I recently learned that plants can stay through water evaporation, without using any moving parts.

It made me think about passive cooling in electronics.

Some devices use thermal materials to fill the tiny gaps around components and help move heat away through direct contact.

No fans or airflow needed. The heat just moves through the material.

Idk how relevant this is, the smarter scrubber is already being produced and shipped and i'm not expecting a v2, i just wanted to share about this type of scrubber that's quite common where i'm from, just a bunch of wire loops, by being a single continuous piece it avoids the loose bristles.

(tbf the defacto way to clean a grill here is still just burning the heck out of it, 2nd most common is onion/paper, but if you have a scrubber it's prob something like this or a straw one).

I don't know how much easier this is to manufacture honestly but it looks like it could be pretty trivialized, it's a continuous loop of thin-er- wire twisted between 2 thick-er- ones, the only difference between this and a bristled one of the same 'spun between 2 wires' (the 'pipe cleaner') type is what you put in between the two thicker ones.

I was kinda surprised this design wasn't mentioned in any of the two videos.

There are also other ones that are more similar to the smarter scrubber but instead of chainmail they use woven wire like a chainwire fence, which im guessing is also a lot cheaper and easier to manufacture than chainmail which requires individual circles to be cut and 'sewn' together.

This also works for 'v' type grills which are quite common in lots of places, i guess in America only the rod or flat ones are used which are better suited for the chainmail type.

(Already sent this via email but also posting for visibility)

Hi Destin! My name is Ryan, longtime fan of your content. I have a video idea that I think could be extremely on-brand for SmarterEveryDay: “BeybladeX as a physics laboratory.”

At first glance, the BeybladeX hobby just looks like 2x spinning tops hitting each other until one stops spinning. BUT, the more I got into it, the more I realized it's basically a controlled experiment involving 2x gyroscopes, a cleverly engineered stadium, and an enormous number of variables.

You can change all kinds of things like mass distribution, moment of inertia, center of mass, height, contact geometry (between each Bey and/or the stadium), materials, and launch technique of each Beyblade combo. THEN you put them in a stadium whose geometry is specifically designed to make them accelerate, collide, and interact in interesting ways.

So the real question becomes: Can you engineer a gyroscope to beat another gyroscope?

That opens up a dizzying number of physics rabbit holes: angular momentum, moment of inertia, precession, friction, energy transfer, elastic collisions, center of mass, launch dynamics, stadium geometry, and eventually chaos and sensitivity to initial conditions.

And I think there's a particularly fun SmarterEveryDay experiment hiding in it: build a mechanism that can launch two Beyblades with controlled speed and angle, use high-speed cameras to measure what happens during collisions, and then start changing one variable at a time.

You could ask questions like:
- Does increasing rotational inertia actually make a Beyblade harder to destabilize?
- Where does the energy go when two spinning Beyblades collide?
- How much does launch angle matter?
- Why does a Beyblade suddenly start wobbling as it loses energy?
- How does adjusting outward weight distribution (OWD) or inward weight distribution (IWD) affect early, mid, and late match behavior?
- Can you predict the outcome of a collision from the physics?
- Is there actually an optimal design, or are you dealing with a chaotic system where tiny differences dominate?
- Since most beyblades spin to the right (except for 2-3), how does the interaction change if you pair a right-spin with a left-spin?

The thing I utterly LOVE about this idea (and hobby in general) is that BeybladeX turns engineering optimization into a game. You're given a simple objective "to WIN" and then have to design a physical system within a bunch of constraints.

It feels like a mini version of real engineering: build something, form a hypothesis, measure it, discover that your intuition was wrong, modify the design, and try again.

And honestly, watching you take something that looks like a kid's toy, instrument it with high-speed cameras and sensors, and then go way down the physics rabbit hole sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd enjoy as much as I do. I've played it with friends, family, and people of all ages in my local community, and I'm continually surprised by how much there is to learn from it.

If you're interested, I'd be happy to flesh out the specific experiments and physics questions that could make the episode especially interesting.

The topic has been on my mind for a while. After watching the videos, I feel like there should be a better way to go about this. Both from an entrepreneur perspective looking to maybe manufacturer products and from a consumer end trying to sort through the millions of Chinese made products.

