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Curious co-hosts Jay and Elisha go on a mysterious and sometimes eerie exploration where the sun don't shine... underground! Their adventure begins as Jay flushes a ping pong ball down the toilet with some dye so Elisha can track its journey down into the world of sewers... and figure out things like which sewer drain the ball will eventually come down. Jay then gets to drive a train in North America's first subway in Boston... it's 100 years old!
Elisha takes viewers on a dark adventure into subway tunnels after closing time to see where the trains go to sleep, and from a rat's point of view, our viewers discover a world that unravels after midnight: from cleaning the mess left behind by people and fixing a track, to meeting people who work underground while we are all sleeping above. Jay visits Boston to see a massive construction project that's underway to move a raised highway underground. He discovers how if the workers are not careful, how parts of the city above could cave in on them! And then Charlie does a cool experiment with a couple kids to demonstrate hydraulics... or what gives a digging machine its power to break through the earth!
This week's Short Paks examine the longest underground and underwater tunnels, the huge and complex drills which dug the Chunnel between England and France, while our indestructible animated character Mechanix takes an electrifying voyage to see how subway trains get the power to whisk crowds of people to their destinations! Kids will also get to see the answer to the ever-popular question of how underwater tunnels are built!
Today we go down under... with submarines! Our co-hosts Elisha and Jay go on several exciting adventures that include a trip California's Catalina Island, where Elisha will explore beautiful coral reefs in a high tech 2-person bubble sub! Kids will also meet the pedal-powered submarine Omer III, the fastest human-powered submarine on the planet... and kids will even get to see it defend its title in the International Submarine Races in the U.S. Navy's giant water tank!
Then Jay gets to board a real navy Trident nuclear submarine, which is fifteen stories high and two football fields long... the biggest submarine in the world! Kids will also learn how to build a remote controlled model submarine, and see one that even fires little torpedos! And Elisha helps Charlie do a cool experiment about pressure... he shows how a pop can is strong enough to let a kid stand on it, but when Charlie pokes at the side of it with a pen, it instantly collapses. This teaches kids what would happen to a submarine if there are any imperfections in its hull, and why nobody makes square submarines!
In our Short Paks, we take kids into the world of computer graphics to see a miniature NASA nuclear-powered submarine that may be going to Jupiter to melt its way down through the ice into an ocean that scientists think lies below. Then learn about the wooden sub called The Turtle, one of the first submarines ever built, in 1775. Mechanix, our indestructible animated character explains how a sub dives and surfaces. Viewers will meet the subs which dive the deepest in the world: the Trieste, the venerable record-holder, and Alvin, the workaholic submarine that filmed the Titantic and discovered new forms of life!
PMK opens with an eerie nighttime street scene, as a vampire-like creature and a monster step out of the shadows... which turn out to be Jay and Elisha, who are taking viewers on an exciting adventure into the castle of special effects to ride the movies... at Universal Studios! We start out with Jay, who rides a stunt boat on a collision course with a bad guy boat that blows up! Jay shows viewers just how little room there is for mistakes, how they make the explosion happen, and why no one gets hurt. A gunner also shows Jay what happens when you get too close to a weapon loaded with blanks, and obliterates a Styrofoam cup!
Elisha meets up with a couple of movie FX experts who rig her with squibs to create the illusion of being hit by bullets. Then both Jay and Elisha learn how to make scary faces with FX make-up, when they visit a movie make-up artist! Later in the show, twin FX artists take us behind the scenes to show us how animatronics works! Charlie comes on the scene with Elisha to show kids how to make fake blood with stuff they can find at home... like corn starch and food coloring. He brings a few kids on the show who share their own recipes! Jay gets back into the action when he gets caught in the middle of a fight between two cowboys at Universal Studios, and subsequently learns just how fake - but difficult - a good fight can be.
This week's Short Paks includes an action sequence on how to build a movie dinosaur. Viewers will also learn how animatronics is being replaced with CGI, or Computer Generated Imaging, which is the latest innovation in special effects. Movies such as THE LOST WORLD have contributed to its growing popularity, and viewers will learn how digital technology is transforming the craziest of ideas into reality.
ZOOS
Episode 4 (1-104)
Take a walk on the wild side with Elisha and Jay, who go to work behind-the-scenes at some of the world's coolest zoos and biodomes! Starting at the Montreal Biodome, viewers think our hosts are in a deep, dark jungle until the camera pulls back to reveal the fake tropical forest environment. Jay and Elisha explain the Biodome's mission is to let animals be free and wild in an environment as close to their natural habitat as possible. They explain how all the vegetation is real except for the really big trees which spray mist water once in awhile.
Jay visits the kitchen at the Metro Toronto Zoo to see how nutritionists prepare daily meals for the animals, including the delicacy of real rats for the blood pythons in residence! Viewers then meet the deadly Komodo Dragon, a 200 pound endangered reptile who runs 12 miles an hour and has a deadly saliva that causes paralysis and death! Then Jay becomes an honorary vet for the day and gets to listen to animals' hearts, and check their x-rays to try and figure out what's wrong with them.
Elisha travels to Marine World Africa USA, where she gives an elephant a bath and cuts its toenails, before taking it for a ride. She then goes to Kansas, where she builds a fake termite mound for chimpanzees and gets a chance to try it out. The shows wraps up with a penguin party... in the Montreal Biodome's arctic ecosystem, as Jay and Elisha explain how within the next 20 years, most zoos will be called conservation centers... a continuing evolution away from caged animals to an environment where the animals are the important guests.
The Short Paks include mesmerizing video of doctors performing surgery on a gorilla at the L.A. Zoo. Kids will also see a horse giving birth to a zebra, and learn how zoo vets are experimenting with in-vitro fertilization to save endangered species! PMK will also show viewers how zoos have changed over the years and how they transport big animals, like a rhinoceros!
COOL CARS
Episode 5 (1-105)
This week, our thrill-seeking co-hosts Elisha and Jay go cruising for the coolest cars they could find. One educational adventure takes them to the renowned Jim Russell Racing Drivers School, which trained both the both father and son Villeneuves, to learn the ropes of working at a pit stop. As a car pulls in, Jay changes tires in a hurry, adjusts wings, and learns about race car mechanics. Kids will really get a kick out of our Monster Truck adventure!
We go inside the huge trucks to discover what makes a truck into a monster! Kids will learn how and where they are built, what special parts they need and sit inside the cab of a Bigfoot 4x4 with one of our hosts as they drive over and squish real cars! We'll even explore the tallest, widest and heaviest pick-up truck... the TIRES alone are 10 feet tall! PMK also teaches viewers about Stereo Lithography, the latest and coolest tool that saves time and money in car design! Once a car model is produced from a computer image, our host will get to see the model dipped into a bath of liquid, then a lazer run over the top, and presto! The new car appears! Charlie will explore the latest in alternative fuels with a cool experiment. But PMK doesn't stop here... how about looking under the hood of a real solar car to see how it works. Viewers will also learn if solar cars are really the cars of the future, and see some cool footage of the solar car race called Sunrace!
Our Short Paks include crash tests an automated auto that drives all by itself, the latest in alternative fuels and just HOW gasoline makes a car go.
COASTERS
Episode 6 (1-106)
Jay and Elisha ride some of the coolest, most frightening rollercoasters in the world! Elisha takes viewers on a search for the rollercoaster with the biggest thrills at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California, including the difference one feels riding a wooden versus steel rollercoaster. We then climb the tracks with a rollercoaster mechanic early in the morning to check for cracks, loose bolts and other potential hazards. We learn about the safety precautions parks use to make your ride safe, like the Safety Dog, which stops a car from sliding backwards.
PMK then shows G-force at work when Elisha rides a coaster with monster loops. Then she rides another coaster for one hour with a guy who once rode one for three weeks... with short breaks to eat and go to the bathroom. He even slept on it! Charlie's experiment of the week is finding victims with Jay to try and solve a unique centrifugal puzzle, in order to show how centrifugal forces work on a rollercoaster. Then Charlie gives Jay a hard time for not having ridden any rollercoasters yet! The pressure is on, so Jay finally relents and goes on Superman: The Escape, the ultimate experience in modern coasters which accelerates faster than a 911 Turbo Porsche and falls twice as far down as Niagara Falls!
Jay and Elisha explain to viewers how they will be as weightless as astronauts for six seconds! The show ends with Jay and Elisha at La Ronde in Montreal, explaining how there are more than 500 rollercoasters around the world, and how the craze hasn't let up... for almost fifty new coasters are built every year!
The Short Paks include a visit to the highest rollercoaster in the world, on the rooftop of a Las Vegas casino. Viewers will also learn some tricks that amusement parks use to make a ride seem more exciting, and some of the funniest items found under a coaster at the end of a day... like bathing suit tops! Even a glass eye, never claimed!
SPORTS
Episode 7 (1-107)
On your marks, set... GO! Come with Elisha and Jay as they sweat their way through the exciting world of sports! They start out shooting some hoops with NBA star Damon Stoudamire, and when they lose against him, they blame it on their shoes. Damon takes them straight to the NIKE lab to explain what he wanted in a shoe, and how NIKE made it a reality. We give viewers a lesson in the basics of skateboarding to learn about the physical laws, practice and mental preparedness needed to do the sport.
Then world champion mountain biker Alison Sydor shows our hosts how to get the most out of bikes and bodies. She started a Vancouver program called Sprockets, which teaches underprivileged kids the finer points of biking. Want to learn how to build your own skateboard ramp? Then come join us as Dan Vezina shows us some science about lifts and what it takes to build a radical ramp! Finally, pitching star Pedro Martinez gives Jay a pitching lesson before Jay tests his new skills throwing the first pitch at a real National League baseball game!
This week's Short Paks include a blast from the past... did you know that running shoe inventor and NIKE founder Bill Bowerman invented the waffle sole by shaping rubber in the waffle iron in his kitchen? We'll also find out how to clean the wheels of your in-line skates and how the world’s best skateboarder got that good. And our animated character Mechanix takes a sniff at what makes you feet stink.
GARBAGE
Episode 8 (1-108)
Jay and Elisha plug their noses and take a trip into the smelly world of garbage! Elisha visits a recycling center in California and sorts paper, bottles and cans, and bales them for shipping. She then finds herself knee-deep in mud, feeding pigs smelly leftover food from local grocery stores and food banks. Talk about closing the recycling loop!
