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The Best Episodes of Modern Marvels Season 14

Every episode of Modern Marvels Season 14 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Modern Marvels Season 14!

HISTORY’s longest-running series moves to H2. Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuity, invention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink...
Genre:Documentary
Networks:HistoryH2

Season 14 Ratings Summary

"Balls" is the best rated episode of "Modern Marvels" season 14. It scored 7.8/10 based on 11 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 1/17/2007. This episode is rated 2.2 points higher than the second-best, "Environmental Tech".

  • Balls
    7.8/1011 votes

    #1 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Environmental Tech
    5.6/1021 votes

    #2 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Canning
    7.3/1013 votes

    #3 - Canning

    Season 14 Episode 3 - Aired 1/31/2007

    It's the unsung essential of modern life. Canning is the method of a preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply. It changed the way the world eats and revolutionized the food industry.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Pumps
    8.1/1014 votes

    #4 - Pumps

    Season 14 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Ice
    NaN/100 votes

    #5 - Ice

    Season 14 Episode 5 - Aired 2/11/2007

    The solid form of life's precious elixir has played a key role in fashioning our history and is making its mark as an unusual tool of technology. Explore how Earth's ice originated and recount how ice age glaciers sculpted North America. Take an inside look at Colorado's National Ice Core Repository to see how ice drilled from Antarctica and Greenland is an invaluable archive of past climate, and at a Canadian research lab experts demonstrate the dynamics and dangers of icebergs. See how Greenland's massive ice sheet may be sliding faster than ever toward the sea. Take a look at how scientists are using Antarctica's ice as a gigantic lens to probe the secrets of the universe.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • More Ice
    8.4/1024 votes

    #6 - More Ice

    Season 14 Episode 6 - Aired 2/11/2007

    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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Destroyer
    6.6/1019 votes

    #7 - The Destroyer

    Season 14 Episode 7 - Aired 2/13/2007

    The destroyers made during World War II are examined. With interviews with veterans and archival film footage.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Star Trek Tech
    6.9/1016 votes

    #8 - Star Trek Tech

    Season 14 Episode 8 - Aired 2/18/2007

    In this episode we are presented with the technology and gadgets used while filming the Star Trek series. It also explores some of the real or possible technologies that were inspired by various Star Trek series.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Weapons of Mass Destruction
    7.5/1019 votes

    #9 - Weapons of Mass Destruction

    Season 14 Episode 9 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Barbarian Battle Tech
    7.0/1013 votes

    #10 - Barbarian Battle Tech

    Season 14 Episode 10 - Aired 3/7/2007

    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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Dams
    7.0/1013 votes

    #11 - Dams

    Season 14 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Yard Tech
    7.7/1013 votes

    #12 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • More Military Movers
    7.2/1019 votes

    #13 - More Military Movers

    Season 14 Episode 13 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Deep Sea Salvage
    8.0/1019 votes

    #14 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Welding
    7.4/1020 votes

    #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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • 60s Tech
    6.6/1013 votes

    #16 - 60s 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • It Came From Outer Space
    7.6/1016 votes

    #17 - It Came From Outer Space

    Season 14 Episode 17 - Aired 5/16/2007

    What do remote controlled robots, Tempur-Pedic mattresses, polarized glasses and metallized blankets have in common? They are all civilian inventions among the thousands derived from technologies used in space exploration.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • World's Strongest II
    6.5/1016 votes

    #18 - World's Strongest II

    Season 14 Episode 18 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Engineering Disasters of the '70s
    7.1/1012 votes

    #19 - Engineering Disasters of the '70s

    Season 14 Episode 19 - Aired 5/30/2007

    To err is human, but when the error 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • 70s Tech
    7.2/1015 votes

    #20 - 70s 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

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Truck Stops
    6.5/1016 votes

    #21 - Truck Stops

    Season 14 Episode 21 - Aired 6/13/2007

    Join Modern Marvels as we discover how truck stops, serving more than twenty million truckers nationwide, are bigger and better than ever. These mammoth pit-stops are essential cogs in the machinery that keeps goods flowing seamlessly around the country. In this episode we'll tour the world's largest truck stop, a grand service area complete with fuel, food, parking, private showers, a movie theater, a dentist office, and a barbershop. We'll see how 18-wheelers power elaborate living quarters without idling their engines by plugging into truck stop utilities.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Fertilizer
    7.9/1018 votes

    #22 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Cheese
    6.6/1017 votes

    #23 - Cheese

    Season 14 Episode 23 - Aired 6/27/2007

    From the giant cheese factories of Wisconsin to the goat farms of Northern California, this episode explores cheese.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Saws
    7.1/1016 votes

    #24 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Aluminum
    6.5/1011 votes

    #25 - 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.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A