I am interested that Melissa’s interpretation of “Don’t reinvent the wheel” is don’t waste time on easy things. I’ve always used the term to mean don’t waste time trying to figure out a solution to a hard problem if someone else already has a solution you can use.
I guess it depends? A while ago I saw a maths exercise that I had done before and tried to solve it again. Obviously at first my thought process ran similarly to how it had done, but I tried to apply the new stuff I learnt and surprisingly it led to the right answer in a more simpler manner. Sometimes doing something again with different view and knowledge can help one come up with a better/easier solution.
@@jacque.line_ng sometimes, yes. but a lot of the time there is no need to reinvent the fundamental. Of course, in a certain sense, we are reinventing the wheel all the time. Material, tires, ball bearings, all those wonderful things that make modern wheels more efficient. but if you tried to start from scratch every time, you would never get to those improvements. which is to say, human progress is more times than not iterative, rather than innovative.
It's sorta complicated too, because reinventing the wheel is the best way to understand the wheel you're using. (Even for literal wheels.) So it depends how important it is that you understand every aspect of the thing you're working with.
I think it's cool how they somehow unintentionally made complimentary primitive modes of transport. Like Melissa suggested, her cart contraption could be pushed/pulled by Terry and his ox/horse/donkey while Melissa's cart axels help disburse the bulk of the weight being transported.
@@monad_tcp That's correct, they are convergent evolutions of the wheel because they both had similar selective pressures that led to their construction. Each cart is a separate entity that came from a similar circumstance which was no prior knowledge on how to incorporate the wheel to a fixed cart.
The thing you are forgetting is that both of these already know about wheels, trucks, cars, wagons etc... that is very different from being back in the time those things didn't exist, nor the concept of them.
now is the time for societies great leap forward... emus on bicycles. with mechanical advantage for draft animals society will have peace prosperity and abundance even if there is still class structure. bird seed is cheaper than gasoline
Your friends also had the major advantage of having seen wheels their whole lives. Once you've seen something revolutionary it's hard to unsee it, but if you've never seen it before... you're going to need some imagination. Even for something as seemingly simple as a wheel
I believe this is a huge factor. Even more so than any other. The amount of pre-history cultures that could make precise carvings and do precise masonry wouldn't be lost making a wheel system, its just that they'd probably never seen something like it. There are very few examples of wheels in nature, much less so of wheels, axles, and a platform to carry objects. I imagine the first proto-wheels were probably logs.
I think the wheel is likely more evolutionary than revolutionary. For example people discovered that rolling logs made heavy loads easier to move. Problem is the logs ran out as you moved the load and the back log had to be constantly moved to the front. What if the logs stayed in place as you moved the heavy load? How to get the logs to turn whilst being attached to the heavy load and not get left behind? Eventually it would lead to the invention of the spindle, or axle. In my opinion the likely biggest thing slowing down the invention of the wheel was necessity and commitment of resources. Back then, getting enough food and resources to stay alive was a full days work. Luxuries like time spent inventing the wheel just wasn't a priority until carrying loads exceeded the extremes of the existing logistics systems.
wow y’all are so smart for reinventing the wheel, it’s almost revolutionary. People like you make the world turn round. You should be wheely proud of yourselves!
I think this deserves a follow up video showing how just how much their wheels can improve in just one or two design iterations and showcase the power engineering in its most primitive form.
But a cart with a horse ACTUALLY IS a genre of pushing... because the horse is pushing on the harness. Technically the cart is being pulled by the harness which is being pushed by the horse. If the horse was pulling it would be walking backwards with the harness in its mouth. 🤔🤓
@@xSidvarg Not even that, with the cart he made one could just add a stick that connects the two side sticks, then somebody can go in the square and push against the stick. Actually a common thin on these carriots if they‘re made to be motored by a human.
@Khue Kinda cheated tho using the pencil - surely the idea is to make a wheel and axle setup with ancient tech ie. no stuff made via woodturning (unless they make a lathe themselves)?
I'm surprised Taha's "tensioned string" axle held up so well! Also I think Terri's box might have been touching the scale pretty early, although that might have just been the camera angle...
I think Terry would always have a bit of contact with the ground, because he only has two wheels, but he would only be disqualified if the whole bottom surface was touching the ground.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 It looks like Terry's right edge is on the scale, as opposed to front or back edge as should be expected from pivoting about the axle. The tensioned string was a risky strategy, because low tension leads to sag and wobble, but high tension without spacers leads to high friction with the wheels on the cart body.
@@goldenoodles6281 For keeping wheels on a rigid axle, my thought would have been to put a hole through the axle outside of either wheel, and tie a knot through it. Then the wheel would be locked on.
Think Taha's design was good for the size they were dealing with but wouldn't scale well. For heavier weights of wood it would squash the rope and add a lot of friction to the system.
Makes me nostalgic for teaching basic design and engineer camps for primary and secondary school students. The "AHA" moment from Melissa is the best. It's fun when you witness realization that slapping a round object onto another object, and thus making it immobile, doesn't make the best cart. My favorite creative design solution I've seen is using overly large wheels on a single fixed axle. The load is fixed to the axle and rotates around the axle as the machine rolls. A counter weight was attached to the other side of the axle to keep the rotation smooth.
Are you kidding me? The guy used STRING TO CONNECT WHEELS! This is by far the most rigged and pathetic attempt ive ever seen bya guy to create something. This man lost dignity
I think that whoever invented ball bearings is the smartest individual alive. Such a simple concept producing such an amazingly efficient spin really raised the stakes across the board for how a wheel is made.
what I want to ask you is, how will emus on bicycles affect the world we live in? steam engines were invented before bicycles. mechanical advantage for draft animals is gonna be a game changer!no possibility of rabies. gasoline is cheaper than rabies!
My grandfather and I used to make wooden cars together. The way we constructed the wheel/ axel was to have the axel fixed to the wheel, and have a groove cut out of the base of the car. The axel would slide into this groove, and a thin plank of wood would be glued or nailed over the axel and groove, holding everything in place.
I think a major contributor to what allowed wheels to go from a "haha neat" kinda thing to one of the most important transport inventions in the world is when we started building streets. Wheels are extremely inefficient unless you have an even surface. The primary reason why wheels even have the capability to be amazingly efficient and useful is thanks to the specialized infrastructure supporting it.