While Elisha is hanging out with the pigs, Jay is at Fresh Kills Landfill, waist-deep in garbage - old stinky garbage that had been buried for years. Jay uses a bucket auger, a really cool machine that works like a huge cookie cutter, to dig 100 feet into the landfill. A garbage archaeologist shows Jay how to analyze the garbage for clues that might reveal something about the people who threw it out. Back in California, Elisha strips a car and crushes it! The salvaged steel will be used to make new steel which will go into new appliance, cars, even cans!
The Short Paks include trashy fashions - clothes made from garbage. Kids will learn how plastic recyclers can turn 20 soft drink bottles into a jacket. And viewers will see garbage collectors as they've never seen them before - competing in a garbage truck rodeo, where they have to crack an egg without tipping it or the pilon over!
BOATS
Episode 9 (1-109)
Jay and Elisha go on a wet and wild adventure to explore some of the world's coolest boats! They get to work aboard a tug boat for a day, learning about its role in the port, steering to push and pull boats, and what the special bell signals mean. Viewers also get to check out a major port on land to learn about the dozen different kinds of cranes and machines that move the cargo off and on the boats, and see a place that pipes liquids like molasses off the ship and into a liquid bulk facility. Then it's off to the races for a first-hand speedboat experience.
Next, our hosts jump aboard a Tall Ship to learn how to sail with a team of kids. The purpose is to build character through adventure, and through rigging and furling sails to tying proper knots. Our hosts are seasoned deck hands by the end of the day! The fun continues when Elisha and Jay spend a day working on a boat for the coast guard and police, discovering the specialized boats used and how they help them do their jobs.
Our Short Paks include a visit to a hydrobassin where hulls are tested for speed with weird and wild machinery. Viewers also take a fast peek at the 101 and more instruments used in navigation. They get to find out how space research can help cure seasickness and take a look at literally wet-behind-the-ears cardboard boat-builders.
BUILDINGS
Episode 10 (1-110)
Have you ever had the mad urge to push all the buttons in an elevator? Well here's your chance as curious co-hosts Jay and Elisha go on a building (and demolishing!) adventure from the ground up, and take a hike to higher ground... in the world of buildings! Their exciting adventure begins as Jay races Elisha to the top of a buildings -- Jay takes the stairs and Elisha cleverly takes the elevator. They tell kids about people like window washers and skyscraper construction workers who know that being afraid of heights can be deadly to their health.
Kids will then join Elisha in a race against time when she helps build an upper floor of a big building! Did you know that buildings are made out of liquid? As Elisha pours quick-dry concrete to complete one floor of a building, kids learn many cool tidbits... like how if workers don't move quickly, the concrete will dry before the work is finished! And how the concrete and steel work in unison to make a building solid. Elisha then goes to a concrete factory to show kids how she mixes her own concrete... and even gets to fly the factory's concrete frisbee!
And Jay finally gets his chance to push all those elevator buttons! Jay takes kids to an elevator testing tower to learn how elevators work and why it won’t fall if the cable breaks.
Then Elisha gets to push the ultimate button! She sets off the dynamite that demolishes a big building into dust and rubble!
In the Short Paks we learn how architects design skyscrapers to look like Japanese combs or streamlined cars. We discover Superscrapers: designs for skyscrapers that are twice as tall as the highest towers in the world ! Then we look at the elevator of the future that will make such towers possible, and learn about Elisha Otis, the man who built the first elevator. Our animated Mechanix discovers why you can drop things on a hard hat and not hurt your head.
AIRCRAFT CARRIERS
Episode 11 (1-111)
Jay and Elisha sail to sea on the most dangerous 4.5 acres on earth... an aircraft carrier! They spend three days aboard the USS Eisenhower, and learn that an aircraft carrier is like a floating city! It can carry up to 6000 people and 100 airplanes. There's a TV and radio station. Even a barbershop! Jay and Elisha participate in a FOD Walkdown, and inspect every inch of flight deck for the smallest object that might damage a plane.
Then Jay joins a pilot in the Ready Room, and suits up for a flight mission. Viewers will learn how a special G-force suit keeps the blood in a pilot's head so he won't faint during flight maneuvers. On another part of the flight deck, Elisha is discovering how planes take off. Jay and Elisha then go into the aircraft carrier's TV Studio to talk to viewers from the news anchor desk. They'll give some cool and educational tidbits like how an aircraft carrier is so big, that if you stood it on its end, it would be the third largest building in New York City!
Elisha takes viewers on a tour of all the neat things on board an aircraft carrier, like a library, store, chapel, even a jail! As always, our hosts get into the action to educate viewers in a fun way, just as Elisha does when she drives the carrier! She tries out every job on the bridge from lee helmsman to captain and learns how to navigate the carrier, which has to speed up for the plane to take-off! She even sits in the captain's chair! In the Control Tower, Jay helps to bring in a pilot, telling him "you're clear to land!". Jay then goes to the Arresting Gear Room to learn what an arrested landing is... and helps land the plane!
Viewers will get to see the four arresting cables that stop the plane in action! Elisha goes to hang out with the cooks in the Mess Hall and helps prepare some food, surprised to learn that each day, 10,000 glasses of milk, 8,000 cans of soda, 2,800 hamburgers and 5,000 ice cream cones are served! Finally, Jay and Elisha board a plane and get catapulted off the aircraft carrier to head home!
Our Short Paks include a history of the first person to fly from the deck of a ship. It was Eugene Ely who wrapped himself in bicycle inner tubes for flotation and wore a leather football helmet for a successful flight in November, 1910! Viewers will then get to learn why the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is said to be the most dangerous 4.5 acres on earth. How do they keep accidents from happening? The answer is using highly developed ways of communicating with hand signals, which when put to music, give the impression that it's some sort of strange dance!
ELECTRICITY
Episode 12 (1-112)
Ever wonder what makes lightning strike? Do you want to learn how people use the wind to make electricity for their home? Then don't miss this week's episode about electricity, as Jay and Elisha get charged up for one shocking adventure after another!
Our hosts help scientists at the Boston Museum of Science to create a real indoor storm in order to study what causes lightning. It's a dangerous mission as they get pulled up into the air inside a metal cage that gets zapped by lightning!
Then our hosts learn how to work on live wires when they study power lines. They will help out a maintenance crew in a special truck, and get to ride a crane bucket that reaches up to the lines where they will work!.
What happens when someone has a heart attack? Learn how electricity gets it pumping again. Jay also shows kids how to build a windmill and learns how it works. Believe it or not, the windmill creates enough electricity to run all the electrical appliances in a home! We'll tour a wind and sun-powered home.
Can cars really go without gas? Our hosts learn about the magic of electric cars We also learn cool things like what causes aurora borealis, hoe an electron microscope works and how electricity is produced.
FOOD PRODUCTION
Episode 13 (1-113)
Have you ever stopped to think about where the stuff you are putting into your stomach comes from? The hosts go to places where they make our favorite foods, starting with Jay, who visits ice-cream giant Ben and Jerry's. With his guidance, Ben and Jerry's scientists give birth to Jay's creation, peanut butter, chocolate and Oreo-cookie pieces, in their lab. No new ice-cream flavour is put into production without a thumbs-up from taste-testers, so a group of kids is brought in to judge the results. Moving from sweet to salty, Elisha takes a potato chip factory tour, to see fat, round spuds, 12,000 an hour, get made into paper-thin, crunchy slices. She also discovers why the bags are only partially-filled.
Earlier, off set, during a private visit to the White House (not recorded for PMK), First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had asked Jay and Elisha to do a story advising people to pay attention to the dangers of food poisoning. Many people get sick, and even die, from food poisoning, some in their own homes. To illustrate, Jay cooks dinner for his sister Taylor under the watchful eye of a food inspector. During his attempt to create a basic hamburger dinner, we learn how a delicious-looking meal can make you very sick if not handled properly. The problem, Jay discovers, is something called cross-contamination, transferring harmful bacteria from one food to another using affected utensils or simply your hands. Uncooked meat is full of bacteria, so if you cut this meat and then cut a tomato without washing the knife first, you can make someone sick. There is a simple solution, the inspector tells Jay; always wash your hands, plates and cutlery that have contacted uncooked food and always make sure your food is properly cooked before you eat it.
If this segment hasn't grossed you out, stay tuned for Elisha's next meal. A gourmet chef prepares pasta... with, UGGGHHHH, mealworms! That's right... worms! It seems certain bugs are full of healthy protein and fibre and are tasty. What's for dessert? Chocolate-covered crickets, naturally.
EMERGENCY
Episode 14 (1-114)
Fires are great to toast marshmallows around, but what happens when we are the marshmallows? Dress lightly, because it's gonna be hot where Elisha and Jay are taking us... into the realm of firefighters and their emergency services. First off, forest fires teach us that nature may be beautiful, but it isn't always safe. Elisha joins a compact firefighting team to see how they handle an actual blaze. Attired in protective gear, our host helps put out a fire, holding the hose and directing the water at the base of the flames. Once the fire is apparently out, special tools are used to ensure there is no more smoldering underground, where it can still flare up and cause more damage.
PMK shows you how budding firefighters train for city infernos, learning their trade inside specially-constructed structures called "burn buildings," which provide a controlled, safe environment. They are taught to stay low on the ground in a fire, where it is cooler (hot air rises) and watch out for injured mates. Personal alarms ring if the fire-fighter is motionless for a certain length of time. Since the rest of us do not have such devices to rely on, there are some rules we must always follow. Get up and out if a fire alarm rings... never stay in bed. Crawl on all fours if there is a fire and feel doors before opening them to see if they are hot. If you are on fire, don't run... drop to the ground and roll around to put the flames out. These and other rules can save your life.
Jay treks to an international airport to join a crash truck crew as they battle a controlled runway fire, handling a hose of his own. When fires are way too large to control by any of the above means, however, the big guns are brought in; the water bombers. The CL-215 airplane is specially constructed to fight fires from above, where it can do maximum damage to the flames while protecting firefighters' lives. Elisha gets to watch one in action first hand, first flying in it, learning how it scoops water up from lakes and then watching it drop its massive load of water. This is the hottest episode of PMK yet!!!
AQUARIUMS
Episode 15 (1-115)
Ever wonder what lives in the wet blue yonder? This whale of a show takes us on an incredible journey with Elisha and Jay, as they meet denizens of the deep and learn about their habits. For instance, did you know that sea-lions are among the smartest sea mammals? Even so, Elisha discovers that trainers must work with the sea-lions a lot to do the things that entertain people.
