Practical Engineering

Designing and building a pulser pump A pump with no moving parts, able to lift water above its source, quietly serving a hillside fortress centuries ago. It is clever, effective, and, all these years later, mostly unknown today.

A few of the things I love about runways Let's dive into some of the construction techniques and engineering requirements for runways that you don’t really notice when you’re a passenger looking through the window.

An overview of the engineering behind stormwater ponds Part park, part plumbing, mostly hiding in plain sight, they are often carefully tuned pieces of infrastructure that help keep the city’s head above water.

A comparison of hobby tunnels and large public infrastructure projects. A little exploration into modern tunnel construction methods used in public infrastructure and how those lessons can be applied to endeavors of the more homemade variety.

Earthquakes are such a challenge in engineering: unpredictable both in time and intensity. But I love this solution of base isolation because it’s so intuitive. It’s something my five-year-old would come up with: just put a suspension system on a building.

The story of the LA aqueduct in a nutshell: The project seemed obvious from an engineering perspective. But it many ways, it was not only unscrupulous, but also short-sighted.

An overview of fuse plug and fusible gate spillways Most of the largest dams in the world have gated spillways with whole teams of staff dedicated to their operation. But it’s still a challenge, especially for small owners like cities. So there is another option, kind of in between controlled and uncontrolled spillways, and its use is growing worldwide.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Teton Dam Failure. It was one of the most dramatic and catalyzing dam failures of the 20th century in the US.

The garden hose is a backyard version of the same problem engineers and operators deal with every day: how much flow can you get through a real system, and what does it cost you in pressure?

The wild story of Mosul Dam in northern Iraq. For the past 40 years or so, the foundation problems at Mosul Dam have been ongoing, scrutinized by some of the most preeminent engineers across the world and complicated by politics, bureaucracy, and armed conflict.

The bizarre science of washboards on unpaved roads The more we understand the physics of washboarding, the better we can engineer roads that stay safe, smooth, and reliable.

The complex engineering involved in demolishing the I-94 Mississippi River Bridge.

Based on a chapter from Disasters By Design: How Engineering Failures Shaped the Modern World by Grady Hillhouse.