2015
    34min
    TV-PG
    Study the technological marvel called the grid - the system that transmits electricity from its point of generation to users. Learn why electrical transmission lines come in threes, why AC power is used instead of DC, and the reason transmission voltages are so high.
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  15. S1 E15 - Electrical Power Distribution
    November 12, 2015
    30min
    TV-PG
    Trace the distribution of electrical power from a substation to your home. Begin with the transformer, discovering how this crucial device functions. By the end, you will be able to read a utility pole like a book, analyzing the different services attached to these ubiquitous structures.
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  16. S1 E16 - Everyday Thermodynamics: Refrigeration
    November 12, 2015
    31min
    TV-PG
    Unravel the secret of refrigeration by focusing on the connection between heat, temperature, work, and energy. Then see how these thermodynamic concepts apply to the vapor-compression cycle in your refrigerator or air conditioner. Discover that a heat pump operates the same way.
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  17. S1 E17 - Heating, Ventilating, and Air-Conditioning
    November 12, 2015
    31min
    TV-PG
    Explore heating, ventilating, and air conditioning - known as HVAC. Begin by learning how thermostats regulate temperature. Then review how heat transfer takes place, and investigate the pros and cons of heating with a furnace, boiler, and heat pump. See how air conditioning integrates into each of these systems.
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  18. S1 E18 - Home Energy Efficiency
    November 12, 2015
    33min
    TV-PG
    Delve into the green building movement, which promotes structures that use natural resources more efficiently while reducing environmental impact. Focus on minimizing energy consumption through a well-insulated, airtight building envelope; energy-efficient windows and doors; and energy-efficient HVAC systems and appliances.
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  19. S1 E19 - Passive Solar and Net-Zero-Energy Homes
    November 12, 2015
    32min
    TV-PG
    How much energy can you save with a properly designed house? Would you believe all of it? Trace the trend in passive solar and net-zero-energy homes that are engineered to stay comfortable year-round by exploiting sunlight in winter and shielding against it in summer, with minimal operating costs.
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  20. S1 E20 - The Plain Old Telephone Service
    November 12, 2015
    30min
    TV-PG
    Begin your look at telecommunications technology by tracking the landline telephone system, known in the trade as "plain old telephone service." Follow the pair of copper wires from your landline phone to the multi-pair cables strung from power poles to the all-important local exchange and beyond.
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  21. S1 E21 - The Global Telecommunications Network
    November 12, 2015
    31min
    TV-PG
    Investigate the beauty and complexity of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Optimized for transmission of the human voice, it comprises a vast array of conventional phone lines, fiber-optic cables, microwave links, and other media. Trace its evolution to the remarkable system in use today.
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  22. S1 E22 - Cellular Phone Technology
    November 12, 2015
    30min
    TV-PG
    Why is cell phone service sometimes so unpredictable? Get inside the cellular network to learn how clever engineering makes a surprisingly large number of two-way conversations possible over a very narrow broadcast spectrum. Also see how the system leads to dead spots, dropped calls, and other familiar cell phone hassles.
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  23. S1 E23 - Satellites and Satellite Communications
    November 12, 2015
    32min
    TV-PG
    Take wireless communications to a higher level: space. First master the rudiments of rockets, orbits, and satellite operations. Then focus on commercial satellite services such as television, radio, Internet, telephone, and navigation. Calculate the ideal orbit for communications satellites, and investigate the workings of the Global Positioning System.
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  24. S1 E24 - Simple Machines around the House
    November 12, 2015
    33min
    TV-PG
    Nothing embodies everyday engineering like simple machines - the basic mechanical devices used for thousands of years that we rely on more than we may realize. Probe the wonders of the inclined plane, screw, wedge, lever, wheel-and-axle, and pulley, and ponder their myriad applications.
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  25. S1 E25 - User-Centered Design
    November 12, 2015
    30min
    TV-PG
    Using the faucet as an example, study the bewildering number of ways that hot and cold water can be delivered into a sink, reflecting the challenges of designing everyday things. Along the way, consider the principles that go into a successful design: affordances, signifiers, mapping, constraints, and feedback.
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Subtitles
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Producers
The Great Courses
Cast
Stephen Ressler
Studio
The Great Courses
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