Diet plays an important part in their training; a well-fed sea-lion is a happy, cooperative sea-lion. Regular medical check ups are required for sea mammals to remain healthy, just as they are for people. Elisha assumes the role of medical assistant for a moment and is ready to help when she is asked to take a mucous sample from a sea-lion's nose. He snorts into a petrie dish and Elisha is really grossed out. Just wait till she has to brush his teeth, a request she finds equally unsettling... talk about bad breath!
The young hosts then take viewers to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, home to a variety of aquatic life. The main attraction, besides the living creatures therein, is an aquarium that weighs a hefty 78,000 pounds and sports a window that is 15 feet high and as long as a railway car... the largest such window in the world. It holds one million gallons of water, which must be cleaned regularly or the fish will die. Your home aquarium also requires such a cleaning; a full one-quarter of the water must be changed every two weeks, ridding the water of nitrates that are harmful to fish.
In large public aquariums, the operations manager is charged with keeping tanks, such as the one sharks are kept in, clean. Scuba divers fulfill this potentially perilous task and literally spoon-feed them (on a very long spoon!) mackerel so that the quantities are just right. Keeping sharks well-fed will ensure they don't snack on their tank-mates.
Another important component of this field is the rescue of wildlife. Sea World often saves mammals like manitees that ground themselves on shores or are caught in fisherman's nets by mistake. Jay accompanies fisherman who catch fish on purpose, to supply the network of aquariums that cross North America. Attired in his scuba-diving outfit in the waters off Catalina Island, Jay holds a special bucket that is filled with fish caught initially in large nets and then transferred to hand-held ones. The show broadcasts an environmentally-friendly message; Did you know that fish and aquatic mammals actually live longer in captivity than in the wild because they are protected from predators?
TOYS AND GAMES
Episode 16 (1-116)
Welcome to the F-U-N episode. Elisha gets the ball.... er, block, rolling by dropping by the Lego factory, which designs and builds toy blocks that have been played with for decades. Low-tech fun in a high-tech age, but its popularity is unrivalled. She visits the design department to assist in creating a life-sized model of a race car. The picture on which the design is based is first scanned into a computer and then overlaid on special Lego draft paper. Elisha helps draw the wheel design onto the paper and later completes the actual Lego rim using round plastic blocks.
Elisha also builds a Popular Mechanics for Kids Lego logo, very cool. PMK also looks at some of the best-selling toys in history. Frisbee, the round flying disk, was the idea of the Frisbee Baking Company and was based on their pies. Slinky was born in 1943 when a mechanical engineer, Richard James, wanted to design a device to protect sensitive components on board U.S. naval ships from vibration. The Teddy Bear is named after late American President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, who refused to shoot a bear on a hunting trip. Modelling compound Play-Doh was first created to clean wallpaper.
Where do lots of today's hottest toys come from? Jay learns about the hottest of all, video games, at Nintendo, where he gets a rare behind-the-scenes taste of the action. Here, game counsellors respond to the queries of more than 120,000 callers, writers and e-mail senders weekly who get stumped by the more than 1,600 Nintendo video games available. Using a computer named Elmo (you don't even have to tickle it), more than 56,000,000 questions have been successfully answered. Jay handles a few calls before graduating to game tester, checking for bugs in a given game by playing it over and over again. Have the time of your life with Elisha and Jay!
SPACESHIPS
Episode 17 (1-117)
Space, the final frontier.... these are the voyages of Jay and Elisha as they take you where PMK has never gone before... into outer space! Get ready to blast off as our hosts look at a fascination people have had with the stars since the dawn of time.
Elisha visits the Johnson Space Centre, where they design spacecraft, choose the astronauts that comprise the space program and where Mission Control is located. Have you ever wanted to put on one of those cool space suits? Well, Elisha does, all bulky nine layers of it over a special long underwear that is temperature-controlled by many feet of tubing threaded under its surface. The suit weighs three times more than she does. Still want to wear one? Elisha then stops by NASA's training facility, after the space agency gives PMK special permission to experience what few private citizens ever do, an actual flight simulation training exercise. Elisha herself gets to launch the space shuttle... if she isn't careful with the helium mix, KABOOM. The responsibility for the pilot of one of these is huge.
Jay gets his space experience of a lifetime when he meets four astronauts who make up the "Neurolab." Guinea-pig Jay is placed into a device called a rotating sphere to see how he reacts to vexion, the sensation of moving when you are not. After passing the test, he goes inside a tumbling space lab, which simulates the motion inside the space shuttle. While dreaming of becoming the youngest astronaut, Jay's bubble bursts and he throws up.... off-screen.
PMK also takes you to another fascinating place, Space Camp, where budding young astronauts learn all about the field. Along with a team of trainees, we pilot a simulated shuttle out of our atmosphere and find that, as one boy admits, "it's tough out there."
Elisha then drops into a habitation module, which recreates living conditions one would find aboard the international space station being built above Earth, scheduled for completion in 2002. Besides the technical task of flying a ship, nature also plays a large role in space travel. Weightlessness, due to zero gravity, is a major problem for astronauts in space. Simple tasks like showering and eating take on whole new dimensions in zero gravity. Going to the bathroom weightless... now that's someplace PMK has never gone before!
Episode 18 (1-118)
In an age where we send robots to Mars to track the terrain, anything is possible here on Earth. Jay and Elisha find that out as PMK checks out the latest in robotic technology. They can do almost anything humans can do, it seems, recognize voices, move things around and, most of all, think. They are the wave of the present and future.
In Salt Lake City, the Sarcos Corporation develops all sorts of robots for corporations like Disney, NASA and clients outside the U.S. Jay puts on a special suit with sensors, which relay information to a computer and then to a robot nearby. Every move Jay makes is mimicked by the cyborg. This technology has important uses, such as creating artificial limbs that can move just like human ones.
At I.S. Robotics, Elisha encounters robots that simulate emotions, mood and personality. They're real characters. One responds to voice commands, another uses proximity sensors to avoid hitting objects... all can be used by humans to handle difficult or dangerous tasks, such as going into dangerous areas, as Jay will soon discover. Of particular note at a time when land mines are so prominent in the news, robots can be used to disarm them anywhere they are found, even those under water. Human lives can be saved by our multi-circuited friends.
PMK visits the meeting grounds of a group of roboticists who discuss the latest in technology and look for new robots to create. Even old calculators aren't safe from these guys, as they rip out old microchips and solar cells to make cute little robots that react to light, touch or sound.
But it is Jay who participates in the most fascinating lesson on robots. With the aid of a police officer, Jay engages a real-life "robocop," a member of the SWAT team named Andros, to destroy a suspicious-looking package. With remote control joysticks, Jay moves Andros toward the box. Then, by just pushing a switch, he uses high-pressure water cannons to blast the insides of the suspected bomb. Jay has saved the day, with the help of a robot. We have now sojourned to Mars; just imagine what the robots of the future will be able to do.
This show presents Jay and Elisha’s grossest, scariest, most embarrassing and fun moments as they travel the continent to discover how things work. Jay goes to the world’s largest garbage dump and digs up garbage. He uses a machine that can dig down 100 feet below the surface to discover what people throw away in landfills – and comes home with a cute, but stinky, present for his sister. Some of the garbage he finds has been there longer than he’s been alive. Elisha experiences her own gross adventures, climbing into a city’s sewer system to follow where the stuff you flush down the toilet ends up. In another adventure, she eats bugs, gross for North American kids, maybe, but part of a nutritious diet in many parts of the world!
Jay and Elisha went to incredible places and did amazing things this season, but both agree their visit to the White House was among the most exciting. They show pictures from that visit, where they met Hillary Clinton, who, when asked what topics she would like to see Jay and Elisha do on the show, suggested a story on food poisoning. Eating bad food injures and sometimes kills people right in their own homes. You can see that report on the Greatest Hits episode.
Jay also sees how planes land from close-up, on the deck of an aircraft carrier; Elisha goes car crushing in a monster truck, and even gets behind the wheel of the truck; Jay learns to pitch with one of the best pitchers in major league baseball; and Elisha fights a forest fire. Fasten your seat belts! This show is chock full of action, adventure, and even humor, you won’t soon forget.
Show us the money, they said, so PMK takes viewers on a cool trip to check out what makes the world go round... money. Take the stock market, where billions of dollars change hands every day. Elisha acts as a stock broker for a very special client. She hears that a new health drink has just come out on store shelves, so she buys 1000 shares for a client, worth $10,000 on a total buy order, which she soon sells for $10,500 minutes later as the stock goes up in value. Just like that, you can make a fast buck... but you can also lose everything just as fast. The drink company burns to the ground and we see the shares going waaaay down. But it is Jay who enters the war room of money making, the busy Exchange floor.
Jay finds himself right in the middle of the trading action, wearing platform shoes so he can be easily spotted by other traders. He calls it a boxing ring in there – people shout at the top of their lungs while standing two feet from his face, and if you’re not careful, you can get punched in the face by all those flailing arms frantically signaling buy and sell orders.
Jay also visits the mint, where he pours a million dollars worth of gold bars, and is then given the chance to keep a 30- pound, $150,000 bar – if he can manage to pick it up!
Finally, Jay visits the Royal Canadian mint to see how they make collector’s edition coins. In the engraving room, a sculptor first makes a plaster model of a sketch of the coin to be manufactured. He then takes a piece of metal and a die, a mold you use to stamp the final design on the metal. A press uses 150 tons of pressure to strike the dies and create the design on the round metal blanks (that’s the weight of 60 elephants!).
Viewers will experience one of the most peaceful journeys imaginable, and then one of the most harrowing, as PMK takes flight in this episode.
First, Elisha visits an airplane accident simulator and is put through the conditions one would experience in a crash landing. She is shown how to get out of a burning plane. Then she is timed in a real simulation, where smoke envelopes the cabin, and she has to find her way out without being able to see. Fire is the leading cause of death in airplane accidents, and many fatalities could have been avoided if people had been able to escape fast enough.
Then Elisha takes a hot-air balloon ride. Like a normal balloon you see at parties, a hot-air balloon must be filled with air. Elisha gets a hands-on lesson at how to set up the balloon and its various components. Once she has filled the balloon using a large gas-powered fan, and checked the various temperature sensors and vent controls inside the basket, she and her pilot climb aboard. Elisha operates the burner and they lift off into the sky, experiencing one of the most breathtaking sights anywhere. But Elisha is unprepared for the pilot’s stunt – he deliberately hits the treetops!
Also, Jay visits a jet engine factory, Elisha climbs aboard an F-18 fighter jet. And Charlie shows us how to build a paper airplane that really goes the distance!