This is why the Aztec and Maya civilizations famously "never invented the wheel." It wasn't because they weren't technologically advanced, it was because in the mountainous jungle environments in which they largely made their homes, the wheel was a comically inefficient way to transport things.
@@littlesnowflakepunk855 Also there weren't any horses to pull carts in the Americas, until Columbus brought them over. But Meso-americans did invent the wheel though - though they only used it for toys. It's more impressive that they invented it themselves, while most of Eurasia just copied the one guy who first invented the wheel.
@@LowestofheDead I don't think pack animals really affected it that much - the Inca had access to American camelids (llamas, alpacas, etc) and also didn't use the wheel for practical purposes
Like David 1234 said, bc he has a face. And that’s what’s weird!😂 Research has been done and it has proven that when ppl see a face or ANYTHING that resembles a face, they see it as somewhat human. They grow attachment to it depending on circumstances/events (like here, Taha created Terry, in a sense, his son) The same can be said when looking at an outlet: 2 long eyes and a gaping mouth, or 3 dots in a paper forming a triangle (or a surprised expression) Human brains be weird👍
depends on the sorts of woods you use and the speed you are going. Doesn't automatically always light on fire. (and axle greasing is something pretty old, they will have known from using sleads that reducing friction is a thing.) Fun Fact: the german word for bribing money has it's roots in axle grease. It comes from paying the carriage drvier extra money for axle grease so he would risk to go faster. (faster means using up more grease)
Funny enough if it was only put a little on fire from friction it would create carbon powered and possibly smooth its self out making it have less friction
Taha came so close to making a Chinese wheelbarrow that I actually laughed when he rejected the idea. For those who don't know, a Chinese wheelbarrow is a human powered flat cart with one large wheel in the center. The large diameter wheel made the angle of attack against a bump in the path easier for a human to overcome, and the single wheel made the necessary width of the path no wider than a human being would require, so low tech paths would work. Additionally, because the human controls the balance of the cart, a single wheel used by a practiced operator can navigate paths that aren't level much better than a two wheeled cart without dumping. The Chinese wheelbarrow is so old, that we don't even know when it was invented; in part because it was a military secret for a long time, as it could be used for troop supply into some hard to access territory while also being useful for defense when under arrow attack.
@@doggieonbaysil2706People waged wars over spices before, so I can totally see this kind of stuff kept under lock and key... or whatever they used before the lock and key were invented.
@@BabyCalypso the part when they "invent the wheel" and then the testing and the verbal manipulation as to why they are the one in the right and not whoever first invented it?
Are you kidding me? The guy used STRING TO CONNECT WHEELS! This is by far the most rigged and pathetic attempt ive ever seen bya guy to create something. This man lost dignity
Melissa's cart carrying Terry definitely deserved the win, but watching Terry be joyfully dragged across the finish line is the real winner of my heart
Terry is the real winner. Cause on thing which is the most important in this case is not strength but reliability. Imagine pulling a lot of weight just to fell over after some distance
@@kgkirandharan1521 Terry's design is flawed as it wouldn't be able to carry any meaningful weight because if you put weight on top the rope is pulling wheels in and wheels will no longer be able to spin as they rub into the chassis. It's a totally stupid design. Dude slept through all his physics class. Melissas design is totally decent she even came up with idea how to secure the wheels in-place by using some string although solution didn't yet hold wheels in-place with little improvement it can easily be improved. The only thing Terry's solution is useful for is that approach can be used to attach spare wheels for Melissa's carage.
i always love this type of video, the classic "i forced my friends to do something....... for science!!" and then i actually learn something from it :D
when you love researching a topic and presenting the information to the class in school sooo much you decide to do it for a living, you make this channel. awesome channel, thank you.
I love how this gradually turned into an educational reality tv show thanks to Sabrina's antics😂 Also, the editing in 15:37 will never cease to amaze me.
@@rachaels.9282 It's a split screen when Sabrina's in the back until Sabrina ducks down, Taha is directed to look back, but really Sabrina is already ducking below the camera, ready to pop up. That's my guess
I was so surprised about your final line 🤣 Completely threw me for a loop so here's a comment~ Also there's something a teacher of mine always told me: "People in history weren't stupid just because they didn't know as much." Like, for example, the geocentric model of the solar system is *far* more complex and has a lot more intricacies than the model where the earth goes around the sun, but there's a whole host of religious/social reasons why that was "known". Very interesting stuff, thanks for the video!
Every time I've been told "don't reinvent the wheel", it was to tell me to not do something that is very hard, that has already been done. Sure the concept is simple, but I've failed to sculpt a stick into a straight cylinder without it looking like an even more twisted version of gandalfs staff... I wouldn't be able to make a wheel even if my life depended on it
Another important factor is that for wheels to be truly effective you need to build and maintain roads, which is extremely expensive and time consuming. Wheels will get stuck in places that sleds would glide over with ease. In most places where humans don't use wheeled vehicles it's usually because wheels actually aren't the best solution for their transportation needs so there's little reason to use/invent them. And that's probably true throughout time as well.
I feel like the rope axle wouldn't be very durable in practice. I think part of the problem with wheels is that the thing that works on one scale won't necessarily work on another. E.g. A rope axle is fine if you're just making a small model, but if you want to make a full-sized cart, carrying hundreds of pounds, you'll wear through the axles very quickly. As you say, wheels have to compete with other methods of transport and that puts a high requirement on efficiency and durability.
Kinda raises the question of whether tensioned cable could do the same thing in a scaled up way. I mean it's probably a bad idea or people would be doing it (that or I've invented an idea that's already done lol) but I'd say it counts as being essentially a different grade of the same mechanism
another issue is that these people live in a society where the wheel is common place, of course they can "invent" the wagon like bruh, he's probably seen thousands of wagons being an indian lol
The problem is not durability but the forces in play. Something has to prevent the wheels to turn into the cart - because the wheel could turn all three dimensions but only one of them is allowed during normal operations. The heavier the load the bigger the effect of moving the wheels sideways. If the bearing of the wheel can do it on its own - like a bear gearing - you don't even need an axel (like on a gocart).
