Fiber optic cables: How they work. Credit: EngineeringGuy.com.

There apparently are a number of readers of this blog who are always on the search for videos to introduce basic materials science and engineering concepts to students, especially at the secondary school level. In the past, we have featured the excellent series by Yale’s Ainissa Ramirez. One of the other better sets of videos I have come across are the ones featuring “The Engineering Guy”—aka, Bill Hammack, a member of the faculty in the Dept. of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The emphasis is on creating fun explanations (many of which could be reproduced in classrooms) that only take a few minutes to demonstrate.

The video above, for example illustrates (albeit, at a very basic level) many of the concepts contained in a Corning video on advanced fiber optics engineering that I posted several weeks ago, except that it uses a laser and bucket filled with ethylene glycol.

Several of the other videos by the EngineeringGuy.com team are very much applicable to introductory materials science. Below are a few others, on lasers, concrete and tantalum capacitors, but be sure to explore the group’s YouTube channel for others that may be of interest.

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