Jay and Elisha get a first-hand look at the world of music production. Elisha records a song in the same studio used by many recording stars, and sees how someone with an average voice can be made to sound like a pro.
Elisha also goes out on the town on a Friday night to hang with a world-class DJ, learning how to “scratch. ”Scratching" is a fancy term for mixing sounds from one turntable to another; one turntable plays background rhythyms and the other plays different kinds of noise. It’s the DJ’s job to turn it into danceable music. There are all sorts of techniques DJs use to effect their sounds, like the Baby Scratch, which uses one turntable only and uses a back and forth motion with the record. The Forward Scratch, also called "Cutting," uses only the forward sound with no back scratches. DJs personalize their techniques to suit their needs; for instance, a left-handed one would use the Left-Handed Battle Mode. Or two hands are used, one on each turntable (much as drummers do with their sticks), in Transforming.
Jay then lives out a dream most kids have: to play in a rock band. While doing a story for PMK on how sound engineering makes a band sound good, Jay, who plays the drums a little in his spare time, is called up on stage to jam with the band during the actual concert!! The whole experience will leave viewers with not just the tricks musicians use when they play a live concert (such as having a “click-track" played into their ear-pieces to keep the tempo and stay in time with fellow band-members), but also with a euphoric host, who can’t believe what just happened to him.
Free as a bird...or almost. PMK takes flight in this very special episode that examines our centuries-old desire to tame the winds and reach for the sky.
Spreading her wings, Elisha skydives in a vertical wind tunnel, which is actually a vertical flying chamber equipped with propellers generating winds of approximately 140-kms per hour. After a short training session with an instructor, Elisha then dons her partially inflatable flight suit (which also includes elbow pads, gloves, goggles, ear plugs and a helmet) and experiences the thrill of truly flying solo. She quickly finds out it is possible to "steer", or control the direction she's going when free falling, but she also learns that, unlike birds or planes, the human body is not naturally designed to stay up. Unless you're Superman, of course...
Tyler tests the magnificent pedal plane the Raven before it attempts to break the record for human-powered flight between Boundary Bay, Canada and Seattle. Since the Wright Brothers flew the world's first airplane in 1903, we have mastered motorized flight and sent people to the Moon, but we are still trying to figure out how to fly a human-powered plane over long distances. Tyler explores the aircraft with its engineer, learning how fragile this ultra-light plane's fuselage and wings are and how testing it — let alone flying it! — is an intricate affair involving highly skillful precision and great knowledge in the science of flying.
After defying gravity in a plane, Tyler looks at how some people actually enjoy doing it outside of a plane on its wings...without a harness or a parachute! What, are they insane!? On the contrary! Flying with one such daring acrobat, Tyler finds out that they need to be extremely focused as well as have excellent knowledge of how centripetal force works. He checks out her special equipment and discovers some of her secrets, like the grooves on the wing that help her grip the plane while she is climbing. Watching her from the cockpit, Tyler is astonished at some of the very cool tricks she shows him, including a headstand. Talk about living on the edge!
Also this week, Charlie tells us about the mysterious Australian device known as the boomerang. Why does it always come back to its point of departure? The best way to find out is by making our own boomerang!
This week, the temperature drops as Elisha puts on her parka and heads way up north, to Iqaluit in the Canadian Northwest Territories, on a lone journey into the fascinating world of the Inuit people and their 2000-year-old way of life.
Elisha meets up with the leader of the first all-women dog-sled team to have reached the North Pole. As she guides an expedition of her own near the polar circle, she learns that it is not quite as easy as its seems to command a team of huskies. Husky dogs have wild natures and personalities of their own that need to be harnessed. Elisha quickly finds out that making them understand who is the boss is crucial to one's survival in the cruel Arctic tundra.
Back in Iqaluit, Elisha learns how to build an igloo, one of the best shelters against freezing winds ever invented by people. Choosing the right location and the right type of snow is crucial in building the perfect igloo. Once all the blocks are in place and all the gaps have been filled with snow, Elisha's igloo will be stronger than a brick house. All there is left for her to do after that is finding a good home decorator and asking friends over for a meal!
That is exactly what she does as she prepares a traditional Inuit feast. She learns that the traditional Inuit diet is very different from that of Southern kids, but just as healthy...if not quite as appetizing. The Inuit found their essential nutrients like Vitamin C, iron, calcium and fat in such delicacies as seal eyes and brains! Elisha tries out some of these yummy dishes as well as fish head soup and a sauce made of bird intestines mixed with blood. Just in case this isn’t your cup of tea, ever-resourceful Charlie offers another kind of recipe as he shows us how to make our own ice cream.
Follow our inquisitive co-hosts as they step into the exciting and amazing world of James Bond, and learn how to use science and technology to solve crimes.
The show opens on mysterious, seedy street scene. Tyler is being followed by a creepy guy. Needing to shake him off, Tyler goes to the Spy Tech store where he meets a real-life "Q" who helps him become 007 for a day. Going through the impressive selection of ultra high-tech espionage tools, like hidden cameras in watches, mini-microphones in pens, night vision goggles and an umbrella tape-recorder, Tyler discovers that all the fancy gadgetry we see at the movies actually isn't that far-fetched. He also learns how all these cool devices work. Hitting the streets, he gets to try them out on a mission that will uncover the identity of his stalker.
Back at home, Charlie shows us how to make our own spy tools using everyday stuff we can find in our cupboards, like lemon juice for invisible ink. He also helps us build a periscope for spying in tough to reach places and he gives us tips to tell if someone has been in our room.
Elisha helps investigate a break-in. Going on site with a detective, she learns how to survey the crime scene and search for useful clues. Using all the nifty forensics tools they have at their disposal, Elisha and the detective dust for fingerprints, use a laser to reveal marks invisible to the eye and collect blood and hair samples left at the scene. Once enough evidence has been gathered, Elisha learns how to use these clues to put the pieces of the puzzle together and solve the crime.
In the last adventure, the tables are turned and it is our host who is under suspicion. Our host takes a lie detector test and gets asked all sorts of embarrassing questions. We see that it is very difficult to fool the polygraph. But how does the machine know you're lying?
It's a wonderful, disgusting world out there! Nothing can gross out PMK's dynamic co-hosts Elisha and Tyler as they take us on an adventure into the realm of waste and filth, where they discover that even the most unattractive or repellent things have a life...and a very useful one too!
The adventure begins as Tyler takes out his nose plug to visit a very special Hamilton, Ontario recycling plant. Picking through mountains of rotten vegetables, restaurant table scraps and stale soft drinks, he learns how all this organic waste can be turned from a slimy goo into a healthy second meal for animals. This amazing metamorphosis is made possible thanks to a heat-loving, or thermophilic, bacteria that kills bad or harmful bacteria in large fermentation tanks. An engineer explains to Tyler the twelve essential steps in the transformation process that ultimately produces small cylindrical food pellets for chickens and pigs. He also learns how the Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer, a gas-fired chamber, prevents odours from escaping the building and stinking up the neighbourhood.
Then, our host goes on a fantastic voyage inside our digestive system! Taking a journey inside the human body through the lenses of miniature medical cameras, we learn everything there is to know about what happens to the food we eat, from assimilation to regurgitation to rejection.
And Charlie shows us how to make snot and boogers out of sugar and protein, the same ingredients found in mucus. He helps us understand how mucus coats the inside of our noses to keep pollution from entering our lungs!
This week, Tyler goes solo and embarks on a wild wet adventure in the blue yonder. Hold your breath, this is going to be one whale of a show!
His journey starts in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California, where he comes face to face with one of the sea's scariest and smartest creatures: sharks! He gets a very close look at their teeth when the blue and mako sharks swimming around him bite at the bars of his steel cage. But they're not trying to attack him. In fact, sharks are simply attracted to the electric waves that the cage gives off, thanks to a sixth sense called electroreception. Tyler discovers that sharks have one of the most sophisticated sensory systems in the animal world. It allows them to detect their prey from many miles away. He also finds out that, despite their killer look, they're not quite as savage as Jaws pictured them. In fact, like most wild animals, sharks generally prefer avoiding contact with human beings. Charlie also plans an underwater adventure for us, as he shows us how to make an underwater glider we can use in a pool.
At the end of his journey, Tyler sails into Iceberg Alley off the coast of Newfoundland on a great barge. He operates a high-tech clam-shaped shovel and takes a bite out of a giant iceberg. He learns how icebergs are formed, how they float, and why they are so dangerous for navigation. He also learns how the barge's complex hydraulic system and huge melting tanks work to preserve the pure thousands of years-old ice until it can be processed into ice cubes and bottled water.
Beware lawbreakers! PMK is watching you! This week, Tyler and Elisha explore the world of law enforcement.
The adventures start in Los Angeles, where Tyler joins the L.A.P.D. for a day. Viewers should buckle up and get ready for a wild ride as he learns how police drive a car in high pursuit situations without hitting anything or anyone else. Tyler will accompany a training officer as he goes through a few exercises designed to help master these fundamentals. Some of these exercises include learning the proper broadcast procedures, trying to regain control of the vehicle after going into an all-wheel locked skid and using a threshold brake which is basically coming to a full stop before turning.
Moving up across the border, Tyler joins the Toronto Police Department for gun training. Going into a shooting gallery, an officer shows him how police properly handle a handgun. Tyler learns that timing and precision are critically important so innocent bystanders don't get harmed. Police officers test their reflexes and reactions in a chamber nicknamed the "Fun House", where cardboard good guys and bad guys jump out at them. Once out in the real world, carrying a gun is very serious business indeed.
Not to be outdone, Charlie tackles a pressing question: bicycle theft. He shows us a few useful tips to make our wheels theft-resistant.
Talk about putting yourself to the test! This week, while our favorite Mr. Fix-it Charlie stays in shape by showing us how to run properly, our hosts take up some very demanding sports and learn what it takes to become world-class snowboarders, surfers and hockey players.
Tyler hits the mighty slopes of Whistler's Blackcomb Mountain, where he trains for the Olympic snowboarding team with help from Canadian coach Collin Blake. Snowboard halfpipe star Maelle Ricker shows him some very cool tricks as she executes a series of perfect spins and jumps. But it is Tyler himself who outwits the specialists as he impresses them with his knowledge of the physics of boarding, particularly the notion of angular momentum, which means that if you get smaller while you spin, you go faster. Or in Tyler's own words, "Tuck in when you spin, man!" That's enough to make anybody feel dizzy!