I wish I had stopped the video and tried this on my own; before continuing to watch. Good job, guys! Informative, (and a bit of fun/funny.) {I really thought that cart was going to get some flame graphics.}
My first thought on hearing the question was "The wheel is simple and 'round things roll' is a really easy thing to learn from nature, but making a usable axle with hand tools is damn near impossible."
This Channel is so good, and the reason is the charisma of these guys COUPLED with a good research and a ease of teaching that sabrina has, I absorb what she says more than I do what my parents said to me when I killed that mailman
quite fascinating that while the modern layman isn't on-par with a mechanical engineer, we know enough about the simple machines we interact with every day to recreate bits and pieces of the evolution of their invention
this is lovely. we had a class about the history of technology and our professor brought us the case of the horse pulled carriage. it required a lot of stuff, like agricultural techniques, metallurgy, the wheel. it was overall much harder than using the ox, but production increased a ton when they got it right and was a factor bringing humanity out of medieval times
@@scottdick296 i mean, agriculture was a huge factor in that. they changed from two harvests a year to 3 harvests a year. that allowed them to feed the people and the horses, and that boosted production some more. they also created gear that allowed horses to pull stuff. with famine in a low, and things improving rapidly, they got into exploration, and that's around the XV century. feel free to correct me, it's been a while and that's not my field of expertise.
I get what you mean but I think they had the wheel pretty much sorted by medieval times. The middle ages usually means from the fall of the western Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Most cultures in the classical era, (Greece, Rome, Egypt etc.) had the wheel so I assume it was developed some time before that.
@@Oddi0 there's a whole complicated interplay between the development of the wheel and the domestication of horses and pack animals which is well outside of my area of knowledge
As someone who grew up near Research Triangle Park, I literally cannot state how impressed I am at an IBM sponsorship. Congrats! You guys really deserve it.
5:56 I feel like the main advantage of the free wheel design is that the free wheels can rotate independently whilst the fixed wheels can only move in the same direction making turning nearly imposable for carts using that method.
That's true actually, even today we can't figure out how much difference we should allow. If we allow anything than one wheel could get all the power. If we limit the ratio we could have reduced power.
@@samarnadra no they do not count, the thing is that SCALE matters, making something tiny like these things you can get away with a lot of wrongs but if they were to scale these models up into actual usable wagons or whatnot then they would completely fall apart.
I always took the phrase "don't re-invent the wheel" to mean basically "someone else already did it, why are you going to waste so much time and effort to do it again?" Basically like "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
i'm an amator luthier : it took me a few weeks to re-invent the ukulele, a day to perfect to the guitar, a month to perfect to the violin. Then i wanted to re-invent the hudy gurdy : a day to do the mechanics, a day to do the string part, And i'm stuck since a year in the wheel part. she need to be perfectly round, and have an angle in the edge, because the strings aren't perfectly parrallels to the body.
Oh yes The perfect circle I studied that eldritch abomination, it’s beyond miraculous how humanity even came across the means to make one It’s a cruel mistress, the pi it serves you is neither sweet nor filling, but an endless nightmare of numbers that punish us for our hubris, woe be unto mankind for daring to know it’s secret (I’m only half joking, good luck with reinventing the hurdy-gurdy, pretty sure a wizard got abducted by aliens and came back to the Earth with the first one)
This video invoked a deep, childlike wonder in me - like the kind I had at age 6 when I tried to make a Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Disk out of paper and tape. It's the joy of discovery, and the bright enthusiasm we bring to a world full of possibilities. Thank you for keeping that feeling alive for me. ❤️
I genuinely love these videos! I never know what subject you guys will tackle next and yet I’m never disappointed. Thanks for reinventing the wheel today very cool 😅❤
To be fair, some of this is being made slightly harder for the subjects because people who would have actually been inventing (or even just making) the wheel at the time would have been using surprisingly advanced math (by which I mean probably high school level by today's standard but still of a level most people don't encounter in daily life once they're done with high school) as part of their trade, and would have had access to some tools we may not expect, like hand drills and plumb lines (and by extension, levels). So as much as giving them power tools and Wikipedia would probably have made the whole thing boring, redundant and probably ultimately further from historical experience, the circumstances in which the wheel was invented may have been more auspicious than the ones this experiment was made under.
the challenge of making a palm sized toy and a proper carriage or cart are also orders of magnitude apart difficulty wise, so they still had a way easier task.
This disadvantage is more than covered by fact that these two had seen all sort of wheels throughout their lives thus they don't really need to invent it they just need to reproduce minimal working thing.
Love how they just combined them… And now you have a train 🎉 Wheels are magic, and those two got through every stage of human ingenuity in just two days. 😂
I think what you failed to mention is that for the wheel to be invented it took some precursor paradigm shift, maybe two- first , it requires hunter gatherer tribes to be successful and safe enough to afford the time needed for the wheel’s development, second, there has to be some shared issue that necessitates it’s creation, I.e. huge amounts of gathering/farming that is near impossible to transport without a wheeled structure, maybe moving a mammoth carcass, PLUS an area size of a civilization with transportation distances long enough to necessitate the innovation. It started with logs as the first wheels
The cut at 11:02 from “I have no idea how Taha is doing” to the Terry reveal was easily the most efficient depiction of the slow decent into insanity in all of cinema. 😂
Y’all never cease to amaze, entertain, and educate. The funny jokes, and amazing friendship y’all have help me be a littleness less TIREd and depressed
I love how emotionally and mentally healthy everyone is. Can we use this video as the gold standard for the next 200,000 years??? ....Asking for a friend.
This is fabulous. Thank you for running this experiment, because I was planning to do this with my elementary students, and I'm realizing there wouldn't be enough time! But it also gave me a concept of what their challenges would be and how we could help them along. ALSO, thank you for summarizing The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, because I wanted to read that book but....don't have time right now! Your graphics are AWESOME. Congrats on your hard work there (and/or to whomever made them).
This is only the second video by you I’ve seen (saw one about vaping first), but you’re so good at this! The mix of styles all done well, wry humor, interesting content, and charisma. You’re killing it!
