Episode 21: Scaling Laws
In episode 21, Shane and Dave explain how things lose features when they get bigger and why. Why can full-sized helipcopters not fly upside down, but small RC helipcopters can?? And so much more!
Deep, thorough explanations about physics, engineering, and technology.
Our promise: we only explain topics we know well. No faking!
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In episode 21, Shane and Dave explain how things lose features when they get bigger and why. Why can full-sized helipcopters not fly upside down, but small RC helipcopters can?? And so much more!
In episode 20, Shane and Dave explain skiing! First principles: Types, materials, physics, techniques.
In episode 19, Shane and Dave explain high performance driving:
In episode 18, Shane and Dave explain how the internet inventors were able to cram billions of IP addreses into a much smaller space. And, this is how your home internet connection works too!
In episode 17, Shane and Dave explain the surprising science of rainbows. Can you touch one? Does everyone else see the same rainbow that you see?
In episode 16, Shane and Dave explain how GPTs work. GPTs are a type of large language model, and the most famous is ChatGPT.
In episode 15, Shane and Dave explain the Domain Name Service, which is how your web browser figures out the IP addresses to use for domain names like google.com
In episode 14, Shane and Dave explain how Alexa works. Alexa is the most popular household voice assistant. Find out how Alexa works on the inside!
In episode 13, Shane and Dave explain how the internet ensures that data is delivered between computers reliably and in order.
In episode 12, Shane and Dave continue explaining the saga of telecommunications. Computer networks! How the technologies work that power the internet.
In episode 11, Shane and Dave continue explaining computers. This is the 2nd part in a to-be-determined-length saga.
In episode 10, Shane and Dave start to explain how computers work, from the very bottom: transistors, digital logic, binary, math, and much more. This will be the first part of an awesome saga!
In episode 9, Shane and Dave correct some errors from episode 8 about eclipses, and add even more explaining!
What makes eclipses happen. Learn about the physics that causes the spectacular phenomena that turns day into night and the moon into blood.
Onward to party lines! After the telephone was invented, the next thing people wanted to do was talk to their friends. But this was expensive! In this episode, we explain how the telephone gained mass market adoption, including the party line, and finally, the first digital (yes, ones and zeros) telephone transmission.
Technology advanced from the telegraph, but how did it work? Did you know they tried using compasses? What about error correction? Did you know Thomas Edison figured out a way to transmit 4 independent telegraph conversations on a single wire? We promise you will be surprised to learn how the telephone evolved from the telegraph.
In this episode:
We promise you; you don’t know what the telegraph is. You think you know, but did you know the first telegraphs had no wires? Did you know they used 30-foot tall towers with people standing on top of them? Did you know that electrical telegraphs were originally discovered thanks to a frog leg?
Gordon Moore declared that CPUs would get better and better at a very ambitious rate, and it turns out, he has been mostly right for over 50 years! We talk about the technology innovations that have allowed Moore’s amazing law to continue from 1965 to the present.
What are cookies on the web? You’ve heard about them. Now go deep on what they are, how they work, and what they let your web browser do.
Part 2 in the thrilling saga: The surprising physics of sailing!
This is the second episode of Explainercast where Shane and Dave explain sailing!
We covered more physics, optimization strategies, racing, and how to get started in sailing.
The surprising physics of sailing!
This is the first episode of Explainercast where Shane and Dave explain sailing! This is the 1st episode in a series about sailing.
The main question to answer is whether this will truly be 1 of only 2 total episodes on sailing given Shane’s profound depth of knowledge on this topic.