World of Engineering

Wire straightener tool

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest of the Ancient Wonders of the World and the last one that remains largely intact.

Step drill bit

Mechanical reasoning test

Diamond has exceptional heat conductivity (better than copper)

Interesting: The name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt”, meaning “play well”. Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but LEGO Group claims this is only a coincidence.

The optimist says: “The glass is half full.” The pessimist says: “The glass is half empty.” The engineer says: “The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”

Almost every argument about energy comes down to one number: energy density. How much energy is stored per kilogram of fuel or material. The numbers in MJ/kg: • Wood: 15 • Coal: 24 • Crude oil: 44 • Natural gas: 54 • Hydrogen (compressed): 120 • Lithium-ion battery: 0.7 • Uranium (fission): 80,000,000 • Hydrogen (fusion): 690,000,000 Read those last two again. A kilogram of uranium contains more energy than 3,000 tonnes of coal. A kilogram of hydrogen fusion fuel contains 45 million times more energy than a kilogram of oil. This is why: • Batteries struggle to replace liquid fuels in aviation and shipping. Energy density is 60x lower. • Nuclear submarines can run for 25 years without refuelling. • Fusion, if cracked, ends energy scarcity permanently – not just for decades, but for the lifetime of the Sun. The energy transition debate isn't about ideology. It's about physics. Every energy source is competing against millions of years of chemistry packed into fossil fuels – and, eventually, against the nucleus itself. Know the numbers. The debate becomes clearer.

On July 12, 2026, researchers recreated the physics of extracting energy from a spinning black hole, using a stationary device on a lab bench. The phenomenon is called the Penrose process. Theorized in 1969: a spinning black hole has an outer region – the ergosphere – where spacetime itself is dragged into rotation. Objects entering this region can exit with more energy than they entered with, stealing rotational energy from the black hole. Nobody had ever built a device that demonstrated this principle. Until now. The lab experiment used a device that produces synthetic ultrafast rotation, mimicking the frame-dragging of a spinning black hole's ergosphere without requiring an actual black hole. Energy was extracted. The physics held. Why engineers care: The Penrose process is one of the most energy-dense theoretical mechanisms in physics. A maximally spinning black hole could, in principle, release 29% of its mass as usable energy. For context: nuclear fission releases 0.1% of mass as energy. We're not building black hole power plants tomorrow. But demonstrating the physics in a controlled lab environment is how every engineering revolution starts. First: prove the principle. Then: build the machine.

Thread restoration

Sonic the Hedgehog is blue because of the Doppler Effect.

The word engineer comes from a Latin word meaning ‘cleverness’

⛽️ Petrol in North America has a lower octane rating than the rest of the world because the US and Canada have a stricter way of measuring it. "Regular" gasoline sold in the US as 87 octane would actually be considered 92 in the rest of the world and "midgrade" fuel sold as 89 octane would be 95.

The original iPhone (and even the second-gen 3G) couldn't copy/paste.

Intel, in full Intel Corporation, company's name comes from “integrated electronics.”

The material that built modern civilisation is now one of its biggest engineering challenges. The solution isn't to stop using concrete. It's to reinvent it. The Romans left us a 2,000-year-old clue. We're just finally taking it seriously. [7/7]

THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM Standard reinforced concrete has a lifespan of 50–100 years. The steel rebar inside rusts. Rust expands. Concrete cracks. Structural capacity degrades. Most of the world's concrete infrastructure was built between 1950 and 1990. It is now between 36 and 76 years old. The replacement wave is arriving. [6/7]

Concrete is the most used material on Earth after water. We produce 4.4 billion tonnes of it per year. And it's one of the biggest problems in engineering. [1/7]