The BEST episodes of Modern Marvels season 13
Every episode of Modern Marvels season 13, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Modern Marvels season 13!
Celebrating ingenuity, invention and imagination brought to life on a grand scale, MODERN MARVELS tells the fascinating stories of the doers, dreamers and sometime-schemers who created everyday items, technological breakthroughs and man-made wonders.
#1 - Deep Sea Salvage
Season 13 - Episode 15 - Aired 5/2/2007
Driven by the need for deep sea rescue and salvage capabilities, the US Navy Diving and Salvage Programs have gathered together a highly skilled team of divers, scientists and engineers, who have been involved in some of the most exciting and dangerous salvage operations ever undertaken.
#2 - Aluminum
Season 13 - Episode 26 - Aired 7/25/2007
This useful metal was once considered more valuable than gold. Watch as aluminum is stretched, pounded, melted and turned into foam. Did you know that aluminum is made out of a powder? Visit the widest rolling mill in the world where skins for the largest jets are made, then it’s off to NASA to observe how aluminum is used to make reflective mirrors for telescopes. Discover the process of making aluminum foil and learn why aluminum baseball bats are better than wood.
#3 - Cold Cuts
Season 13 - Episode 43 - Aired 12/17/2007
They're the meat in our sandwiches. We will take you behind the deli counter to reveal the secret ingredients in boloney. Watch a master sausage maker craft salami, and pile it on at Carnegie Deli with their famous mile-high pastrami sandwich.
#4 - More Military Movers
Season 13 - Episode 14 - Aired 4/18/2007
Soldiers, machines, and supplies are only effective if they arrive at the battlefield in time. Explore the history and the technology behind the machines that do the heavy moving in times of war.
#5 - Cheese
Season 13 - Episode 24 - Aired 6/27/2007
From the giant cheese factories of Wisconsin to the goat farms of Northern California,
#6 - Weapons of Mass Destruction
Season 13 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/21/2007
Nuclear and biological Weapons of mass destruction are examined. With a computer-generated depiction of a dirty-bomb attack in Seattle and how scientists identify biological agents.
#7 - 70's Tech
Season 13 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/30/2007
The 1970s were a decade of excess. Dust off your mirror ball, put on your leisure suit, and rediscover the gadgets of the era.
#8 - Environmental Tech 2
Season 13 - Episode 38 - Aired 11/12/2007
Take a look at the innovations designed to hold off a global warming meltdown.
#9 - World's Strongest 2
Season 13 - Episode 19 - Aired 5/23/2007
What does it take to become "the world's strongest"? You'll find out on this episode of Modern Marvels. With life-saving boron carbide body armor and MegaFly - a giant ram air parachute.
Watch Now:Apple TV#10 - It Came from Outer Space
Season 13 - Episode 17 - Aired 5/16/2007
What do remote controlled robots, Tempurpedic mattresses, polarized glasses and metallized blankets have in common? They are all civilian inventions among the thousands derived from technologies used in space exploration.
#11 - Welding
Season 13 - Episode 16 - Aired 5/9/2007
It was a science first conjured amid the fiery ovens of ancient blacksmiths; today more than 50% of all U.S. products require some form of welding. Whether via electricity, flammable gases, sonic waves, or sometimes just raw explosive power, welding creates powerful bonds between metal unmatched by any other joining process. From high atop emerging 60-story towers on the Las Vegas strip to oil platforms hundreds of feet below the ocean, discover how welders forge the backbone of civilization. Learn about exciting new applications: how sound waves create bulletproof welds for contemporary body armor; the technologies behind robotic welding systems; and the knee-rattling impact of an explosion weld, the most powerful method of all.
#12 - Dams
Season 13 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/28/2007
Dams - one of man's greatest accomplishments are explored. The history of dams from construction to demolition and their impact on the environment. Beavers and their dams and construction of embankment dams and larger Hydroelectric dams such as Three Gorges, Hoover, and Grand Coulee are explored.
