Engineering stories whose deep dive explains waves, light and sound, ready to use as a starter, a reading task or a real-world example. Each one links to the GCSE and A level curriculum.
Health
For people with any of the roughly 736,900 cochlear implants registered worldwide by December 2019, all devices currently on the market share one obvious…
Deep dive: From Electricity to Light, the Next Frontier in Cochlear Stimulation
Electronics & CommunicationsInnovation
The Adidas Trionda match ball packs a 500Hz IMU, UWB positioning, and inductive charging into a 3-gram module that tracks every kick at the…
Deep dive: MEMS Sensors and the Physics of Football Flight
Construction & Infrastructure
Engineers begin placing 15,000 tonnes of Norwegian granite to protect the 150-year-old South Gare breakwater on the River Tees from increasingly severe North Sea…
Deep dive: How Rock Armour Protects Coastal Structures
ManufacturingBreakthroughs
A new purple radiative cooling fabric reflects 88% of sunlight and stays cooler than white cotton, challenging assumptions about colour and heat.
Deep dive: How the radiative cooling fabric actually works
Electronics & Communications
LED light pollution in cities is worsening despite energy-efficient streetlights. Engineers are rethinking colour temperature, shielding, and urban lighting design.
Deep dive: The Physics of LED Light Pollution in Cities
Space
Getting a signal back to Earth from a small satellite is harder than it sounds. The problem is not power — CubeSats carry solar…
Deep dive: How the Origami CubeSat Antenna Steers a Beam Without Moving
Aerospace, Defence & Marine
China's Tianwen-2 entered orbit around asteroid Kamoʻoalewa on 7 June 2026, beginning a sample return mission that could confirm the rock is a fragment…
Deep dive: How Do You Orbit a Rock That Barely Has Gravity?
HealthBreakthroughs
MIT engineers have developed an ultrasound wearable pacemaker sticker that corrects heart arrhythmias without surgery, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Deep dive: Inside the Ultrasound Wearable Pacemaker
Electronics & CommunicationsBreakthroughs
Carnegie Mellon engineers used gold metamaterial patterns to boost nanoscale heat transfer fourfold, a Nature-published breakthrough for chip cooling and energy.
Deep dive: The Physics and Fabrication Behind Metamaterial Nanoscale Heat Transfer
Aerospace, Defence & MarineInnovation
NASA's X-59 quiet supersonic jet broke the sound barrier for the first time on 5 June 2026, reaching Mach 1.1 over California.
Deep dive: Shaping Shock Waves from the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Jet
Electronics & Communications
ESA's Celeste LEO navigation satellite broadcast Europe's first dual-frequency signal from low Earth orbit, testing a new layer for positioning systems.
Deep dive: How satellite navigation works from two different altitudes
Space
A UK-led mission is launching fluorescent C. elegans worms to the ISS inside a shoebox-sized Petri Pod to study bone, muscle and radiation effects…
Deep dive: How to run a biology lab in orbit