Four videos about one really bad event that could have been much worse

We'll start with the video debrief of the driver with the armored vehicle manufacturer after the fact so we're all aware that things worked out fine for the people you'll see in the next two videos which are the original footage - first one inside the vehicle, second one a dashcam pointed out of the video.

We've had impressive videos of bulletproof, composite glass before, but this is a really impressive application of that material in its designed use. And, of course, the host sits in the car at the very end while one of his coworkers fires another two shots at him. Nuts, man...

And the final video is from an American morning show providing some context on the interior video that was making its rounds on social media at the time.

Heck of a first day on the job for the guy in the passenger seat.

Electric Vehicles' Battery Problem

"To replace the UK (not the UK) 31.5 million gasoline cars will require 236,000 tons of lithium carbonate." ~ quote from about 1:00 in the above video.

That would - again, according to the video - require all the world's output for 9 months.

And that metal comes from some countries with awful human rights records and workers' protections.

Then, if we mine the US's lithium, we have to use up water and leach arsenic into the water supply of Nevada...and dig into land holy to Native Americans...and destroy habitat for endangered animals.

It's the frickin' Kobayashi Maru, man.

Then we have to look at the cobalt mining.

To quote a magnet I got from the University of Utah, "what's your is mined," but clearly what's mined is bad for the planet and people.

Around the Corner - How Differential Steering Works

I'll readily admit that I'm not so sure this is a material science video, but it taught me how differential steering works more clearly than anything I'd ever seen before.

It's stunningly obvious and clear.

This is a marvelous video.

Inside the 23-Dimensional World of Your Car's Paint Job

We're continuing this week with a little more on the art theme. It's a very different kind of art from last week's memory metal flower, but there are still pedals involved. (groan)

Wired magazine has a brilliant article detailing the incredible process of color matching the paint on a repaired part of a car to the paint on the rest of the car. At first blush, the process seems awfully simple - pick up a can of the paint used to paint the car originally. Things are a little more complicated than that, however, as no repair shop is going to stock 50,000-60,000 different paints (the number of car colors on the road according to the article), no car in need of repair looks exactly like it did when it first rolled off the production line. and because the original paint job on most cars involves twenty three different dimensions to the color - sparkles, coarseness, red, blue, green, angle, diffuse coarseness, and so on.

The knowledge and skills involved in color matching are absolutely mind-boggling. There's an art to it all.

Crash Test 1959 Cheverolet Bel Air VS 2009 Cheverolet Malibu (Frontal Offset)

Gimme a great, old, heavy car if you're going to whomp me with another car.

Obviously that heavier car will have worse gas mileage, but the mass of the old car will mean that I'll be that much safer.

I swear that my dad said something like this when I was getting my first car. He wanted his boy to be safe, gas mileage be damned.

Turns out that maybe Dad was wrong. Yes, the old cars had more mass, but they also had old engineering. New cars are much, much safer because of great new materials and because of great safety engineering...and Ralph Nader.