What Happens to an Email After You Click 'Send'?

Email is one of the most essential things to our life. But do you actually know what happens when you click the “send” button, and how it's sent to your friends?

Hosted by: Hank Green

----------
----------
----------
Dooblydoo thanks go to the following Patreon supporters—we couldn't make SciShow without them! Shout out to Jeremy Peng, Kevin Bealer, Mark Terrio-Cameron, KatieMarie Magnone, Patrick Merrithew, Charles Southerland, Fatima Iqbal, Benny, Kyle Anderson, Tim Curwick, Scott Satovsky Jr, Will and Sonja Marple, Philippe von Bergen, Bella Nash, Bryce Daifuku, Chris Peters, Saul, Patrick D. Ashmore, Charles George, Bader AlGhamdi
----------
----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
----------
Sources:

[alexandrujuncu]

I was a teaching assistant for several years for courses related to operating systems and networking so I had to explain this to my students many many times. And I still find it amazing to tell the story of an email. But I approve of your presentation in this video and I would like to thank you on behalf of IT people everywhere for doing it. Hope it is seen by as many people as possible.

[Master_Therion]

Sometimes after I click "send" on an email I have to call the I.T. department and tell them I forgot to put a stamp on it. They always say they'll take care of it. They're so nice to me. ^_^

[kunalkokate]

I cleared my interview just because of you. Thank you very much for such an informative explanation.♥

[mikep]

As someone who has been sending and getting network email for nearly 50 years, and actually building and running the systems that do it for over 30 years, I'm glad to see such a well put together explanation aimed at the average viewer. You left out a lot of details (I have a complete presentation that tries to cover it in several days, but you don't have that time 🙂 ), but you did include a lot that often gets glossed over. I've actually dropped "how an Email happens" from my normal presentation conclusion and replaced it with "What happens when I click a link" as a slightly simpler case with fewer possible rabbit holes attached. I suggest you might consider doing that, you could include some of the simpler details that needed glossing over in this video.

[GigAHerZ]

SciShow really needs SciShow Tech.

Love the episode, waiting for more.

[adamwhitehurst]

I thought this episode was particularly awesome because I feel computer science is underrepresented on SciShow. I hope we get more CS content :)

[mixiekins]

1:57 -- Fun fact: in the IT world email has been jokingly compared to postcards rather than envelopes because of this. These days they now have encryption, but it has to be enabled on most servers. It's kinda like the comparison between http versus https, any man in the middle that can intercept the data in-transit can read it plain as day if it's not encrypted. Protip: be nice to your sysadmins, they have all of the access. All of it.

[ooops]

I thought that one episode of the Fairly Oddparents made this answer quite clear...

[VincentRiquer]

there are a few simplifications, but it's good to finally see a video that explains how this whole mess works. Nice work, Hank

[JacobMcCabe]

I've always visualized email like in The Fairly Oddparents where Timmy rides a letter through cyberspace. You're telling me it doesn't work like that?

[JacksonWelch]

you guys should make a new channel called SciShow Technology

[LovinoFernandez]

This was way more interesting than I thought it would be.

[sgnir]

Finally another video from Hank, loved it

[JahanZeb]

Great video and a big deal of information discussed.

[ryanzarmbinski]

It makes me happy to hear some Computer Science on SciShow :)

[samseidel]

When he was saying "humans send ten times more emails than..." I expected him to finish that sentence with something like pigeons or voles.

[mipsuperk]

I highly appreciate the use of the word "initialism" where most people would incorrectly use "acronym".

[agnosticgo]

I just finished the video and I'm still pretty convinced it is magic

[thadguy]

So I now know how Emails work. But how do BIG Online multiplayer games work?

[BoozledYT]

Do they monetize their videos? I've never seen an ad on their channel.