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1937 film explains how a car differential works

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Re: 1937 film explains how a car differential works

#81

Post by segfaultbuserr »

tzs wrote: post #66
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #65

If you enjoy this, don't miss the video lecture on World War 2-era mechanical fire control computers by the U.S. Navy. I learned you can do a lot of computations with gears and shafts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwf5mAlI7Ug

Another great older film is "Similarities of Wave Behavior" [1] from Bell Labs. It was aimed at college students, and covers in a very clear way these topics: reflection of waves from free and clamped ends, superposition, standing waves and resonance, energy loss by impedance mismatching, and reduction of energy loss by quarter-wave and tapered-section transformers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DovunOxlY1k

I always use this video to explain how Time Domain Reflectometry finds a broken cable in a wall. Not everyone is familiar with the idea that a cable going to nowhere can have voltage and current.

Re: 1937 film explains how a car differential works

#82

Post by simias »

nabla9 wrote: post #14

The style in those old films is so relaxing and pedagogically great. Has anyone else noticed that today's educational content intended for adults increasingly uses a format that was regionally only used for very young children? There is almost always personality emoting and doing accidentally on purpose funny things and laughing, exaggerating everything to keep people engaged.

It's something that as a French person associate a lot with the USA, although the cultural influence of America is so great that it's been borrowed by many other cultures as a "hip" thing to do. Everything is uh-may-zin in America. Everything is "WOW" and "FLAVOUR BLASTED" and ends with an exclamation point.

I often mock some of my American friends by mimicking them when they say that some rather mundane thing is "AMAZING" or "OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE IT" or "THIS IS INSANE" and no, Mark, it's not insane, it's just a decent piece of a cake.

Of course my default French blasé attitude towards everything errs the other way, there's probably a compromise to be found. But at least when I say that I found something to be "amazing" my friends generally take note, because it's not something I say lightly.

That's sort of the main issue for me, it's like the loudness wars for music mixing, when people tell you how to unclog your drain as if it was the most amazing thing that ever happened to them the baseline is completely skewed.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Re: 1937 film explains how a car differential works

#83

Post by ben509 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #37
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the subject of an entire book by Neil Postman called "Amusing Ourselves To Death" (1985), including a chapter called "Teaching as an Amusing Activity". Some excerpts from the book: > “Dr. Ruth Westheimer is a psychologist who has a popular radio program and a nightclub act in which she informs her audiences about sex in all of its infinite variety and in language once reserved for the bedroom and street corne…

> She is almost as entertaining as the Reverend Billy Graham Can someone explain this to me? Billy Graham is... the last person I’d think of as an amusing figure.

Amusing probably isn't the right word, probably captivating is better. Preaching is a very well developed art; listen to preachers and they're always telling a story of some sort, the story goes to lows and then up to highs, they draw that story back to the lives of their audience and then finish with a call to action to make their lives better. Even details like the preacher's cadence and the songs and rituals are well thought out and tested to keep people engaged. It also helps that the bible is essentially a collection of stories that touch on fundamental themes of the human condition and that Jesus is a universally relatable figure.

Re: 1937 film explains how a car differential works

#85

Post by thechao »

tzs wrote: post #68

A good thing about that film is that after seeing it if I can't remember how a differential works I usually can remember the steps they took to get to how a differential works and then figure it out myself from there. That suggests that it didn't just tell me how a differential works. It taught me how someone who needs to invent a differential should think about the problem.

There’s another type of differential called a “spur gear” differential, where none of the gears are at right angles. It’s a much stronger design than a bevel gear differential, but also has a much larger diameter. It’s classic application is in farm equipment.

Re: 1937 film explains how a car differential works

#86

Post by kenjackson »

ehnto wrote: post #46
nabla9 wrote: post #14

The style in those old films is so relaxing and pedagogically great. Has anyone else noticed that today's educational content intended for adults increasingly uses a format that was regionally only used for very young children? There is almost always personality emoting and doing accidentally on purpose funny things and laughing, exaggerating everything to keep people engaged.

I get so tired out by the constant filler in written and video articles of education. At the same time, the internet is becoming harder and harder to search for specific bits of information in lists, encyclopedias or other easily referenced and digestible formats. Earlier today I was trying to find a list of all Alfa Romeo models to identify a car, and all the top results were ten paragraphs of SEO infused filler bul…

I searched for Alfa Romeo models and my top hit was Wikipedia that listed all the models (I think).

Re: 1937 film explains how a car differential works

#87

Post by kodoque2 »

typon wrote: post #80
bluetomcat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Person-to-person interactions have changed dramatically since those days. Western culture had a sense of duty and progress that is now questioned by the postmodern intellectual elites. The emphasis today is on "enjoying yourself" in your own bubble, and debating "grand moral standards" is even ridiculed.

Just Coursera has more high quality educational content than all these silly videos that were ever produced combined. Western society moved forward - unlocking education from ivory tower universities and making it freely accessible to students around the world.

Without going down the "moral decay" debate and with all due respect to the coursera content, pedagogically wise nothing touch old video content (check out also the ATT science brief), like wise for the science books. It is only very recently that we have content producer like 3blue1brown or learnengineering that start to match or even exceeds those.

Re: 1937 film explains how a car differential works

#89

Post by tqi »

The lack of background music and pace is really interesting to me. Compared to a typical "how it's made" video [1] (which I feel has a similar level of detail), this video feels significantly more digestible. Those moments of silence feel totally alien and out of place in today's style, but I think contributes positively to my ability to understand and process the information.

[1] https://youtu.be/8gno0_emzo8

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