Modern Marvels

Journey underground and backstage at the technological marvel that is Walt Disney World. Enter a make-believe world spanning some 27,000 acres, brought to life by cutting-edge technology. What was once Florida swampland now boasts the world's largest theme park. The ride technology ranges from space-age centrifuges to enhanced motion vehicles powered by 3,000 PSI of hydraulic pressure.

On this episode of Modern Marvels we'll construct, and deconstruct, the roundabout ribbons that comprise the world's Superhighways. Our road trip starts in Houston, Texas where a multi-billion dollar expansion project is widening a stretch of superhighway to a spacious 20 lanes. Then we're off to China's 28,000-mile National Trunk Highway System.

Explore the hottest trends in gadgets, how they've evolved and where they're going. See how the latest miniaturized, mobile gadgetry can fit all the technology that once filled an entire office into a single briefcase. Visit Brookstone, the ultimate gadget store. We'll meet a gadget collector who's turned his home into a gadget museum.

Zip through the French countryside at nearly 300 MPH on the TGV--the fastest locomotive in the world. Ride on the little engines that could as they guide giant ships through the Panama Canal. Watch two locomotives crash head-on as the federal government monitors safety.

It's the basic source of nourishment for half the world--bread. Bake it, roast it, slice it, toast it--it's a wonder that three simple ingredients, flour, water and salt, can be transformed into so many different shapes and tastes. From baguettes to pita, from corn bread to flour tortillas, every culture finds a way to make it and bake it.

Modern arsenals have become much more sophisticated than bullets and bombs. Discover microwave-like rays that make the enemy flee when they feel the heat and laser weapons, mounted on trucks and airplanes that can blow missiles out of the sky.

Witness some mind-blowing feats of strength starting with the world's most powerful elevators--one lifts fighter jets, the other lifts a giant stage filled with acrobats. Discover the world's strongest tire and the monster mine machine it rolls with. Take a 35-foot drop on the world's strongest mountain bike. See the world's strongest land transport vehicle that carries the Space Shuttle.

The dot com decade opened up the information superhighway and for the first time, people could shop, search, and surf online with the click of a mouse. Take a trip back to the end of the 20th century and the beginning of today's trendy technologies and see how the gadgets we can't live without all started in the 90s.

On Modern Marvels: Milk, we'll visit a farm with a milking parlor for 80 cows that looks more like a bovine merry-go-round. At the Driftwood Dairy processing plant, we'll find out what's so hot about pasteurization.

All life forms, including us, are built upon atoms of carbon. But modern technology is also built on a foundation of carbon. On Modern Marvels: Carbon, you'll find out just how versatile this simple element can be.

CORN is a chameleon that has found its way into over 3,000 different items. Discover how hundreds of tons of sweet corn make it from the field to a sealed can within mere hours at Lakeside Foods in Wisconsin...how corn is transformed into clear plastic packaging (ironically to hold food) at NatureWorks in Nebraska ..

A steam pipe explosion rocks New Yorkers on a summer day in Midtown Manhattan. Boston's Big Dig highway project suffers a major setback when sections of a tunnel ceiling fall onto the roadway. Rush hour in Minnesota turns deadly, as a bridge plunges into the Mississippi River.

It is said that the pig is as smart as a three-year-old human. The pancreas, heart valve and intestines of the pig have been transplanted into human bodies, yet the primary use of the pig is for food. Watch the pig transform into bacon, ham, ribs and sausage, using a high tech water knife, at Burger's Smokehouse in Missouri.

They're the meat in our sandwiches and slices of American pop culture. Modern Marvels: Cold Cuts 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.

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 and resource scarcity.

Be Afraid. The dangers associated with Electric Shock are 100% real. It kills and injures thousands each year. Yet in the last 100 years we've corralled its power to create marvelous devices. In this episode we'll explore the stunning ways that electric shocks occur - from lethal prison fences to the slippery shock of an Electric Eel.

From the Stone Age, to the Space Age, we've built our world from rocks. Modern Marvels travels to America's horde of moon rocks located at NASA's Johnson Space Center. These rocks give us clues as to how the planets were formed, and how old the solar system is.