Demist for engineering students
Engineering lectures name a concept once and then use it for the rest of the hour. If the name did not land, every derivation that follows is built on something you missed.
What it does during a engineering lecture
Demist transcribes as your lecturer speaks, picks out the terms you are unlikely to know at your year of study, and puts a one-sentence explanation on screen while they are still talking. You keep listening instead of writing down a word to look up later.
Afterwards you have the full transcript, a glossary of every term that came up, a summary, and flashcards scheduled by spaced repetition so you revise something shortly before you would have forgotten it.
The kind of engineering terminology it explains
Young's modulus
A measure of a material's stiffness: the stress applied divided by the strain it produces, while the material still springs back to its original shape.
Reynolds number
A dimensionless number comparing inertial forces to viscous forces in a flowing fluid, used to predict whether the flow will be smooth (laminar) or turbulent.
Bending moment
The turning effect of the forces acting on a beam at a given point, which determines how much the beam bends there.
Eigenvalue
A number that describes how a transformation stretches or shrinks a particular direction, called an eigenvector, without changing the direction itself.
Fourier transform
A way of breaking a signal down into the frequencies it is made of, so it can be analysed by frequency instead of over time.
Explanations are written for your year of study and the subject you set up, so a first year and a finalist get different levels of detail for the same word.
It listens, it does not read the board
Demist works from what your lecturer says. It will explain a concept they name, but it cannot see equations or diagrams written on the board or slides, so it is a companion to your notes on the maths, not a replacement for them.
Where your lecture audio goes
In the Windows app, live recording is transcribed, and its terms detected and explained, by AI models running on your own machine, so the audio of a live lecture never leaves your computer. Your transcript and glossary sync to your account so you can see them on the web and keep your history if you reinstall.
The browser version works differently: it sends the audio to our server to be transcribed, and sends the terms it picks out to be explained. So does uploading a recording, in any version. The privacy policy sets out exactly what goes where.
What it costs
Live explanations, translation, your glossary and your flashcards are free, with no advertising. Recording is free and unlimited in the Windows app; in the browser, free accounts get three recordings. Free accounts keep lecture history for seven days. Demist Pro keeps your whole term, records in the browser with no limit, and adds unlimited summaries and Anki export for £4.99 a month. New accounts get Pro free for their first 30 days, with no card.
Built for students who find lectures harder to follow
Demist exists for engineering students with a hearing impairment, with dyslexia, who find holding attention difficult, or who are studying in English as a second language. If that is you, it is worth trying for one lecture.