#13 - Acid
Season 13 - Episode 35 - Aired 10/1/2007
It is the most widely produced chemical in the world and possibly the most dangerous. Take a look at the many uses of acid. See how the military harnesses acid to make the explosive “Comp B-4.” Visit a sulfuric acid plant to see how acid can take the stain out of stainless steel and learn how it can be mixed to dissolve precious metal. At the Heinz vinegar plant discover why acid’s sour taste is sweet. Finally, learn how acid loving bacteria in Yellowstone National Park may hold the key to a biological industrial revolution and meet a mad scientist who will demonstrate how acid can hollow out a penny and turn a hot dog to sludge!
#14 - Pumps
Season 13 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/7/2007
The history of the pump is chronicled. Pumps used in water distribution in Southern California - The Colorado River Aqueduct, a robotic cow-milking pump and a pump used in heart surgery.
#15 - Sticky Stuff
Season 13 - Episode 27 - Aired 7/30/2007
A look at everyday stuff that is sticky including VHB tape, velcro, stealth rubber, cling wrap, and asphalt.
#16 - Chocolate
Season 13 - Episode 28 - Aired 8/6/2007
It's America's favorite flavor. We eat over three and a half billion pounds of it each year.
#17 - Balls
Season 13 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/17/2007
Examining the technology and evolution of balls used in sports. Included: a tour of the Wilson Football Factory Ohio; the Rawlings baseball factory Costa Rica and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. And also "juego de pelota" - the ancient Mesoamerican ball game.
#18 - Barbarian Battle Tech
Season 13 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/4/2007
It's clear from the bow that nearly brought down Rome, the suspension system that revolutionized the chariot, and the axe that named a country that barbarians and technology aren't such a contradiction after all.
#19 - Extreme Aircraft 2
Season 13 - Episode 33 - Aired 9/20/2007
Take a supersonic flight through a world of flying machines that are redefining our skies. Pull serious G’s in the U.S. military’s latest fighter jet: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Riding shotgun in the lethal B-1B Lancer, and look close or you’ll miss the swarm of MAV’s (Micro Air Vehicles)–so small they are launched out of a backpack. The “vertical takeoff and landing” capable PAV’s (Personal Aerial Vehicles) may be the answer to the commuting needs of tired travelers. Then, discover how a commercial jetliner has been retrofitted into the biggest flying fire truck the world has ever seen.
#20 - Canning
Season 13 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/31/2007
Canning is the method of a preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply.
#21 - Engineering Disasters of the 70's
Season 13 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/31/2007
To error is human, but when it results in the loss of life, it's a disaster. Learn about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Buffalo Creek Dam disaster, and the explosion of a tanker in Los Angeles harbor.
#22 - Environmental Tech
Season 13 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/24/2007
From the prairies of Saskatchewan to a Manhattan skyscraper we’ll see the 21st Century’s cutting-edge “green” technologies in action. New technologies such as carbon sequestration and bioremediation take on our most daunting environmental crises, from global warming and deforestation to nuclear waste.
#23 - '60's Tech
Season 13 - Episode 18 - Aired 5/16/2007
A look at the technology behind some of the 1960s greatest inventions. With color television, transistor radios, satellite broadcasting, touch-tone phones, lava lamps, the Ford Mustang, and toys like Etch-a-Sketch and the Super Ball.
#24 - Saws
Season 13 - Episode 25 - Aired 7/18/2007
They brought down the forests and built up the pyramids. They're a cut above for construction, salvage, demolition - and they even make music and some have used them to torture.
#25 - Deep Freeze
Season 13 - Episode 34 - Aired 9/25/2007
Modern Marvels: Deep Freeze takes the technology of cold to the extreme: A 12-story ice box filled with 135 million pounds of ice cream, arctic vaults that store billions of seeds and learn how scientists have mastered temperatures of minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.