This is one of the few channels that can make me laugh, and it's educational too. also you're undeniably impressive cart animation has the wheels turning backwards
I always took the meaning of 'don't reinvent the wheel' to be a message to not be afraid to build on the work that came before. Standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak.
I like that this video goes into a bit of depth thinking about the journey that people went through while inventing the wheel, especially since it made me think of what alternatives could have arose. Imagine a world where we used tank treads for everything simply because that's a shorter leap from when people rolled carts on top of logs and simply ran back and forth to bring the logs in back up to the front. Or imagine a world where vehicles are attached to the axles and the wheels as well so that the entirety of the vehicle spins as it travels making it so that you have to take some time to recover from your concussion after every journey.
Love your channel and your 2 cohorts!!! Love how you label your commercial spots!!! Love all the content, sense of humor, and educational value of what and how it’s presented
The weight test wasn't entirely fair because there was no horse or weight to balance Terry on. With a horse attached there is tension, keeping him up straight, whereas here he was left sagging, which made him lean and touch the ground. I think both would have drawn if this was properly accounted for.
@@MacNerfer rope is pulling wheels in. With weight on wheels those wouldn't even spin. Mellisa can work on her design revise and improve. Terry's design is good enough if you want to carry a spare wheel and really for nothing else.
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
I am interested that Melissa’s interpretation of “Don’t reinvent the wheel” is don’t waste time on easy things. I’ve always used the term to mean don’t waste time trying to figure out a solution to a hard problem if someone else already has a solution you can use.
This applies so well in design that it’s first thing they teach you in stem
Yup. Don’t kill yourself with derivations when Schaum’s is right there.
I guess it depends? A while ago I saw a maths exercise that I had done before and tried to solve it again. Obviously at first my thought process ran similarly to how it had done, but I tried to apply the new stuff I learnt and surprisingly it led to the right answer in a more simpler manner. Sometimes doing something again with different view and knowledge can help one come up with a better/easier solution.
@@jacque.line_ng sometimes, yes. but a lot of the time there is no need to reinvent the fundamental. Of course, in a certain sense, we are reinventing the wheel all the time. Material, tires, ball bearings, all those wonderful things that make modern wheels more efficient. but if you tried to start from scratch every time, you would never get to those improvements. which is to say, human progress is more times than not iterative, rather than innovative.
It's sorta complicated too, because reinventing the wheel is the best way to understand the wheel you're using. (Even for literal wheels.) So it depends how important it is that you understand every aspect of the thing you're working with.
I think it's cool how they somehow unintentionally made complimentary primitive modes of transport. Like Melissa suggested, her cart contraption could be pushed/pulled by Terry and his ox/horse/donkey while Melissa's cart axels help disburse the bulk of the weight being transported.
That's almost like a case of converged evolution to solutions that work.
That’s so cool!
@@monad_tcp That's correct, they are convergent evolutions of the wheel because they both had similar selective pressures that led to their construction. Each cart is a separate entity that came from a similar circumstance which was no prior knowledge on how to incorporate the wheel to a fixed cart.
The thing you are forgetting is that both of these already know about wheels, trucks, cars, wagons etc... that is very different from being back in the time those things didn't exist, nor the concept of them.
now is the time for societies great leap forward... emus on bicycles. with mechanical advantage for draft animals society will have peace prosperity and abundance even if there is still class structure. bird seed is cheaper than gasoline
Your friends also had the major advantage of having seen wheels their whole lives. Once you've seen something revolutionary it's hard to unsee it, but if you've never seen it before... you're going to need some imagination. Even for something as seemingly simple as a wheel
Well yeah it only took them a day, not 2000 years!
I believe this is a huge factor. Even more so than any other. The amount of pre-history cultures that could make precise carvings and do precise masonry wouldn't be lost making a wheel system, its just that they'd probably never seen something like it. There are very few examples of wheels in nature, much less so of wheels, axles, and a platform to carry objects. I imagine the first proto-wheels were probably logs.
I think the wheel is likely more evolutionary than revolutionary.
For example people discovered that rolling logs made heavy loads easier to move. Problem is the logs ran out as you moved the load and the back log had to be constantly moved to the front. What if the logs stayed in place as you moved the heavy load? How to get the logs to turn whilst being attached to the heavy load and not get left behind? Eventually it would lead to the invention of the spindle, or axle.
In my opinion the likely biggest thing slowing down the invention of the wheel was necessity and commitment of resources. Back then, getting enough food and resources to stay alive was a full days work. Luxuries like time spent inventing the wheel just wasn't a priority until carrying loads exceeded the extremes of the existing logistics systems.
@@longdang2681 well, the wheel is quite literally revolutionary, in a more pun-oriented way.
If you think it’s not hard make a musket
wow y’all are so smart for reinventing the wheel, it’s almost revolutionary. People like you make the world turn round. You should be wheely proud of yourselves!
I never get *tire* -d of these puns :))
Lmfao best comment yet 😂
you made the puns on purpose and not axle-dentally
I don't know how you can come up with so many puns so early.
@@easarsalad they were just on a *roll*
Damn Sabrina really flung Taha and Melissa into engineering 101
I hope they’re not TIREd of her…
It truly was TERRYfic
Ba dum tsss 🥁
Lmfao😂
Booo
still appreciate the joke under the fold :)
I think this deserves a follow up video showing how just how much their wheels can improve in just one or two design iterations and showcase the power engineering in its most primitive form.
a part 2 even
"What is pulling along, if not a genre of push" this man is a true physicist
Pulling is just negative pushing 😎
i’m here waiting for nupush, push pull and alternative push
@@BandithThach's boutta start a whole genre of music based on the wheel and axle.
But a cart with a horse ACTUALLY IS a genre of pushing... because the horse is pushing on the harness. Technically the cart is being pulled by the harness which is being pushed by the horse. If the horse was pulling it would be walking backwards with the harness in its mouth. 🤔🤓
@@xSidvarg
Not even that, with the cart he made one could just add a stick that connects the two side sticks, then somebody can go in the square and push against the stick. Actually a common thin on these carriots if they‘re made to be motored by a human.
I love that melissa’s plan to invent the wheel is literally just “make a wheel”
I mean its a heck of a plan.
