How Machines Work

A clean-coal burning power plant in England is a giant machine the size of two Central Park's side-by side. It pulverizes coal to explosive dust to turn steam turbine, to feed a city. See how a mega-sized roller coaster delivers thrills while keeping us alive. Rollercoasters produce such G-forces, that your pocket phone weighs over 2 pounds in mid-flight. A massive binocular telescope atop an Arizona peak promised to deliver galactic images crisper and closer than those of the orbiting Hubble. At your local bowling alley, a pin-setting mechanical robot works behind the scenes clean up and reset your pins. It may be old tech, but this mechanical worker hasn't stopped in 40 years, no software needed.

Nearly 200 ,000 parabolic mirrors on the Mojave Desert make up Solar One, a power plant that focuses the sun's rays onto oil tubes, which boil water to power steam turbines that produce electricity. A Hydrogen fuel cell powers a prototype electric motorcycle. Go inside the fuel cell to learn how it makes power, and how it produces its only environmental emission: water. There's more to an escalator than we all thought. It processes and directs crowds while ongoing development keep us safe from injury. Ever wake up with a tattoo and wonder what happened the night before? Our inside scoop on how a tattoo machine works, may answer that. It stabs the skin 6,000 times a minute, as fast as the wings of hummingbird - only more painful.

It may look like an off-the-lot stock car, but the rally car is rebuilt from the ground up, inside out to make a nearly indestructible race car. A major city newspaper needs to get a million copies out the door by morning. It depends on a low cost, high speed, high volume printing to make its deadlines. The Web offset printer delivers 80 pages a second, 500 folded newspapers a minute — all without a smear. Ships depend on canals and lift locks to get them between navigable waterways. This one is an elevator that lifts a dozen boats at a time without using any electricity or fuel — just a hydraulic system that run on river water. At a century old, it's an original green machine. If you ever wonder what makes a mechanical clock 'tick', take a cue from a giant. This 11-story German clock tower in Munich is a bit like your grandfather clock at home — gears, pendulum and a clock face. Only bigger.

In a city shy of skyscrapers, super-ferris wheel London Eye rises 40 stories above the Thames. 800 riders in 32 lounge-sized pods hang of its rim. So finely balanced, the machine never stops while loading and unloading passengers. The high-powered Samba is a jet ski prototype with a redesigned hull profile that races over the water. It also responds to the low-slung rider's body moves, spinning a full one hundred and eighty degrees at an almost standstill. Hoover Dam is a giant machine that uses water pressure to drive turbines that produce electricity - simple in theory. But in practice, the real work is holding back a raging river to create enough water pressure at bone-crushing depths. The traffic light is the visible end of a machine-like, coordinated web designed to keep urban people and traffic in synchronized motion. The modern intersection actually reads traffic patterns, and adjusts its signals in real time.

A diesel powered lumberjack, the Feller Buncher grabs a tree almost two feet thick, slices through the base, lifts and stacks it onto a pile, in just seconds. Finely balanced, it won't tip over while wrangling tall trees on a mountain slope. The rescue hovercraft is light and portable to get to emergencies quickly. To do that, designers broke the rules by using just a single fan for lift and for thrust, where others use two. Notice the weave up close on your shirt sleeve. It's likely made on a high-speed industrial loom. One strand after another is woven two thousand times per second on a complex, synchronized machine, without breaking a stitch. The remote controlled quadrotor aerial drone has graduated from hobby shop to super spy. A meter wide and weighing less than a kilo, it's not only remote controlled, but programmed to fly and land on its own.

The Russian built Sukoi aerobatic stunt plane is built from the ground up to survive near-deadly G-forces. With simple manual controls, it's designed to design uses the force of the outside wind speed to help the pilot combat resistance. The powerful tugboat is designed dig into water and hold its position, while pushing, pulling, as it takes over the steering and power functions of large ships through narrow channels and harbors. The carousel, invented in the middle ages to train knights for battle, today lights up a fair ground with fairy tale themes that mask the mean, mechanical machine hidden underneath, that keeps the whole thing moving while and in balance.

A clean-coal burning power plant in England is a giant machine the size of two Central Park's side-by side. It pulverizes coal to explosive dust to turn steam turbine, to feed a city. See how a mega-sized roller coaster delivers thrills while keeping us alive. Rollercoasters produce such G-forces, that your pocket phone weighs over 2 pounds in mid-flight. A massive binocular telescope atop an Arizona peak promised to deliver galactic images crisper and closer than those of the orbiting Hubble. At your local bowling alley, a pin-setting mechanical robot works behind the scenes clean up and reset your pins. It may be old tech, but this mechanical worker hasn't stopped in 40 years, no software needed.