Progress in education, flight, and flight safety
Some things I learned at Progress con:
It can often seem like there is no progress in education at all - for hundreds of years, the expert has stood at the front of the room and the students sat at desks listening. But Matt Bateman argued progress is real, even if glacial. Exercise books, grade-appropriate readers, stories tuned to the interests of children, were all invented at one time or another. These, plus many other innovations, have allowed the typical student to learn more in less unpleasant environment.
The Wright brothers plane looks backwards to us today, with a tail-like protrusion sticking out of the front. According to Brian Potter, this unintentionally had the effect of converting a deadly stall into a gentle descent. That was one factor that let the Wright brothers successfully conduct the hundreds of tests they needed to develop manned flight.
Speaking of flight, one of the most successful drones at the DARPA lift challenge was successful because it “cheated”: it was able to run its engine at speeds that would normally overheat and kill it by rotating the whole drone as it flew, then shunting the rotating air into the engine to cool it. Watch more drones crash here.