So simple and so interesting
Logs and platforms could have worked for the pyramids well before needing to cut the wheel for a cart.
@Khue Kinda cheated tho using the pencil - surely the idea is to make a wheel and axle setup with ancient tech ie. no stuff made via woodturning (unless they make a lathe themselves)?
Qq
14:47 idk why but the editing of the preperation with the adorable jump and "you guys ready to race?" at the end is just perfect lol.
I'm surprised Taha's "tensioned string" axle held up so well! Also I think Terri's box might have been touching the scale pretty early, although that might have just been the camera angle...
I think Terry would always have a bit of contact with the ground, because he only has two wheels, but he would only be disqualified if the whole bottom surface was touching the ground.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 It looks like Terry's right edge is on the scale, as opposed to front or back edge as should be expected from pivoting about the axle.
The tensioned string was a risky strategy, because low tension leads to sag and wobble, but high tension without spacers leads to high friction with the wheels on the cart body.
It was really good especially for the race as the ability to bounce and deform to the bumps on the road made it well not fall apart
@@goldenoodles6281 For keeping wheels on a rigid axle, my thought would have been to put a hole through the axle outside of either wheel, and tie a knot through it. Then the wheel would be locked on.
Think Taha's design was good for the size they were dealing with but wouldn't scale well. For heavier weights of wood it would squash the rope and add a lot of friction to the system.
Makes me nostalgic for teaching basic design and engineer camps for primary and secondary school students. The "AHA" moment from Melissa is the best. It's fun when you witness realization that slapping a round object onto another object, and thus making it immobile, doesn't make the best cart.
My favorite creative design solution I've seen is using overly large wheels on a single fixed axle. The load is fixed to the axle and rotates around the axle as the machine rolls. A counter weight was attached to the other side of the axle to keep the rotation smooth.
Melissa and Taha prove that you don't have to be a primary school student to have fun like this. You just need the mental age of one.
I... would not like to ride that vehicle. Or maybe I would.
@@michaelwerkov3438 You actually could ride a variant of it: the Rhönrad or gymnastic wheel.
this was one of the best deep dives into a ubiquitous technology that i have ever seen. awesome video.
Are you kidding me? The guy used STRING TO CONNECT WHEELS! This is by far the most rigged and pathetic attempt ive ever seen bya guy to create something. This man lost dignity
@@silver2zilver Are you okay?
"The wheels that are better attached win" "Melissa deserves this"
One minute passes
Melissa's wheels fall off on their own
RIGGED I TELL YOU!
RIGGED
If the pecils where not round a big one would have been turning terry has two free spinning wheels but maybe not the cart
RIGGED
RIGGED
RIGGED
I think that whoever invented ball bearings is the smartest individual alive. Such a simple concept producing such an amazingly efficient spin really raised the stakes across the board for how a wheel is made.
You can thank Philip Vaughan
what I want to ask you is, how will emus on bicycles affect the world we live in? steam engines were invented before bicycles. mechanical advantage for draft animals is gonna be a game changer!no possibility of rabies. gasoline is cheaper than rabies!
you need machining to do that though
I don’t think so. The person who invented ball bearing isn’t alive any more.
@@johannes4518 lol
My grandfather and I used to make wooden cars together. The way we constructed the wheel/ axel was to have the axel fixed to the wheel, and have a groove cut out of the base of the car. The axel would slide into this groove, and a thin plank of wood would be glued or nailed over the axel and groove, holding everything in place.
I think a major contributor to what allowed wheels to go from a "haha neat" kinda thing to one of the most important transport inventions in the world is when we started building streets.
Wheels are extremely inefficient unless you have an even surface.
The primary reason why wheels even have the capability to be amazingly efficient and useful is thanks to the specialized infrastructure supporting it.
This is why the Aztec and Maya civilizations famously "never invented the wheel." It wasn't because they weren't technologically advanced, it was because in the mountainous jungle environments in which they largely made their homes, the wheel was a comically inefficient way to transport things.
@@littlesnowflakepunk855 Also there weren't any horses to pull carts in the Americas, until Columbus brought them over.
But Meso-americans did invent the wheel though - though they only used it for toys. It's more impressive that they invented it themselves, while most of Eurasia just copied the one guy who first invented the wheel.
@@LowestofheDead I don't think pack animals really affected it that much - the Inca had access to American camelids (llamas, alpacas, etc) and also didn't use the wheel for practical purposes
@@littlesnowflakepunk855 because the rocky roads of the andes mountains wouldn't have been a practical place to apply it.
@@Graeberwave yup
I love how enthusiastic and emotionally attached they became to their wheel/tractor/terry
i love terry. if they make a plush of terry i would buy it.
It's because he has a face. That's when he became alive.
Like David 1234 said, bc he has a face.
And that’s what’s weird!😂
Research has been done and it has proven that when ppl see a face or ANYTHING that resembles a face, they see it as somewhat human. They grow attachment to it depending on circumstances/events (like here, Taha created Terry, in a sense, his son)
The same can be said when looking at an outlet: 2 long eyes and a gaping mouth, or 3 dots in a paper forming a triangle (or a surprised expression)
Human brains be weird👍
Melissa DEFINITELY doesn’t know what a tractor is
UK invented wheel and then technology was transferred to its colony such as India..
I'm curious about the first time people realized without greasing the free spinning wheel on a wooden axle it would light on fire 🔥
depends on the sorts of woods you use and the speed you are going. Doesn't automatically always light on fire. (and axle greasing is something pretty old, they will have known from using sleads that reducing friction is a thing.)
Fun Fact: the german word for bribing money has it's roots in axle grease. It comes from paying the carriage drvier extra money for axle grease so he would risk to go faster. (faster means using up more grease)
regardless of tech, back then its posible to use bee wax to prevent fire between wood friction.
@@hsushssbwj Would also work with butter, or any other animal fat or plant oil.