Going from the white stuff to the wet blue yonder, we find Elisha on the sandy beaches of Hawaii as she learns how to surf on the great waves of the Pacific. Surfer and oceanographer Pat Caldwell helps her demystify the physics of waves, how they are formed, how gravity, tides and winds affect them, and how they can reach amazing heights when going from deep to shallow water. In winter, storms in the North Pacific generate seas of up to 30-40 meter, making Hawaii the world's premier destination for adventurous surfer dudes from all over the world. As expected, Elisha fits right in.
Then, putting on his goalie's mask, Elisha tests her reaction time by going one on one with an NHL hockey player. She discovers how, with the proper equipment and the right combination of strength, reflexes and mechanics, almost anyone can stand up to a puck flying through the air at 100-kms per hour. Along the way, she also answers some very interesting questions about the surface on which the game is played: the ice itself. What makes it slippery? What is the difference between "fast ice" and "slow ice"? How does one make ice? What makes the blade slide on the surface? So, hop on the Zamboni and get ready for some of the fastest action in professional sports!
This week, Elisha and Tyler are falling from tall buildings, getting into fights and...breaking a phenomenal number of glasses. Did our co-hosts suddenly become amazingly stupid and clumsy? Of course not! They have simply entered the wonderful world of make-believe: the movies.
Elisha checks out the latest innovations in specials effects at a computer animation studio. CGI, or Computer Generated Imaging, and digital technology are completely changing the way we make movies. In a blue-screen studio, Elisha finds it's actually kind of fun to fall from a building because you are never in danger of breaking your neck...only of looking a bit ridiculous. Once every movement has been painstakingly recorded so the actor fits exactly into the background, computers step in and remove all traces of blue to replace it by the desired background. But that's not all that computers can do. Elisha tries out some really cool effects, like morphing and cloning. Of course, computers are not the only way to animate characters. Charlie demonstrates the principles of animation by showing us how to build our own flip book or zoetrope.
But what about sound effects? Tyler demonstrates what happens during a foley session, where all the little noises needed to make a good soundtrack are created. The hardest ones to get are human sounds, like footsteps or heads smashing. Tyler tries to reproduce a few of them on the foley floor where hyper-sensitive microphones pick up even the faintest of rustling. He also tries a few of the many unusual things used to fake everyday sounds. For example, did you know that footsteps in the snow are made by crushing a bag full of corn starch? Bet you will never listen to a movie the same way again!
In the last segment, viewers will be stunned to see Tyler engaging a kung-fu star in battle. Extremely popular in Asia for centuries, martial arts have long since conquered the Western world with such stars as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Tyler learns that every movement in a martial arts scene is evaluated and choreographed very much the same way as in ballet. He also found out that, even though fighters never exchange real kicks and punches, they still need to be in excellent shape to be able to sustain the level of energy required.
Just how close can we get to molten lava pouring off of a volcano without burning up? Why do some clouds turn into tornadoes and hurricanes and other don't? Why do tons of snow roll down from some mountain tops and not others? Our good old Earth can certainly be really temperamental sometimes. Tyler and Elisha set out on their most awesome journey yet as they travel across the continent to experience first-hand these spectacular natural phenomenons.
Flying to Hawaii, Elisha meets up with a geophysicist and sets out to conquer the Kilauea volcano. Hovering above it in a helicopter, Elisha feels the heat as she gets very close to the lava flowing from the main crater. When it comes out of the ground, it is about 1150°C! Thank God there are no big eruptions! She assists her new scientist friend in collecting lava samples and learns that measuring the change in temperature and composition helps us figure out what is happening underground. She also learns that the center of the earth is made of hot liquid rock, a combination of silica, manganese, iron, magnesium and aluminium. By conducting these experiments, we come to a better understanding of how volcanoes build and fertilize land.
While Elisha rides on rivers of fire, so to speak, Tyler can't complain about not having enough thrills of his own. He gets blown away by a tornado! But fear not, he is actually experiencing the exciting new twister ride at Universal Studios in Florida. The tornado "Twister: Ride it Out" is a gentle breeze compared to the real thing! Using the ride, Tyler shows us how tornadoes form and what happens during one. We look at the kind of storm clouds that spell trouble. Hail and rain are usually good signs that something is cooking up there in the sky. But even with all that knowledge, predicting when tornadoes will hit is still a very imprecise science. Not to be outdone, Charlie shows us how to make our own hurricane!
Moving up north to Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler, BC, Tyler joins a team of mountainers, scientists and explosives specialists who make a living setting off avalanches! Talk about a mind-blowing job! Avalanches kill more people in North America than volcanoes, tornadoes and earthquakes combined. Fortunately, forecasters can determine the stability of snow layers on the slopes and therefore predict when an avalanche hazard is beginning to build, threatening to engulf passing cars on highways or skiers shushing down the mountain. Tyler accompanies the avalanche warning team as they drop off their explosives to provoke a "controlled" slide.
Does Dr. Dolittle really exist? PMK's curious co-hosts Elisha and Tyler find out that, yes, there exists several such miracle workers who have learned how to "talk to the animals". Elisha and Tyler also find out that, while these beautiful, smart animals can be trained, they can't necessarily be tamed!
First stop, the Mirage Dolphin Habitat, where Elisha gets to meet up close some these noble creatures. Working with an aquarist/biologist, she learns how to communicate with dolphins. As she tries a few tricks, like showing them how to do back flips, she learns that they like to be rewarded when they have done what they were asked to do; that's called operant conditioning. She gets to feed them and scratch their belly. They really like that! She also discovers that, while dolphins may look cute and cudly, they still are wild animals that weigh 400 lbs and have sharp teeth. They are also very playful and, even if they don't mean to hurt people, things can get rough if some precautions are not taken. So training them requires a lot of respect and a lot of patience.
Our next stop is Hollywood where Tyler explores the lifestyles of the rich and famous...animal actors!? Visiting the home of some of these movie and television stars, he goes behind the scenes to reveal how professional these animal performers truly are. He meets with a trainer who shows him a few of the techniques used to get all sorts of animals, like dogs, bunnies and even rats, to really act for the camera. He finds out what's involved in preparing them for auditions and learns some interesting tricks of the trade. For example, did you know that identical doubles are used to get different kinds of emotional or physical reactions? Animals even wear make-up sometimes! Talk about pampering! Charlie also gets in the act and gives us a few basic dog training tips for beginners and then shows us some advanced tricks for dog owners who might think that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Our last stop brings us to the airport where our host discovers that airplanes aren't alone in the skies above the runways. Specially trained falcons also circle the airspace. But why? Falcons have long been used for hunting purposes. Today, these great birds of prey put their skills to a slightly different use by performing a very specific job: clearing the runways of birds (mostly seagulls) that can make it dangerous for planes to land and take off. Our host learns how these wild birds are trained from a very young age so they get used to the presence of humans and learn how to respond to their trainer's commands and calls.
Don't be afraid of the dark, because when the sun goes down and shadows invade the earth, a whole new world awakens. Co-hosts Tyler and Elisha take us on a thrilling journey into the night.
Walking around in Las Vegas, Elisha is struck by the city's spectacular show of lights. Determined to design a PMK sign of her own, she walks into the Y.E.S. Company which makes neon signs and is responsible for the maintenance of many of the Vegas strip's most fabulous signs. She learns that what makes them glow is an electrical discharge in gas, same as for lightning. Different gases, like neon, the most common one, or argon, are used to achieve the desired glowing effect and the right colors. Working away in the factory, she learns to bend the glass, attach the electrodes, pump out the air, fill the tube with gas and seal it. When she has mastered all these steps, she is ready to plug in her sign on the strip!
Our host discovers how to get rid of nightmares by getting wired up at a sleep lab. We spend about 2,900 hours a year sleeping, that's one third of our lives doing nothing...or are we? Our host finds out that the brain doesn't shut down when our eyes are closed. On the contrary, our brains become even more active during certain stages of sleep, organizing our thoughts for the next day through dreams. We learn that dreams and nightmares mostly occur during the agitated final stage of a sleep cycle, or REM sleep. By monitoring a person's sleep, the lab specialists can identify patterns and help patients have more control over recurring nightmares.
Finally, Elisha plunges into the depths of the earth on the trail of one of the animal world's most misunderstood and fascinating creatures, bats! Sure, with their sharp claws, piercing shrieks and ominous wings, bats can be very scary, particularly when lunging at you from a cave's ceiling after being woken up too suddenly. But, as she helps a team of specialists catch one for scientific tagging, Elisha learns that there are many myths surrounding bats: they actually are a very intelligent and organized species that often prove to be surprisingly good-natured. Bats are also predators that can help us get rid of undesirable rodents and bugs. Charlie shows us how to build a bat house to attract bats so they can take care of our backyards.
This week, PMK's intrepid co-hosts race against time to make some daring rescues with some of the most highly skilled professionals in the world.
At Blackcomb Mountain, Tyler accompanies a search and rescue dog team on an emergency mission to find a person buried in an avalanche. Ninety per cent of slide victims are still alive for five minutes after being buried, but after that their chances of survival rapidly decrease, so the team must act very fast. That's why they bring in dogs. Their sense of smell is ten million times more sensitive than a human's, so they can easily find the trail of anyone lost in a natural disaster, even under thick layers of snow and ice. Tyler learns how dogs are chosen and how they are trained to position themselves on the slopes for best efficiency. He also learns how the team looks for surface clues, like skis or clothes, before unleashing the dogs.
There is also a lot of action going on in the streets of Toronto where a hostage situation is under way. Tyler joins a S.W.A.T. team preparing to handle the rescue operation. But before going anywhere, he must be fully equipped with coveralls, a bullet-proof vest and a helmet. Speed is a very important factor with hostages because there is little way to know how the assailant will react under stress. The tactical team is called in to do a dynamic entry when negotiations are broken off. Storming into a place is very dangerous, so it has to be well choreographed. Tyler gets to break down the door with a sledgehammer, but he must do some fancy footwork not to be trampled by the officers going in behind him. Once inside, everything happens very fast: a stun grenade is set off and our suspect is handcuffed!
Hitting the beautiful beaches of California, Tyler finds out that there is much more to being a lifeguard than a suntan. He learns everything there is to know about daring rescues at sea as he goes on patrol on a Baywatch rescue boat off the shores of sunny Los Angeles with an L.A. County Lifeguard team.
Since we can't always count on the presence of such rescuers to help us in desperate situations, Charlie gives us some tips on how to survive if we get lost in the wilderness.
