Transport
Discover facts about transport. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Transport
Why Skip-It toys were so hard on your shins
Swinging a heavy plastic ball on a string around your ankle meant you had to constantly hop over it. Miscalculating the jump resulted in the heavy…
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Why planes take off faster into a headwind
The absolute best way to leave the ground quickly is to have the wind violently scream directly into your face. Because lift is generated entirely by air…
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Industrial conveyor belts rely entirely on raw friction
A massive motorized cylinder spins a continuous loop of fabric, pulling heavy items along purely because they are rough enough to grip. It is essentially just…
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Why horses can breathe only through their noses
If their nose gets stuffed up, they are in serious trouble. A flap of tissue in their throat permanently separates their breathing passage from their…
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Apollo astronauts said Moon dust smelled like gunpowder
You would think the untouched lunar surface smells pristine, but it reeks of a chaotic gunfight. Astronauts returning to their landing modules after moonwalks…
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Why three-legged races are so difficult
Tying your leg to another human fundamentally ruins thousands of years of bipedal evolution. It requires extreme coordination to accomplish a distance that a…
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Why jet skis were inspired by snowmobiles
Kawasaki brought the Jet Ski to the mainstream in the 1970s, turning peaceful lakes into obnoxiously loud racetracks. The original concept was literally just…
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Strait of Gibraltar passenger ferries connect two continents
If you want to casually commute from Europe to Africa, you just buy a ticket and sit on a boat for an hour. It completely trivializes the massive geopolitical…
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Why the London Tube keeps getting hotter
The original Victorian commuters actually used the Tube to cool down during the summer. But after a century of friction from heavy brakes and millions of…
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Pan Am took reservations for flights to the Moon
Delusional marketing was at an all-time high during the Space Race. In 1968, Pan Am launched the "First Moon Flights Club," offering optimistic civilians a…
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Drop-through longboards mount trucks through deck holes
Why bolt the trucks to the bottom when you can cut a hole and shove them straight through? Drop-through boards lower the deck's standing platform closer to…
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Singapore makes you buy the right to own a car
Traffic doesn't exist if only the mega-rich can afford to participate. To stop the island nation from becoming a permanent traffic jam, the government…
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Sleeping on the cabin floor is strictly forbidden
No matter how incredibly desperate you are to stretch out your aching spine, utilizing the dirty carpet as a bed is completely banned. Crew members will…
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Extruded snowboard bases retain less wax than sintered ones
A classic example of getting exactly what you pay for in the world of sliding planks. Extruded bases are created by simply melting plastic and spreading it…
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Houseboats are mostly just unmoving floating homes
Many of these supposedly aquatic vessels have power units that haven't functioned in decades. They remain permanently tied to docks, dodging land taxes while…
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Hydrofoil passenger boats lift their hulls to glide faster
Water resistance makes boats annoyingly slow, so these ferries just hoist their entire bodies out of the water on metal stilts. Passengers get to blast across…
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Boxcars enclose standard palletized freight
The absolute most generic piece of rail equipment in existence. A completely enclosed metal rectangle featuring sliding side doors, designed strictly to keep…
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Why cars have a third brake light
That third red light staring at you from the rear windshield is installed to sit directly in your line of sight. It ensures maximum glaring annoyance while…
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Gated biological tunnels for charged atoms
Cell membranes despise charged particles, flatly refusing to let them pass without heavy regulation. Ion channels exist as highly selective, gated biological…
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V-shaped airplane tails combine two wings into one
Standard aircraft have separate vertical and horizontal tail fins, which adds unnecessary weight and drag. By simply angling two fins into a harsh V shape,…
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Bicycle saddles feature intentional cutouts
Hook: That massive hole in the middle of a bike seat is not for ventilation, sadly. Explanation: Prolonged cycling puts immense, damaging pressure on the…
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Mumbai trains have a crowding level called “Super Dense Crush Load”
When your commuter rail system transports over seven million people a day, standard capacity metrics become a cute joke. The Mumbai Suburban Railway…
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To turn right, motorcyclists first steer left
Pushing the handlebars in the actual direction you want to go at high speeds will immediately toss you into a ditch. To lean the two-wheeled machine properly,…
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France built a canal to avoid the sea
Because sailing through hostile Spanish waters was just too much of a hassle. King Louis XIV commissioned the Canal du Midi to connect the Atlantic to the…
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