This was before, the friction of a stick to get fire was used by many people who didn't know about wheel
Funny enough if it was only put a little on fire from friction it would create carbon powered and possibly smooth its self out making it have less friction
Taha came so close to making a Chinese wheelbarrow that I actually laughed when he rejected the idea. For those who don't know, a Chinese wheelbarrow is a human powered flat cart with one large wheel in the center. The large diameter wheel made the angle of attack against a bump in the path easier for a human to overcome, and the single wheel made the necessary width of the path no wider than a human being would require, so low tech paths would work. Additionally, because the human controls the balance of the cart, a single wheel used by a practiced operator can navigate paths that aren't level much better than a two wheeled cart without dumping. The Chinese wheelbarrow is so old, that we don't even know when it was invented; in part because it was a military secret for a long time, as it could be used for troop supply into some hard to access territory while also being useful for defense when under arrow attack.
that's so interesting!!!
Wow! Incredible to think a cart was a secret.
@@doggieonbaysil2706People waged wars over spices before, so I can totally see this kind of stuff kept under lock and key... or whatever they used before the lock and key were invented.
This was such a humanizing moment... as an engineer I felt all three of these positions and can't even pick the most relatable reaction!
which part
@@BabyCalypso the part when they "invent the wheel" and then the testing and the verbal manipulation as to why they are the one in the right and not whoever first invented it?
Are you kidding me? The guy used STRING TO CONNECT WHEELS! This is by far the most rigged and pathetic attempt ive ever seen bya guy to create something. This man lost dignity
@@silver2zilver Don't talk abt Terry like that
this is amAZING. the production value, the chemistry, the competition, 1000000/10 aboslutely loved this video
Melissa's cart carrying Terry definitely deserved the win, but watching Terry be joyfully dragged across the finish line is the real winner of my heart
Terry is the real winner. Cause on thing which is the most important in this case is not strength but reliability. Imagine pulling a lot of weight just to fell over after some distance
@@kgkirandharan1521 Terry's design is flawed as it wouldn't be able to carry any meaningful weight because if you put weight on top the rope is pulling wheels in and wheels will no longer be able to spin as they rub into the chassis. It's a totally stupid design. Dude slept through all his physics class. Melissas design is totally decent she even came up with idea how to secure the wheels in-place by using some string although solution didn't yet hold wheels in-place with little improvement it can easily be improved. The only thing Terry's solution is useful for is that approach can be used to attach spare wheels for Melissa's carage.
i always love this type of video, the classic "i forced my friends to do something....... for science!!" and then i actually learn something from it :D
That's the fun thing about having a channel with three people running it. They can always be each other's guinea pigs.
The real science was the friends we made along the way
how is that classic, though? can you provide another example of this type of video? It isn't nearly common enough to be called "classic"
God I love this channel!!
Quirky, goofy, intelligent and most important of all funny.
You guys are my tribe
You're REALLY GOOD at making these videos , excellent writing and pacing, and the enthusiasm in your explanations really keeps my attention!
Agreed! I love these videos!
Except it’s NOT scripted !!! ; ) 😂
+
Sabrina just summarized the human race (and the video itself) in the first three seconds
It took humanity 200,000 years, but Sabrina did it in three seconds. Amazing.
This is now my favorite Answer in Progress video. Maybe one of my favorite videos on RUclips
when you love researching a topic and presenting the information to the class in school sooo much you decide to do it for a living, you make this channel. awesome channel, thank you.
I love how this gradually turned into an educational reality tv show thanks to Sabrina's antics😂
Also, the editing in 15:37 will never cease to amaze me.
how did she edit that?? its so seamless
@@rachaels.9282 that’s what I’m saying!!!
@@rachaels.9282 It's a split screen when Sabrina's in the back until Sabrina ducks down, Taha is directed to look back, but really Sabrina is already ducking below the camera, ready to pop up.
That's my guess
@@RachelWolfe Lmao no, the popup is just green screen effect overlayed on first layer.
It's as basic as inventing a wheel
Im saying like how tho
I was so surprised about your final line 🤣
Completely threw me for a loop so here's a comment~
Also there's something a teacher of mine always told me: "People in history weren't stupid just because they didn't know as much."
Like, for example, the geocentric model of the solar system is *far* more complex and has a lot more intricacies than the model where the earth goes around the sun, but there's a whole host of religious/social reasons why that was "known".
Very interesting stuff, thanks for the video!
Sabrina using Melissa and Taha as test subjects is actually a fantastic way to do these videos.
Every time I've been told "don't reinvent the wheel", it was to tell me to not do something that is very hard, that has already been done. Sure the concept is simple, but I've failed to sculpt a stick into a straight cylinder without it looking like an even more twisted version of gandalfs staff... I wouldn't be able to make a wheel even if my life depended on it
Another important factor is that for wheels to be truly effective you need to build and maintain roads, which is extremely expensive and time consuming. Wheels will get stuck in places that sleds would glide over with ease. In most places where humans don't use wheeled vehicles it's usually because wheels actually aren't the best solution for their transportation needs so there's little reason to use/invent them. And that's probably true throughout time as well.
I love that you actually put your sources in the video. I feel like hardly see any youtube channels of this style do that.
I think that's important.
I feel like the rope axle wouldn't be very durable in practice.
I think part of the problem with wheels is that the thing that works on one scale won't necessarily work on another. E.g. A rope axle is fine if you're just making a small model, but if you want to make a full-sized cart, carrying hundreds of pounds, you'll wear through the axles very quickly.
As you say, wheels have to compete with other methods of transport and that puts a high requirement on efficiency and durability.
Kinda raises the question of whether tensioned cable could do the same thing in a scaled up way. I mean it's probably a bad idea or people would be doing it (that or I've invented an idea that's already done lol) but I'd say it counts as being essentially a different grade of the same mechanism
At some point the bearing surface also factors in. And then you got to figure out what substance to use for axle grease.
another issue is that these people live in a society where the wheel is common place, of course they can "invent" the wagon like bruh, he's probably seen thousands of wagons being an indian lol
The problem is not durability but the forces in play. Something has to prevent the wheels to turn into the cart - because the wheel could turn all three dimensions but only one of them is allowed during normal operations. The heavier the load the bigger the effect of moving the wheels sideways. If the bearing of the wheel can do it on its own - like a bear gearing - you don't even need an axel (like on a gocart).
@@Danuxsy I think any of us could jump-start the industrial revolution by having so many well-tested ideas.