Welcome to the world of daring stunts, gravity-defying acts and hysterical laughter. PMK's fun-loving hosts Tyler and Elisha invite viewers to run away and join the circus with them.
Checking all humility at the door, Elisha goes to Montreal's world-famous National Circus School to learn how much effort it takes to become a top-rated circus performer...and quickly realizes how hard it is not to smash into the foam paddings all the time. With help from some other young students in this very special gym class, she tries walking the tightrope, and, as she watches contortionists and acrobats do their acts, she learns that flexibility, good balance, concentration, strength and fearlessness are the five essential elements in one's ability to perform circus arts. Elisha then joins the Cirque du Soleil's Mystere show in Las Vegas for a day, where she experiences first-hand how difficult it is to fly through the air. A young bungee-trapeze artist teaches Elisha some of her cool moves and demonstrates how vertigo and sweaty palms can wreck everything.
Meanwhile, how surprising is it to find out that Tyler prefers showing his funny side to getting into high-flying acts? Spending some time at the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, he takes clown lessons from a real pro. Being funny is serious business and Tyler sets himself to the task as he learns special clown tricks and how to make faces. He also learns there are different types of clowns, such the August and the Pierrot, and why their individual costumes and make-ups need to be very specific. A red nose or a white face? Fuzzy hair or bald head? Every detail has its own importance and meaning. Equipped with such profound knowledge in the fine art of laughter, Tyler is now ready to face the music. Bring in the crowds! Charlie also gets in the act and sides with a juggling whiz kid to show us how to juggle.
Human beings have been looking up at the stars for millions of years. Yet, just a century ago, space travel was still pure fiction. With their extraordinary discoveries about Earth's gravity, physicists like Galileo and Newton have contributed to make a seemingly unattainable dream possible.
On a visit to Hawaii's Mauna Kea, Elisha checks out the most powerful telescope in the world! It sits at the top of a dormant volcano which rises 4,205 meters above sea level, at the Keck Observatory. There is no better spot on the planet for astronomers to study the heavens, and especially our own Milky Way. Mauna Kea's summit is above 40% of the Earth's atmosphere, which makes its skies crystal clear, free of dust and light pollution from cities, and perfect for observing...as well as getting altitude sickness! Elisha learns that one must acclimatize slowly while going up, or else suffer from all sorts of ailments, like headaches and dizziness. She also learns how telescopes work. She even gets to operate one of the twin Keck telescopes, the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes, and probe the deepest regions of the Universe. Who knows what she will find out there...
While staring out into space makes us realize how small we all are, falling from the sky at top speed can also put a whole other perspective on life. Get ready for an stunning experience as Elisha rides the Power Tower at Cedar Point Amusement Park. The thrilling 300 ft tall rocket ride uses new air compression technology to blast Elisha straight up and straight down at a force of more than 4Gs, faster than free falling. On the way down, such speed and height create a moment of negative gravity where Elisha gets to experience weightlessness, however briefly. To find out how that can be, viewers should take a closer look at Charlie's experiment. By throwing various objects from a high building, he explains gravity's role on how fast they splat on the ground.
Our host also tries another kind of free floating experience...in a swimming pool! With help from a trained astronaut, PMK recreates in its own big pool the conditions of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, a giant water tank used by astronauts at NASA to prepare for missions involving space walks. Our host finds out what neutral buoyancy is by jumping in the pool in full scuba gear, with a combination of weights and flotation devices, that make him seem to "hover" underwater. Our host learns that, although it has some limitations, underwater training provides the best possible simulation of the zero gravity vacuum of space. As he tries to perform some delicate tasks at the bottom of the pool, our host learns that moving about in a weightless environment is very different indeed as walking around on good old earth.
This week, our thrill-seeking co-hosts take us on a journey inside one of nature's most eerie universes: swamplands. As we follow Tyler's and Elisha's advance deeper into these strange territories, we discover that, although wetlands play an extremely important part in the balance of our ecological system, they are being depleted at an alarming rate. To get us acquainted with some of the swamp's fascinating wildlife, Charlie shows us how to take care of tadpoles to watch them grow into frogs.
Hopping on an air boat powered by a huge propeller, Tyler goes on a safari in Florida's Everglades. Sliding over the water through the tall grass, his guide explains to him that the swamp's spongy land is covered by the mat, a 10-cm thick vegetation carpet strong enough to support Tyler as he steps out on it. But what about reptiles and alligators? Maybe it's a better idea to stay on the boat... There is always some danger to take into account, but his guide reassures him. He even catches a snake and an alligator! His guide explains the creatures' role in the eco-system. Swamps are home to plenty of wildlife. As swamps disappear, so do these species, affecting the entire food chain.
Exploring another kind of wetland, Elisha goes on an eerie canoe ride through the Bayou in Louisiana. The vegetation is very different from the Florida swamp and, consequently, so are the species that live there. Moving slowly through the tall cypress trees dripping with Spanish moss, she manages to catch some frogs, turtles and various reptiles before running into the nutria, a cute and cuddly rodent that is wreaking havoc in the swamp. She learns why their rampage is so damaging to the eco-system. Getting caught in quicksand near the end of her journey, she learns why these treacherous patches of wet mud suck people in, but above all, she learns how to get out of there safe and sound!
Meanwhile, at Gatorland in Florida, Tyler gets up close and personal with one of the swamp's most dangerous creatures: the alligator. Working with a 'gator wrangler, Tyler learns some interesting facts about them, including what tells them apart from their cousins, the crocodiles. Going to the pit, he watches one of the wranglers wrestling with an alligator. With a jaw that powerful, the guy must be nuts! Still, Tyler comfortably sits on one of these voracious saurians...but not before its mouth has been firmly taped closed. Crazy, but not stupid!
Every kid likes to play with trucks. Now, Elisha and Tyler get to drive the real things!
The show shifts into high gear when Tyler accompanies the driver of an 18-wheel truck on a mission to pick up a load (hundreds of thousands of cookies!) and deliver it unbroken to a destination one thousand miles (1600 km) away. Before going, Tyler helps the driver inspect the truck, checking it to see if the signal lights and the brakes are working properly, that the frame doesn’t have any cracks, that there’s oil in the engine, and that the wheels are tightly fastened. Then they are ready to hook up the trailer to the truck. When they reach the loading destination, Tyler drives a forklift to load all the boxes of cookies into the huge, empty trailer. Then it’s off to their destination! But on the way, Tyler gets a big surprise. The driver makes a detour onto an old airport runway and lets Tyler try his hand at driving the rig!
Then it’s Elisha’s turn to get behind the wheel of some of the weirdest trucks on the planet! They are known as “city trucks,” used to keep cities looking beautiful. She drives a truck that waters plants, one that sweeps up streets, and a giant vacuum on wheels, excellent for sucking up street garbage... and how about cleaning up your room?
While the kids drive the trucks, Charlie shows us how gears make a truck and every other kind of vehicle use power more efficiently - so they can go fast on a straight stretch of road, or have the power to climb up a steep hill.
And finally Elisha goes to an oil-sand field in Alberta to drive in the biggest dump truck in the world. This truck has the power to crush anything in its path - to demonstrate the size and power of the truck, viewers will see what happens when it dumps a full load of sand onto a pickup truck, and then “accidentally” drives over another vehicle!
Get ready to be blown away by this week's episode, 'cause our intrepid co-hosts Elisha and Tyler are starting their danger-filled adventures with a bang. Literally!
What is more spellbinding than the fleeting beauty of flowers made of fire and colourful dust set against a starry night sky? Elisha learns all the secrets of fireworks as she helps pyrotechnicians set up for a firework show. She also discovers what makes them dangerous. People of all ages have enjoyed fireworks for over 2000 years, but still, how can such irresistible and delicate designs be created by a huge kaboom!? It's all a question of balance, proportions and centuries-old traditions passed from generations to generations. What produces the explosion? And how are the different colours and patterns achieved?
In a segment that's pure dynamite, our host follows a team of specialists getting ready to blast rocks at a quarry. Our host helps engineers set up the detonators and make the charge. We see what kind of explosives they use to produce bigger or smaller chunks of rock, and we learn how they manage to do all this safely. We also learn that the material used to build great structures like skyscrapers, tunnels, roads and bridges come from quarries.
Where would disaster movies be without their wild explosions? Working with a special effects coordinator, our host helps plan a huge blast. With actors and stunt people involved in the shots, there is very little room for mistakes. We see how experts can blow entire buildings to pieces without hurting anyone.
As always, Charlie has great ideas. Helping us experience an explosion for ourselves, he uses a mixture of baking soda and vinegar to create homemade blasts that are fun...and safe for the whole family!
In an episode that will go by faster than a speeding bullet, PMK's co-hosts Tyler and Elisha learn all there is to know about the need for speed. Their adventures will leave you breathless.
The show opens on a racetrack in Atlanta, Georgia. As Tyler races against Olympic champion Donovan Bailey, he comes to understand why the Canadian sprinter is now the fastest man in the world. In a way, Donovan's genetic make-up destined him to become the amazing athlete he is today. He was born with the kind of muscle fiber called fast-twitch, which burn up energy very quickly and move very powerfully. Training takes care of the rest, and Donovan goes through a daily regimen of exercises in physical strength, speed and skill. Tyler tries out some of them, working on his body position, his breathing and his starting and accelerating techniques. Ready for another race?
Moving to an adventure that will leave you biting the dust, Tyler travels to Philadelphia to check out the RamJet, an ordinary-looking car powered by an airplane jet engine with full afterburner! With enough power to accelerate more than 500 kilometers per hour in just eight seconds, the RamJet actually goes faster than an airplane! Putting on his fire-resistant race suit, Tyler shows us how the afterburner works to double the car’s power instantly by burning up excess unburned air from the engine. He also shows us how the car's special features, like the position of the engine and the big wing at the back, prevent it from literally taking off. Windows will shake and the ground will rumble as Tyler finally gets to ride in the very special car, spitting fire and smoke as he flies down the track at incredible speeds!
And in the final adventure, our host checks out the newest and fastest airplane fighter jet while it is still in its testing phase: the F-22.
And Charlie shows us how to build balloon rockets. Using a combination of long tube-like balloons, straws, spring paper clips and fishing cord, he makes the balloons shoot forward as they deflate. The really fun part is to see which one is faster in a race!
A collection of Tyler and Elisha’s most exciting adventures from episode 23-40 of Popular Mechanics for Kids.
