Combustion is a push. Everything in an engine exists to convert a series of pushes into smooth rotation, at speed, repeatedly, while managing the heat and friction that produces. Here…
There is a constraint on ships that has no equivalent on land and that determines almost everything about how vessels are shaped and sized.
The constraint is that a vessel…
There is a widespread assumption about roads that is understandable and backwards.
The assumption is that the hard black surface is the road, and that what lies beneath it is…
The organism does one thing: it consumes sugars and produces gas and alcohol. Bread keeps the gas and loses the alcohol; brewing keeps the alcohol and loses the gas. Everything…
A moving bicycle with nobody on it can stay upright for a considerable distance, correcting itself when pushed. Working out why took far longer than anybody expected, and the popular…
There is a difference between two ways of putting a mark on a surface, and almost everything about the history of writing materials follows from it.
The first is to…