Watch a gigantic ship being built in six minutes

Projects like Think Physics spend a lot of time illustrating how engineering careers mostly aren’t about welding or metalwork. But there’s still something plain cool about seeing huge slabs of steel being thrown around by massive cranes and slotted together like oversize Lego. This video is the cruise ship AIDAprima being built in Nagasaki, Japan, between June 2013 and May 2014.

On board are two water slides, climbing walls, a lavish sports deck, 1643 guest rooms, thirteen restaurants and some sort of clever roof I don’t quite understand. Underneath is what sounds like a fiendishly clever air bubble system which reduces friction between the hull and the sea it’s travelling through, which is claimed to reduce fuel consumption by 7%. That’s a huge saving for a ship of this size (more technical details about the ship here).

When we’re talking about cutting edge engineering innovations and the exciting career opportunities that are emerging from breakthrough sectors, it’s worth remembering that the traditional heavy engineering companies are also still doing cool stuff. Ship building, power generation, mining, machine tool production – they’re all busy fields, and they’re not standing still when it comes to new technologies and approaches.

(video via the superlative blog The Kid Should See This)