Elisha visits the world's only leech farm in Charleston, South Carolina. As she cleans out a leech tank, she learns why leeches are making a comeback in hospitals and research labs, after being nearly abandoned by modern medicine for close to a century. With recent scientific advances, especially in plastic and reconstructive surgery, doctors are now using leeches to remove any congested blood from a healing wound and to restore normal circulation to grafted tissues, thus preventing gangrene from setting in. She also learns that, despite its 300 teeth, a leech bite is painless because it injects its own anesthetic. Efficient little suckers...if only a bit yucky!
It's an invasion! Tyler goes on a mission with an exterminator and helps her flush out hundreds of cockroaches from an infested house. He learns that cockroaches have been around for 300 millions years, so they've had plenty of time to develop a true survivor's instinct. That's what makes them so hard to kill. Should a nuclear explosion occur, cockroaches would be the only living things to survive at the core of the blast, so imagine what it takes to get rid of them! They are also rather tough to find because they live at night and hide in tiny crevices. Is our battle against them hopeless? No, but they are certainly making the job difficult. Tyler helps mix the chemicals and activate the sprays that will poison these pests or attack their central nervous systems, effectively sending them into oblivion.
On the final portion of this journey into the world of insects, Elisha walks into a swarm of bees wearing protective clothing to help a beekeeper collect honey from his bee hives. She learns that honey bees generally attack only to defend a nest, but are usually rather harmless. Bees live in a matriarcal society, which means that female bees, and especially the queen, have all the power in beeland! Elisha also find out that honey bees are also a very well organized and active colony, where every little worker has a specific job to do. They even communicate between them through touch during bee dances.
There are a lot of ways to catch cool-looking insects! Charlie shows us a few tricks, like laying down a sheet under a tree and shaking the tree really hard to see what kinds of bugs will drop. He also shows how to look under rocks, walk in high grass whiping a net back and forth and, at night, attract night butterflies with a black light.
Kids and adults alike will get a monster kick out of this series of adventures as Tyler and Elisha explore the world of big, huge, monumental machines!
The show starts at the Joliet Annual Car Show Festival in Illinois where Tyler runs into a giant, fire-spitting metal monster that could easily take on Jurassic Park's T-Rex! Cool! Meet Megasaurus, a 50,000 lbs., 3-stories tall, one-of-a-kind hybrid mega-robot, part truck, part tank, that eats cars for lunch! Poor thing, it was born with an iron deficiency. Tyler jumps in on the action and gets behind the controls to show us all of Megasaurus's capabilities. Its amazing power comes from its hydraulic pumps and cylinders. The robot's operator, George Carpenter, explains how hydraulics work and why it gives Megasaurus a biting force of 15,000 lbs. No wonder it can chew through cars, boats and even houses!
Our hosts will also get to operate two other mega machines, still to be announced.
In the season's finale, PMK searches for answers to kids' questions and goes on adventures that have been suggested by young viewers.
Charlie also tops a fantastic season of experiments by doing one last really cool trick: sucking an egg into a bottle! It's easier than it looks: all we need to do is burn the oxygen in the bottle by throwing in two lighted matches, then closing the bottle very quickly with the egg. A vacuum is created and the egg gets sucked in!
PMK goes back to school in this episode as our hosts enroll in some of the coolest schools around and learn a whole lot more than reading, writing and arithmetic!
Tyler goes to the only underwater acting school in the world and holds his breath during an audition for a big part. If he can last underwater for at least thirty seconds, he gets the chance to join the underwater theatre troupe and perform as a mermaid or is it a merman? Incredible, huh? The school and theatre are part of a huge underground river complex flowing all the way from New Mexico to Florida and under the guidance of a Navy frogman, actors use special hoses which supply fresh air through a compressor allowing the actors to perform safely underwater. We'll find out if Tyler really has what it takes to be in show business.
Vanessa also has her work cut out for her as she does some rather unusual learning in the desert. First, she heads to Nevada to take on some monster sand dunes and giant boulders from behind the wheel of a Hummer. She finds out what makes this mammoth military land vehicle tick as she takes a tour inside the shop where the vehicles are inspected. She'll also find out what makes the Hummer hum so easily up steep hills and over boulders and how to stop those gigantic tires from getting stuck in the desert mud.
After graduating from Hummer school, Vanessa heads north to Colorado to get the low-down on high-tech protection at the Executive Security Bodyguard school. Although it usually takes two years to complete the course, they've agreed to give Vanessa a crash course in the art of protecting the rich and famous.
She'll learn how to check out a limousine for bugs and bombs, how to hide a walkie-talkie and what to do when someone you're trying to protect gets into trouble. She'll also go on a real mission with real bodyguards and see how the pros get a celebrity safely from their private jet to their limo. And we thought algebra was hard!
Also, this week, Charlie does a little teaching of his own and shows us how to build the perfect treehouse.
PMK gets amused this week when we journey to Orlando, Florida and get an insider's look at the nuts and bolts of Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. Tyler and Elisha get the awesome chance to go behind the scenes at some of the biggest and best amusements at the world's newest theme park.
Elisha starts us off when she checks out the heart and the brain of the Incredible Hulk Coaster. All part of the Marvel Super Hero Island, this wild ride has 220 computers and four generators giving it the same thrust as a U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jet. Our PMK camera records every gut-wrenching, body-squirming and face-twisting scream when Elisha gets shot out of a 150 foot tunnel, turns upside down at zero gravity while she's 100 feet up in the air and then shoots down a 105 foot incline while the coaster clocks in at 60 MPH. Whew! Talk about a bad hair day!
It's Tyler's turn next when he makes a splash at Poseidon's Fury and walks through a forty-foot water vortex holding a whopping 17 thousand gallons of the wet stuff. He tries to hold his breath and squint his eyes but the water is hitting him at 90 MPH. After he dries off and catches his breath, he discovers exactly how this fantasy ride is done and gets a chance to check out the water pump room and the super high-tech water canons.
Next stop is the Triceratops Encounter on the Jurassic Park Island where PMK gets the chance to see the most life-like dinosaur animation technology has ever created. Standing more than 13 feet high and weighing in at a staggering twelve tons, Topper as he's called, is so high-tech that he can actually feel things like happiness and boredom and even gets sleepy once in a while. If you touch the gigantic critter, he'll blink and if you get him mad, he'll let out a giant scream. Tyler discovers how all of this is done and how space age technology brought the dinosaur back from extinction.
To wrap up our show, Charlie explains the best ways to rock and roll in a roller coaster without getting motion sickness.
Tyler heads south for an adventure of a lifetime with some of the biggest creatures found under the sea. He'll visit the Human Dolphin Institute to meet some of the smartest underwater animals on the planet. We'll watch him get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to dive into the open waters and swim with the dolphins, while discovering the calming effects hanging out with these animals can have on the human spirit.
After chilling out with the dolphins, Tyler goes to Sea World's rescue and rehabilitation facility and meets the folks who are in charge of the care and feeding of sick sea turtles and manatees, one of the most endangered marine animals on the continent. Working with the veterinarians, Tyler will bottle-feed an orphaned manatee, care for an adult manatee that was hit by a boat and release a recovered sea turtle back into the ocean.
Vanessa also goes out on the ocean, but she's hunting for humpback whales. When she finds one, she'll shoot it with a bow and arrow and try to extract its blubber. This giant mammal is on the endangered list now, with only about 10,000 of them left in the world. By studying the blubber, scientists can help them live longer by figuring out if the food they're eating is toxic.
For those of us who like to keep our sea creatures at home, Charlie shows us how to set up our own aquarium for Japanese fighting fish along with a variety of others.
Getting down and dirty this week on PMK, Vanessa searches for the proverbial needle in the New York City haystack when she searches the city garbage dump looking for something very special that she accidentally threw away. Will she find it? Stay tuned!
Tyler also gets his hands dirty when he takes a romp with the rhinos to find out if he’s got what it takes to become an ace zookeeper.
Vanessa holds her nose to discover how fish get from the ocean floor to our dinner tables when she visits a stinky fish-gutting factory
Our hosts get up-close-and-personal with some pretty slimy critters. Elisha goes into the woods with a herpetologist on a frog-capturing expedition. Their mission is to find a black masked frog with a white upper lip called a wood frog and see what happens when they bring it back to the lab, freeze it and then witness a real miracle as it thaws out and comes back to life. We'll see how these kinds of frogs actually super-cool their bodies during the winter months which is pretty cool to us too!
Tyler is up to his elbows in creepy crawlers as he worms his way into a huge bait farm. He'll take delivery of a truckload of worms and watch how they get shipped to fishermen all over the world. These slimy night crawlers are picked by hand from the soil, loaded into styrofoam boxes stuffed with peat moss and rolled into a well-lit cooler to make sure the worms don't crawl away. Good thing Tyler won't have to count the worms, there can be up to 300,000 in each shipment!
Vanessa also has her hands full as she journeys to the Seattle Aquarium to meet Neah, a fifteen pound Giant Pacific Octopus. Vanessa will take Neah out of her tank, place her in a big barrel and weigh her. With an arm span of about five feet, these creatures can be pretty nimble and pretty smart and Vanessa gets the chance to actually watch Neah grab and digest her clam dinner.
Although Charlie has only two arms, he puts them to good use in his adventure teaching us how to make our own homegrown slime.
This episode comes with a don't-do-this-at-home warning for good reason! Elisha tries break-dancing and finds out if she can do those dangerous head stands while turning her entire body upside down.
Vanessa catches up with an orthopedic surgeon and figures out how broken bones are set back into place. She'll actually break the femur bone on a human skeleton and then assist the doctor as he sets that bone back into place. Not for the faint of heart, bone surgery can get pretty gruesome!
Tyler pits himself against some of the toughest athletes in the world when he joins a grueling triathlon race. First, he'll put on his wet suit and head down to the lake to try and swim 2 kilometers. Then he'll leap out of the water and jump on his bike for the second leg of the race which will take him a whopping 55 kilometers. If he's got any energy left, he'll rack his bike, put on his sneakers and join the other runners as they head for the finish line after jogging for 15 kilometers. Will he make it? Does he have the stamina to keep up with the pros or will he have to crawl into the medical tent for some emergency help?
Charlie shows us how to do some pretty dangerous stuff this week. He'll teach us how to walk on hot coals, take a nap on a bed of nails and break a piece of wood with just bare hands! We told you not to try this stuff at home!
