The Secret Life of Components: Springs [video]

They showed these at my school. Some images like the beer can mortar, the man running with a wobbly resonating plank, and a pyrotechnic pellet firing gun are indelible on the mind of my cohort. At least the easily excitable boys.

In one of these shows there's a demonstration of magnetic tape. As far as I remember they attach a coil of wire to a loudspeaker and demonstrate that you can get sound from wiggling a magnet near the coil, and magnetism by shouting at the speaker.

They then literally file some iron filings on to some sticky tape and move it past the coil as someone shouts into the speaker. They then do the same thing again, but this time the sound of shouting comes out if the speaker.

Even when I'm writing this now I'm thinking, "well of course it works, that's obviously the whole principle", but I'm sure I only feel that because I saw the demonstration.

His companion Rex Garrod also stars, and was one of the greatest ever competitors of UK Robot Wars (with Cassius I/II).

Tim is so pleased with the reception these videos have had! He is exactly as knowledgeable and gentlemanly as he comes across. I’ve learned a lot from him!

If you get the chance to visit his arcades in London or Suffolk I highly recommend it. The combination of humour, physical activity and engineering is wonderful.

Tim Hunkin has also released remastered versions of his The Secret Life Of Machines TV programmes on the same channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/timhunkin1/videos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Machines

Another great use of springs: vehicle recovery ropes

https://youtu.be/qiIXY9BpKww

The guy doing the demonstration runs Winder Towing in Hurricane, UT and has one of the greatest YouTube channels I’ve found in a very long time. Just nice people helping others while solving difficult problems in a beautiful environment. It makes me want to move to Utah and build a funky wheelin’ rig.

https://youtube.com/c/MattsOffRoadRecovery

Now I want to visit https://www.novelty-automation.com/ next time I’m in central London :)

I am homeschooling my kid and this Secret Life of Components series is part of our Design and Technology curriculum. We've always done a lot of making and building, and Tim's practical knowledge of so many things really expands our know-how.

This is great as charming! It’s this stuff that I actually want on YouTube.

I’ve just found that making things with my hands is the best way for me to relax and get a break from everything digital. I’ll be binge watching this tonight.

I grew up watching the Machines series. It and my grandfather are the reason I am an engineer today AND into Jazz.

I drove myself crazy trying to find the exact version of Take 5 he was using-- this was in the early 90's, before you could just ask Siri what a song was :-)

For a minute I thought this video was about @Component classes in the Spring Framework

I should spend less time in IDEA

His new videos have been fantastic.

What I remember from my intro ME class: energy in a elongated coil spring is stored as torsion of the wire and the max strain is on the surface so make sure you don't knick or scratch it.

Youtube algo blessed me with his channel recommendation couple of weeks ago. Finally looking forward visiting UK to appreciate his arcade and the Museum of Everything Else.

Imagine what a dystopian future with no springs will be like:

https://youtu.be/le2eB2xtvBQ