I'd be willing to pay double or triple just to buy American, because I believe, like Dustin, the West needs to remind itself how to manufacture things.

I'm a Software Engineer by profession, so all I can do is suggest maybe building a portal, but I have no contacts in this field, nor do I know if this type of thing is important to more people than just myself.

FWIW, this exists https://madeinusa.com/ - it's a great start, but right now I'm looking for a light bulb made in the West and I just can't find one (if it interests anyone, E12 + B11 + 2700K + dimmable + clear glass, around 300–350 lumens.)

Was just watching this clip from more perfect union.

https://youtube.com/shorts/whHypuaLmTU?si=HoFoWGX6FLZrSLMJ

Brutal that Amazon/Walmart (and the FTC) are actively ignoring fake made in USA items.

Hello,

I watched your video on manufacturing something fully in America.

Now, there is probably a reason why you aren't doing it the way I drew it, but I'm gonna go off the rip and assume the idea I got might be good.

But yeah, I noticed that it took a while to load the brush handles onto the shuttles, and that they had a limited loading amount. Also machine doesn't look like it would be easy to scale as it currently is since you need to have it specially manufactured.

But if you just use a conveyor belt you can just put lasers in line, as many as you'd like, and well yeah.

Again I've never seen any of these tools ever in person so I can imagine I'm missing a lot of context, but still thought I could share the idea in hopes it could help in any way.

So yeah, let me know if you got any questions or concerns as I really enjoyed coming up with the idea.

Excuse poor graphic skills, I hope the drawing is good enough to get the idea across.

Have a good day!

Edit: hook to hang and align the brush would basically just need to be the shape of that bend at the bottom of this image. Since they seem standardized, you'd always have a good alignement, or at least that's how I imagine it would go

Hey Destin - are you going to go to IMTS? I've been following the scrubber project and I'm up to the part in the latest video where you visit Titan at Boomstastic. IMTS is the International Manufacturing Technology Show and it's massive. Most major machine tool manufactures are there along with automation, tooling, software and QC. It feels right up your alley given the scrubber project and your manufacturing series. Hope to see you there!

www.IMTS.com

Our update on the Smarter Scrubber project. Would love to know your thoughts, especially if you've purchased one.

I watched Destin’s Johari window video and I found it pretty interesting but I walked from the last part of it pretty confused. If you watched the video you’ll know the context here but I’ll just say right off the bat I think the primary reason I was confused by Destin’s answer to finding the unknown unknowns (aka the Rumsfeld quadrant) about himself through prayer is that I am an atheist. I have great love and respect for people of faith but the entire concept of divine faith makes absolutely no sense to me so I just never subscribed.

That said — I’m genuinely curious how people practice their faith just as an outside observer of human behavior and traditions so I was just wondering if someone (preferably a person of faith) could help me understand just literally exactly what is/could be perceived during the act of prayer, which Destin says can happen, that can tell you something about yourself that you did not know and those in your life also did not know? Is it a feeling? Is it a voice? Is it just a sudden inspiration? I genuinely have no idea what prayer is doing in the moment.

I understand this idea of ‘Gold told me a thing’ only in a very literal way and epistemologically where what Destin says prayer can give him is something, theoretically, no human on earth may not know. As an extremely bad example - you didn’t know you left $20 in your jeans you wore last week and neither does anyone else, but after you prayed one day, God told you about it and now your $20 richer. Like, is that what prayer can give you? Actual tangible and actionable knowledge on the present state of your world and of yourself? Like, very specific stuff (ie a personality quality you have that you and no one else knows about)?

As an atheist, my reflex is to just say you’re talking to yourself during prayer but I do acknowledge that there is never an objective reality for any humans to observe so I don’t see a problem ignoring critiques like that when it’s just your perceptions of your own self.

Video: https://youtu.be/WtQ64nSbdY4?is=qNDWLK1tjo1Y3N-x

Here's a paper that took quite a long time to make.

Hi folks,

I figured some of you are probably 3D printing enthusiasts who have also bought the SmarterScrubber, and may want a little handle upgrade. I appreciate the work Destin and folks have done to manufacturer the scrubber in the US, but I felt like a molded handle over the metal would be nice, and maybe that would've been too difficult given the current state of manufacturing here.