I wish I had stopped the video and tried this on my own; before continuing to watch. Good job, guys! Informative, (and a bit of fun/funny.) {I really thought that cart was going to get some flame graphics.}
Probably one of my favorite ones lmao. It’s great seeing you guys doing science while being fun together
+
+
My first thought on hearing the question was "The wheel is simple and 'round things roll' is a really easy thing to learn from nature, but making a usable axle with hand tools is damn near impossible."
17:29 the Terry cherry on top at the end was the cherry on top of this amazing video 😂😍
I love the energy that is carried through this entire video. It's just so wholesome and chaotic.
I think wholesome and chaotic is indeed a very accurate description of their vibe :D
15:17 the victory and frustration in the same plane 🤣
That's so true, when I hear "wheel" what I actually imagine is just a disk. Disk ≠ Wheel. Disk very much < Wheel.
This Channel is so good, and the reason is the charisma of these guys COUPLED with a good research and a ease of teaching that sabrina has, I absorb what she says more than I do what my parents said to me when I killed that mailman
Not to mention the amazing editing, animation and equipment 👌
Edit: and no I didn't kill a mailman why are you asking?
You WHAT
@@comelypepper i absorb what sabrina says more than I do anyone else, idk why tho
@@hydrohomiee you killed the mailman
@@Adamcito. no I didnt. You can't prove i did
"Are you guys ready to start with challenge one?"
"Me and Terry could never be readier"
_"This is my tractor"_
I just loved Sabrina's reaction to that
That moment lives rent free in my mind now
quite fascinating that while the modern layman isn't on-par with a mechanical engineer, we know enough about the simple machines we interact with every day to recreate bits and pieces of the evolution of their invention
this is lovely. we had a class about the history of technology and our professor brought us the case of the horse pulled carriage. it required a lot of stuff, like agricultural techniques, metallurgy, the wheel. it was overall much harder than using the ox, but production increased a ton when they got it right and was a factor bringing humanity out of medieval times
"Out of the medieval times?" No offense, but I think your timeline might be a little off.
@@scottdick296 i mean, agriculture was a huge factor in that. they changed from two harvests a year to 3 harvests a year. that allowed them to feed the people and the horses, and that boosted production some more. they also created gear that allowed horses to pull stuff.
with famine in a low, and things improving rapidly, they got into exploration, and that's around the XV century.
feel free to correct me, it's been a while and that's not my field of expertise.
I get what you mean but I think they had the wheel pretty much sorted by medieval times. The middle ages usually means from the fall of the western Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Most cultures in the classical era, (Greece, Rome, Egypt etc.) had the wheel so I assume it was developed some time before that.
@@damientonkin Yeah, if anything the wheel was a factor bringing humanity _into_ the _classical_ era.
@@Oddi0 there's a whole complicated interplay between the development of the wheel and the domestication of horses and pack animals which is well outside of my area of knowledge
Sabrina, the motion graphics are out of this world. So seriously inspired with your creativity and ability to let that come to life!
Not me not understanding a good 95% of this video but still loving it for the vibes of the folks involved in it
As someone who grew up near Research Triangle Park, I literally cannot state how impressed I am at an IBM sponsorship. Congrats! You guys really deserve it.
Time to actually watch the rest of the video now :)
Loved the editing at 14:38 so much I had to rewatch it twice. Every video your quality gets better and better, keep it up guys!
Yeah that part feels like a movie cut
there was a drone view as part of that sequence. informative and moderate and soooo far from the wheel
The topic was very interesting, and the IBM topic of New Creators too. That's a value-added advertisement. Thanks for your amazing content.
3:23 The final move in that slideshow was absolute perfection. What a smooth operator.
5:56 I feel like the main advantage of the free wheel design is that the free wheels can rotate independently whilst the fixed wheels can only move in the same direction making turning nearly imposable for carts using that method.
That's true actually, even today we can't figure out how much difference we should allow. If we allow anything than one wheel could get all the power. If we limit the ratio we could have reduced power.
I mean yeah, but also you don't have to move the axel. Less movement more effect.
Trains have fixed wheels
That 90s PowerPoint was totally rad!
Sebrina: A large part of the problem of inventing the wheel was inventing the axle.
Melissa: So anyway, I’m just gonna use this pencil.
Lmao
I was gonna say, that sounds like cheating lol
cmao
Definitely think we're stretching the "using only string and saw" definition there
@@samarnadra no they do not count, the thing is that SCALE matters, making something tiny like these things you can get away with a lot of wrongs but if they were to scale these models up into actual usable wagons or whatnot then they would completely fall apart.
Humans figured out "round things roll" the first time a caveman kicked a log down a hill. Getting things to roll in place is the tricky part
I could use a friend who would ask me to reinvent the wheel. That sounds like a better use of my time than what I was gonna do.
Be the friend you wish to see in the world
I always took the phrase "don't re-invent the wheel" to mean basically "someone else already did it, why are you going to waste so much time and effort to do it again?" Basically like "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
I'm fascinated by these videos trying to recreate the process of re-inventing ancient ideas! Would love to see more like this!
I think this is one of the best videos you've made. The editing and pacing are just perfect for your humor and style.
The wheel animation at around 5 minutes is so impressive. Love it
i'm an amator luthier : it took me a few weeks to re-invent the ukulele, a day to perfect to the guitar, a month to perfect to the violin.
Then i wanted to re-invent the hudy gurdy : a day to do the mechanics, a day to do the string part,
And i'm stuck since a year in the wheel part. she need to be perfectly round, and have an angle in the edge, because the strings aren't perfectly parrallels to the body.
Reinventing the hurdy gurdy? Now that's a cause I can get behind! You have my support.
But isn't the hurdy gurdy perfect now?
The reason people say not to reinvent the wheel is because our resources would be better utilized reinventing the hurdy-gurdy.
