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Sand Castle Holds Up A Car! - Mechanically Stabilized Earth

Practical Engineering · 5M views · 2016-05-16 · 7:53

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Overview

Practical Engineering explains Mechanically Stabilized Earth, where layers of reinforcement make soil strong enough to hold heavy loads, shown with a sand structure supporting a car. It notes that MSE walls are everywhere in infrastructure.

On Hacker News

Often named as a great first video from Practical Engineering and as the explanation of reinforced earth.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2016–2026

Topics

Civil engineering & construction
Search by tags
reinforced soilmse wallscivil engineeringretaining wallsdemonstration

What people said

davidwf · 2021-01 · Recommendation

I keep a Google Document of these to share just in case people ask about my YouTube interests. I Actually Watched All of Them I have actually watched ALL of the videos on these channels and I don’t even feel bad about it :-) I actually like new videos from some of the ones below (like NativLang, for example) but they maybe don’t hold up in the early videos. - Space Time: PBS Physics, sooo good -- [LINK] -- Great first video: [LINK] - Lindsay Ellis: Really, really intelligent video essays about film and culture -- [LINK] -- Great First Video: [LINK] - Periodic Videos: Chemistry, including a video for every element -- [LINK] -- Great first video (obviously): [LINK] Other Math and Science - 3Blue1Brown: Amazing math visualizations -- [LINK] -- Great first video, how e^pi*i works: [LINK] - NumberPhile: Fun math videos -- [LINK] -- Great first video: [LINK] - PBS Eons: Biology! -- [LINK] -- Great first video: [LINK] - PBS Infinite Series: Math math math, really really hard math -- [LINK] -- Great first video: [LINK] - SciShow: Science! More poppy but fun -- [LINK] -- Silly first show: [LINK] -- Actual physics: [LINK] - VSauce: Science-y? -- [LINK] -- Great first video: [LINK] - Practical Engineering: -- [LINK] -- Great first video: [VIDEO] Other Humanities - Alliterative: Connections via language -- [LINK] -- Great first video about gin and gimlets: [LINK] - Bon Appetit: Such fun food stuff! -- Gourmet Makes: [LINK] -- It’s Alive: [LINK] - Masaman: Genetics and human migration (an

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cwkoss · 2018-08 · Recommendation

I wonder if sheets of a cloth-like material could be used in loading similar to Mechanically Stabilized Earth Practical Engineering has a great video on this simple but pervasive technology. [VIDEO]

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milesvp · 2026-08 · Reference

I was suprised to see the use of wiremesh in sand castle building some years ago. Same concept though. You add something that helps with shear strength and you can build much taller sand buildings. It’s really counter intuitive to see too, since the sand could clearly sieve through the mesh. Ha! just looked up the video, seems it’s another practical engineering video I was thinking of [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Practical Engineering, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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