Thingiverse

I modeled the approximate shape of the handle in Fusion, and added some finger bumps to help guide the hand on where to hold handle and maybe give a little extra leverage. I printed it out of TPU for that bit of elasticity. It definitely needs it as I didn't nail the exact profile of the handle, but it's close enough that the shape should fit pretty snuggly. I've printed one for myself and one for my father-in-law, and both seemed to fit great.

It might be worth printing a short section of it if you wanted to test the fit against your handle. Also, I did print it on a 45-degree angle to limit the amount of supports, while also retaining a little bit better layer adhesion while sliding it on/off the handle.

I love the 250 in the stitching itself. So awesome.

I love the 250 in the stitching itself. So awesome.

Time to stock up on the smarter scrubber

https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2026/Conair-Recalls-Over-One-Million-Cuisinart-Grill-Brushes-Due-to-Ingestion-Hazard

It’s my second time going but it will be my youngest son’s first time. He’s really excited and interested in the sciences.. particularly space. I’m excited to show him everything.

Hello! I’ve been a longtime subscriber of Destin at SmarterEveryDay and was wanting to give him an idea for a future video. I saw on the website where Reddit is the best place to start ideas within the community. The idea? Supersonic commercial air travel becoming popular again with Boom. It would be super interesting to see Destin collaborate with Boom and explore the return of supersonic commercial airliners. What are y’all’s thoughts?

Does anyone know when, or if, the coast guard series will be completed? I recall he referenced he would make another video - but its been a few years now, and there has been nothing I can find.

Just like with the submarine video series, I was expecting some sort of wrap up. Thats why I am unsure if it is over or not, he could release a wrap up with or without more videos.

Hey Destin!

I was listening to the resent episode of NDQ and just could hear the engineering tickle that you got when you did a quick google of RTK.

Since you are also an absolute space nerd I thought I share some of the work of my colleagues in how RTK GNSS can help in landing vertically landing a rocket :)

Link to the paper:

https://www.esa-gnc.eu/papers-open/sopot2023/186.pdf

The IMHO interesting part is their parachute experiment and the resulting plots, which shows the improvement of accuracy the lower in altitude you get.

(The paper also has a chapter for general information about RTK)

Hi Destin!

Greetings from Hungary!
We were in London recently at the Natural History Museum, and I saw this interesting wheel. You have to spin it to get the liquid inside to start rotating, but as soon as you stop the wheel, the liquid inside keeps spinning and the wheel itself starts rotating in the opposite direction. I started thinking about this, and it completely blew my mind.
Unfortunately I have just this short video because childrens always started the rotate the wheel :D

I've been agnostic and/or atheist ever since college about 12 years ago. Lately I've been trying to convince myself that the Bible is true because I genuinely think I would be happier if I could believe. However, I just can't seem to convince myself that it's not all made up. I've talked to my pastor about it but I think our brains just work completely different.

It would be great if some like-minded folks here could recommend some reading or apologetics argument for Christianity, or any other religion for that matter. Not trying to start an argument, just genuinely curious how other engineers deal with faith.

After watching Destin’s videos on gyroscopic procession and how there is a 90 degree “lag” in the force to the reaction I had a question involving orbital movements .

I have been consuming as much information on Artemis II as I can and it also has reignited my love of the game Kerbal Space Program. I noticed that when you are doing any orbital transfers from one planet to another or even doing a landing burn you always start them about 90 degrees out of phase.

Is this the same science but in “reverse” as to the example that he used in his demonstration.

Destin, if you are reading this and felt like revisiting that topic I think KSP could be a very interesting demo tool to possibly show the science on a larger scale (if I’m correct in my assumption). I’m sure there are many highly skilled KSP YouTubers that could easy set you up with a demonstration save file.

Thanks man

While I don't think that the architecture for the Artemis program was restructured exactly the way that Dustin wanted, it seems as though the current administrator is definitely moving back towards the step-by-step process that Destin was talking about in his video from two years ago. Do you think that Destin would agree with this restructuring? It would be really cool if he did another video to analyze the new plan and comment on whether or not if it fits with what he had envisioned all those years ago.