Transport
Discover facts about transport. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Transport
Japan built a train with a working fireplace
Japan's Train Suite Shiki-shima was designed to make literal billionaires weep with joy. The rolling palace is an ultra-exclusive sleeper train featuring…
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Saliva immediately transports digestive enzymes into food
Digestion doesn't wait for the stomach. The second you take a bite, your spit is already acting as a chemical delivery service, soaking your sandwich in…
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Why a bobsled can cost over $100,000
Careening down an ice tube in a fiberglass bathtub requires a disgusting amount of money. The sleek shaping and materials involved in shaving milliseconds off…
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Tugboats utilize recycled tires as boat bumpers
Despite millions of dollars spent on high-tech maritime equipment, the absolute best way to stop massive steel hulls from smashing into each other is still…
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Why cars finally got cup holders
For decades, European car manufacturers scoffed at the idea of putting cup holders in vehicles, insisting that cars were for driving, not dining. However, the…
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Early helicopters shook pilots like jackhammers
Before the invention of complex dampening hubs, bolting a spinning blade to a rigid metal stick resulted in absolute chaos. Test pilots were subjected to such…
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Amazonian canoes are paddled while standing up
Sitting down is for beginners. In thick jungles, locals pole long, unstable wooden boats by balancing upright, casually gliding past piranhas while…
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Why skeleton racers wear spiked shoes
Because trying to sprint on a polished glaze of frozen water in normal sneakers is a guaranteed slip-and-fall scenario. To get their tiny sleds moving off the…
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The real bumper is hidden behind the plastic
That sleekly painted panel spanning the front of your car provides absolutely zero structural integrity in a real collision. The actual heavy impact bar is…
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Excavator boom and stick arms mimic human joints
Moving a giant bucket of dirt requires creepy articulation. The 'boom' acts like a giant shoulder joint, raising the entire mechanism, while the 'stick'…
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Why longboards feel like surfing on asphalt
Normal skateboards are meant for flipping and grinding, but these oversized planks are purely for vibes. Built with a much wider wheelbase, they allow the…
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Private jet upholstery features hand-stitched leather
When you are dropping twenty million dollars on a flying tube, generic polyester seats simply will not suffice. The cabins of elite private aircraft are…
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What an airline's flight number 001 really means
Airlines don't just assign numbers randomly to their metal tubes. Earning the coveted '001' designation means that specific path is the carrier's absolute…
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Draisines are light auxiliary rail vehicles
Not everything on the tracks weighs a thousand tons. These tiny, motorized inspection cars zip along the rails purely so track operators can look for broken…
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Automatic transmission fluid is heavily dyed bright red
Because relying on the average person to differentiate between viscous brown puddles is a recipe for absolute disaster. Almost all vehicle fluids naturally…
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The rubber tiles that help submarines evade sonar
Stealth underwater warfare is mostly just gluing hundreds of squishy bath mats to the outside of a billion-dollar nuclear tube. Submarines use anechoic tiles…
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Yellow taxi cabs burn through brake pads incredibly quickly
Because a typical taxi shift involves slamming on the brakes every ten seconds for a wildly unpredictable pedestrian, their stopping gear requires constant…
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How double-decker trains fit under low bridges
You cannot simply make a carriage twice as tall without ripping the roof off at the first bridge. Instead, designers creatively drop the bottom floor deep…
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Wheelchair push rims are smaller than the wheels
Hook: Grabbing a moving tire is a great way to get your fingers crushed, so a second rim was invented. Explanation: Manual wheelchairs feature a slightly…
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Bicycles turn little effort into lots of travel
You can convert minimal physical effort into miles of travel simply by spinning a few pedals. It is essentially a cheat code for reality that makes walking…
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Why wheelchairs have the right of way
In the complex hierarchy of crossing the street, mobility devices reign supreme. Every single moving entity is legally bound to halt completely and allow a…
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How SpaceX flips a rocket upright before landing
For sixty years, rockets were treated as single-use garbage that we simply dumped into the ocean after launch. To make them reusable, SpaceX engineers had to…
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Fireboats can draw endless water from the sea
Unlike land-based emergency responders that eventually run dry, these vessels pump directly from the sea they float on. They can unleash staggering torrents…
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Helicopters land on hospital roofs using precise angles
Landing a wildly vibrating blender on top of a building is exactly as stressful as it sounds. Medical pilots have to calculate specific approach paths to…
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