Oh yes
The perfect circle
I studied that eldritch abomination, it’s beyond miraculous how humanity even came across the means to make one
It’s a cruel mistress, the pi it serves you is neither sweet nor filling, but an endless nightmare of numbers that punish us for our hubris, woe be unto mankind for daring to know it’s secret
(I’m only half joking, good luck with reinventing the hurdy-gurdy, pretty sure a wizard got abducted by aliens and came back to the Earth with the first one)
This video invoked a deep, childlike wonder in me - like the kind I had at age 6 when I tried to make a Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Disk out of paper and tape. It's the joy of discovery, and the bright enthusiasm we bring to a world full of possibilities. Thank you for keeping that feeling alive for me. ❤️
This is my favorite video you guys have ever done, I've rewatched it so many times. Peak chaotic educational energy.
I genuinely love these videos! I never know what subject you guys will tackle next and yet I’m never disappointed. Thanks for reinventing the wheel today very cool 😅❤
Genius marketing - 11:20 "What is pulling along, if not a genre of push?"
The second he named him terry I instantly put 100% of my support into terry
To be fair, some of this is being made slightly harder for the subjects because people who would have actually been inventing (or even just making) the wheel at the time would have been using surprisingly advanced math (by which I mean probably high school level by today's standard but still of a level most people don't encounter in daily life once they're done with high school) as part of their trade, and would have had access to some tools we may not expect, like hand drills and plumb lines (and by extension, levels). So as much as giving them power tools and Wikipedia would probably have made the whole thing boring, redundant and probably ultimately further from historical experience, the circumstances in which the wheel was invented may have been more auspicious than the ones this experiment was made under.
im not reading allat
@@mrslime9137it’s a paragraph. How are you not failing English?
the challenge of making a palm sized toy and a proper carriage or cart are also orders of magnitude apart difficulty wise, so they still had a way easier task.
This disadvantage is more than covered by fact that these two had seen all sort of wheels throughout their lives thus they don't really need to invent it they just need to reproduce minimal working thing.
@@wolfiegames1572bold of you to assume they aren't failing English. They had 6 words to say, misspelled one, and gave up on separating the last 3
Sabrina, master of wheels, visionary of power points.
This was a wheel-y good episode.
14:14 - Rigged!
17:30 top 10 anime betrayals
Love how they just combined them… And now you have a train 🎉
Wheels are magic, and those two got through every stage of human ingenuity in just two days. 😂
I LOVE this video format. Really enjoyed seeing you all in the same place working on such a fun project.
I think what you failed to mention is that for the wheel to be invented it took some precursor paradigm shift, maybe two- first , it requires hunter gatherer tribes to be successful and safe enough to afford the time needed for the wheel’s development, second, there has to be some shared issue that necessitates it’s creation, I.e. huge amounts of gathering/farming that is near impossible to transport without a wheeled structure, maybe moving a mammoth carcass, PLUS an area size of a civilization with transportation distances long enough to necessitate the innovation. It started with logs as the first wheels
Logs as a precursor makes a lot of sense and creates a sense of rolling things. It was an improvement on the sled which they had to drag or pull.
The cut at 11:02 from “I have no idea how Taha is doing” to the Terry reveal was easily the most efficient depiction of the slow decent into insanity in all of cinema. 😂
13:54 humanity thrives when we work together
Y’all never cease to amaze, entertain, and educate. The funny jokes, and amazing friendship y’all have help me be a littleness less TIREd and depressed
I love how emotionally and mentally healthy everyone is. Can we use this video as the gold standard for the next 200,000 years??? ....Asking for a friend.
The energy in this video is off the charts, I was rooting for everyone!
It’s amazing omg
I love how they started cooperating during the "competition"
This is fabulous. Thank you for running this experiment, because I was planning to do this with my elementary students, and I'm realizing there wouldn't be enough time! But it also gave me a concept of what their challenges would be and how we could help them along. ALSO, thank you for summarizing The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, because I wanted to read that book but....don't have time right now! Your graphics are AWESOME. Congrats on your hard work there (and/or to whomever made them).
The cut to 'wrong' at 5:00 really made the video for me.
This is only the second video by you I’ve seen (saw one about vaping first), but you’re so good at this! The mix of styles all done well, wry humor, interesting content, and charisma. You’re killing it!
This is one of the few channels that can make me laugh, and it's educational too.
also you're undeniably impressive cart animation has the wheels turning backwards
Sabrina finally had her friends in the same place and immediately pitched them against each other. absolutely hilarious
Yo your content is getting so much more accessible to a wider audience. Can really tell your production quality is increasing I love to see it!
I always took the meaning of 'don't reinvent the wheel' to be a message to not be afraid to build on the work that came before. Standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak.
Shout out to Chantale or Sabrina for capturing 3:35, the shot almost looked planned 😭💀
I like that this video goes into a bit of depth thinking about the journey that people went through while inventing the wheel, especially since it made me think of what alternatives could have arose. Imagine a world where we used tank treads for everything simply because that's a shorter leap from when people rolled carts on top of logs and simply ran back and forth to bring the logs in back up to the front. Or imagine a world where vehicles are attached to the axles and the wheels as well so that the entirety of the vehicle spins as it travels making it so that you have to take some time to recover from your concussion after every journey.
RIGGED is a term commonly used in the operation of naval vessels.
at 15:28 Taha sounds like he's a fan of F1 :D
The chemistry between Melissa and Taha is unmatched.
Love your channel and your 2 cohorts!!! Love how you label your commercial spots!!! Love all the content, sense of humor, and educational value of what and how it’s presented
The moment you said that it's the wheel *and axle* suddenly that saying truly made sense.
the chaotic energy is amazing! more of this please
That is one of the greatest videos I ever witnessed. You have lovely friends, and an even lovelier video. Cheers to that !
This video was a blast. Love seeing a group of friends who clearly have a fun dynamic just shoot the crap and be creative together
There are two type of parents: 15:13
12:56 Tractors were named that because they had tracks.
Not wheels.
The weight test wasn't entirely fair because there was no horse or weight to balance Terry on. With a horse attached there is tension, keeping him up straight, whereas here he was left sagging, which made him lean and touch the ground.
I think both would have drawn if this was properly accounted for.
His axle was made of string, so it would sag pretty quickly. Also would have friction and eventually wear through. But still worked pretty well.
@@MacNerfer rope is pulling wheels in. With weight on wheels those wouldn't even spin. Mellisa can work on her design revise and improve. Terry's design is good enough if you want to carry a spare wheel and really for nothing else.