The BEST episodes of Modern Marvels season 14

#1 - Rocks

Season 14 - Episode 41 - Aired 12/3/2007

From the Stone Age, to the Space Age, we've built our world from rocks. With moon rocks located at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

#2 - Engineering Disasters of the 70's

Season 14 - Episode 19 - Aired 5/30/2007

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.

#3 - Traps

Season 14 - Episode 30 - Aired 8/27/2007

They're designed to capture and often kill, but they don't always harm their prey. Traps are devices as old as humanity itself. We'll trap 400 punds Black Bears with West Virginia Division of Natural Resources biologists.

#4 - Extreme Aircraft (2)

Season 14 - 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.

#5 - Deep Sea Salvage

Season 14 - Episode 14 - 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.

#6 - Saws

Season 14 - Episode 24 - 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.

#7 - Canning

Season 14 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/20/2006

Canning is the method of a preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply.

#8 - Balls

Season 14 - 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.

#9 - It Came from Outer Space

Season 14 - 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.

#10 - World's Sharpest

Season 14 - Episode 36 - Aired 10/11/2007

The Katana blade of the Samurai is the world's sharpest sword. We'll craft one from scratch to reveal the secret of its legendary cutting ability. We'll also visit Cutco Cutlery, where the sharpest for chopping food in your kitchen are made.

#11 - Environmental Tech

Season 14 - 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.

#12 - '60's Tech

Season 14 - Episode 16 - 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.

#13 - Fertilizer

Season 14 - Episode 22 - Aired 6/20/2007

Without it one third of us would starve. Modern Marvels: Fertilizer tours the places that harness the vital nutrients that enrich the soil...that grow the crops...that feed us.

#14 - Deep Freeze

Season 14 - 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.

#15 - Welding

Season 14 - Episode 15 - 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.

#16 - Acid

Season 14 - 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!

#17 - Engineering Disasters (21)

Season 14 - Episode 37 - Aired 10/25/2007

A steam pipe explosion rocks in Midtown Manhattan. In Boston's sections of a tunnel ceiling fall onto the roadway. And in Minnesota a bridge plunges into the Mississippi River.

#18 - Bedroom Tech

Season 14 - Episode 28 - Aired 8/13/2007

We spend 1/3 of our lives in the bedroom, explore the technologies that help to ensure we wake up on the right side of the bed.

#19 - Chocolate

Season 14 - Episode 27 - Aired 8/6/2007

It's America's favorite flavor. We eat over three and a half billion pounds of it each year.

#20 - Sticky Stuff

Season 14 - Episode 26 - Aired 7/30/2007

A look at everyday stuff that is sticky including VHB tape, velcro, stealth rubber, cling wrap, and asphalt.

#21 - '70's Tech

Season 14 - Episode 20 - 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.

#22 - Yard Tech

Season 14 - Episode 12 - Aired 4/12/2007

The technology used to keep your lawn green including the lawnmower, riding movers, sod, astro turf, and sprinklers. The state of the art grass used in the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona. Also: how a company moves big trees, and the science of different types of grasses.

#23 - Star Trek Tech

Season 14 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/18/2007

#24 - Aluminum

Season 14 - Episode 25 - 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.

#25 - More Ice

Season 14 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/28/2009

It traps a treasure of energy on the ocean floor, and confounds scientists still trying to solve why it’s so slippery. We’ll venture inside NASA’s Icing Research Tunnel in Ohio, and then it’s off to Salt Lake City’s Olympic Oval which boasts “the fastest ice on Earth.” Dive to the ocean floor to collect and analyze a unique form of ice called methane clathrates–cages of ice encasing pressurized natural gas. Scientists believe that if only one percent of the world’s ice-entrapped methane could be harvested, it would more than double our current supply of natural gas. Other highlights include the search for extraterrestrial ice and a trip inside the studio of a chainsaw-wielding artist as he sculpts a masterpiece