PMK walks on the wild side when our hosts get up-close-and-personal with some of the most dangerous animals on the planet. Tyler journeys to a sanctuary for wild tigers where he learns how these neglected beasts are cared for. These Siberian tigers come from zoos that can no longer care for them, circuses that only want younger animals or pet-owners who didn’t realize how hard it is to raise a tiger at home. Tyler meets the experts who dedicate their lives to caring for these endangered animals and gets a chance to actually walk, pet and feed a wild tiger. Some of these creatures grow to around ten feet long and can weigh as much as 675 pounds, so we better hope Tyler makes a good impression.
Vanessa also meets some of the largest animals in the world when she ventures all the way up to the Canadian North to discover what happens when wild polar bears wander away from their natural habitat and end up in the city foraging for food. Weighing up to 800 kilograms and measuring three meters in length, a polar bear in the city can pose quite a problem. Vanessa will hang out with the team of scientists who capture the wandering animals and then airlift them in helicopters back to the wild. She’ll see the polar bear jail where these giant animals stay until they’re ready to be re-released back into their natural habitat and find out what kinds of very special training these bear workers must have before tangling with such massive and dangerous animals.
Elisha discovers that size doesn’t matter when it comes to dangerous creatures when she comes face to face with one of the deadliest animals on the planet: the Komodo dragon. She’ll meet ‘Spud,’ the biggest Komodo in North America and get a chance to feed him through the glass wall of his zoo home. She’ll learn what special precautions zookeepers have to take when caring for these dangerous creatures and then gets the chance to hold a baby Komodo in her hands! Let’s hope the mother Komodo is OK with that!
Charlie shows us his wild side when he takes us deep into the forest and teaches us how to protect ourselves from the wild animals that live in the woods.
Our hosts are right out of this world this week, well, almost! Tyler makes the trek to the Mojave desert and gets a rare chance to step right inside the largest antenna at NASA’s Deep Space Network Control Headquarters. Once inside the space-age looking dish, which is about ten stories off the ground and weighs about 12 million pounds, Tyler learns how to lock the antenna into place so it can receive signals from a spacecraft that’s more than 90 million miles away from Earth. The space scientists at NASA will then show Tyler exactly how that data is received from so far away and what they are able to learn about space missions from the information gathered by these gigantic dishes.
Vanessa gets her dose of science-fiction when she pays the creators of the SPAWN comic book a visit in their Arizona offices. Started back in 1992, SPAWN is now one of the coolest superheroes on the planet with the comic book translated into 19 languages and read in more than 100 countries around the world. The SPAWN artists will let Vanessa watch them work and actually teach her how to do the inking-in of a comic panel. She’ll discover how a computer is used to color the comics and then gets a chance to try her own hand at creating her own science-fiction masterpiece.
Charlie gets himself in a knot and all upside-down when he teaches us how to defy gravity. Better eat lunch after this segment!
A hit parade of our greatest adventures this week on PMK. The best of the best and all your favorites on POPULAR MECHANICS FOR KIDS: television for curious minds!
SPACE STATION
Episode 64 (3-320)
PMK soars into orbit this week when Vanessa visits the NASA laboratory and enters the world of virtual reality to find out exactly how space stations are built. She’ll climb right into the virtual reality lab to discover what kind of training real astronauts get before they’re allowed into the international space stations. Then she checks out all the cool tools the astronauts use to build the space stations and even learns the secret of how these tools defy gravity so they don’t float away into space.
Tyler also gets into the action at NASA when he gets to test his skills in a new space-age lifeboat that scientists are building to help bring sick astronauts back to earth. He’ll also test his cast-iron stomach when he gets the chance to ride in the specially-designed vomit van that NASA uses in emergency situations. Talk about one small step for mankind and a giant one for PMK!
Charlie gets a bit spacey on us this week too, when he shows us how to build our very own telescope.
Soaking wet and wild – Water, water everywhere this week on PMK. Tyler gets to go behind Niagara Falls to see how the massive falls keeps electricity flowing. He then keeps his wet suit on and joins a real emergency oil spill clean team.
Elisha has a hair-raising adventure when she takes a run down the rocky rapids in the ultra-modern and indestructible raft.
Our hosts get a front row seat and discover what really goes into setting up a mega-stadium event. Elisha runs away and joins the circus, but not the ordinary kind with animals, but rather the world-famous Cirque du Soleil that features extremely agile acrobats twisting, turning and hanging in some spectacular ways. She discovers how many people it takes to engineer the Cirque backstage and even gets a chance to strut her stuff in front of the large audience. Keep your day job, Elisha, is all we can say!
PMK enjoys some freestyle fun this week when we find out about three of the most action-packed sports around. Tyler starts us off when he takes to the skies in a powered parachute plane. Called the "Dream Machine", this two-seater, taxis down the runway while air starts to fill the attached parachute. As soon as it's ready, the parachute takes off quickly ascending into the wild blue yonder with Tyler slowly scaling heights of up to 400 feet. Once high enough, he'll shut the engine off and gracefully glide the parachute above the Earth enjoying the most spectacular view he’s ever seen!
With his feet planted firmly on the ground, Tyler gets ready for his next adventure on a mountain in Virginia. Getting into one of the newest and coolest extreme sports called 'street luge', Tyler , all decked out in protective body gear, lays down on a luge board just two inches from the pavement. Gravity rules with this one and the speed of the descent depends on the steepness of the hill. Stopping? No problem, he'll do it just like Fred Flintstone used to do…feet first!!
Vanessa gets her turn to strut her daring side when she visits Oregon for a lesson in kite skiing. Similar to water skiing, except the kite stands in for a boat, a kite skier can reach speeds of up to 20 mph using only the power of the wind and a 20 foot kite! Gaining speeds more than two and a half times faster than a sailboat, kite skiing requires precise skill and the ability to predict the wind speed and kite movement. Looks like Vanessa is heading up, up and away this week!
Charlie shows us how to build our own x-treme ride by attaching cables between two trees and using a pulley to get your body from one spot to the next! Yes, you can try that one at home!
PMK gets down and dirty this week when Vanessa travels to Oregon to create a real landslide! Using just a shovel and a front-end loader, Vanessa will move 20 tons of dirt to the top of a mountain and then with the help of some very large machines, she’ll dump the dirt behind a seven-foot tall solid steel gate. After watering the masses of rock, clay, earth and sand, she'll hit the ‘magic’ release button creating a 'real' landslide. Scientists are using this unique outdoor laboratory to find out more about the patterns of landslides and how to prevent them from devastating many areas of the continent.
Vanessa then journeys down the coast to Los Angeles where she'll train with a real Collapse Rescue Team at an elite training facility called the "Rescue Mall". These are the brave scientists who are called in to save people from such emergencies as collapsed buildings, stalled elevators and truck and car accidents. Using very specialized tools like a chain saw and a cutting torch, Vanessa gets some first-hand experience about the dangers these paramedics and firefighters face trying to rescue people in need.
Tyler also gets a chance to see how real life disasters are dealt with when he goes out into the field with a crew of fire researchers and helps them set a room ablaze! He'll use heat-sensitive and high-tech devices to monitor the temperature of the fire and then alert the firefighters when the temperatures get dangerously hot! By setting these kinds of controlled fires, scientists are able to learn and devise the most up-to-date fire fighting techniques, which help in saving lives. No, Tyler won't have to clean up the mess when it cools down, but he will get a chance to walk through the charred mess and see what kinds of clues the firefighters are able to pick up. And Charlie shows us a few water survival techniques of his own!
PMK gets out of some pretty tight spaces this week when Vanessa catches up with Dean Gunnerson, one of the most famous escape artists in the world. She'll get a chance to tie him into a straight jacket, hang him upside from a rope that is pulled 100 feet into the air by a crane, and then if that isn't enough, she'll set the rope on fire and wait on the sidelines to see if he can escape this life-threatening situation. If he comes out alive, Dean promises to share a few of his top-secret tips with Vanessa including how not to panic under such extreme situations of danger. This adventure comes with a 'don't try this at home' warning!!
Tyler gets to do some escaping of his own this week when he gets inside the cockpit of an underwater helicopter and finds out what it's like to be trapped inside something that is slowly sinking to the bottom of a deep pool. The Marines in Lousiana's Survival Training Centre will teach Tyler to resist his natural impulse to kick his way to the surface and concentrate instead on holding his breath, kicking out the helicopter door and swimming to the surface. With expert training like this, Tyler will be prepared for any kind of water emergency!
Tyler’s adventures continue in Delaware this week when he tries out a life chute, designed to rescue people from high rise fires. Conceived after the 1980 Las Vegas hotel fire, the Life Chute is a tube-shaped net attached to 66 super strong nylon cords with three-foot metal rings at each end. The unique device is capable of carrying a continuous flow of evacuees from a burning building or any other kind of life-threatening emergency.
Charlie gets all tied up himself this week sharing a few tips on the art of escape!
PMK horses around this week as we go behind-the-scenes at the world renowned Strathcona Mounted Troop: the only non-British Cavalry Unit in history to mount the Queen’s Life Guard at Buckingham Palace. After some very special training, Tyler participates in the Musical Ride and finds out how the twenty horses are taught to obey the riders’ very intricate instructions.
Tyler then goes back in time for our second adventure in the show by entering the world of jousting. He’ll be a knight-in-training for a day while learning about the medieval sport of full contact jousting. Sporting a ten-foot lance, decked out in a full suit of armor and riding a horse, Tyler learns the exciting history of this ancient sport and finds out why it's still so popular today.
Vanessa heads west for our next adventure to Alberta's cowboy country where she learns all about the rigors of the range. Decked out in authentic cowboy gear, she'll saddle up with a real cowboy for some calf-roping, cattle herding and lasso tying. We'll find out if Vanessa earns her spurs on the ranch and if home sweet home really is on the range!
Charlie ropes us in this week when he dons his cowboy hat and boots and shows us the art and science of throwing a lariot!
PMK gets all wet this week when Tyler gets going on a trio of underwater adventures. His first stop is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California where he gets on a remote-control operated vehicle called a ROV and explores the largest submarine canyon on the continent's West coast. With deep sea depths reaching more than 10,000 feet, Tyler will assist these highly-trained scientists as they search for never-before-seen life forms at the bottom of the ocean floor. Although some ten million species of underwater life lives on the bottom of the ocean floor, researchers have only been able to identify about a million and by finding new species scientists can produce vital medicines and treatments for many deadly diseases.
Tyler stays underwater for his next adventure only this time he has to wear a diving suit that weighs a full ton – the helmet alone is 32 pounds. After securing his oxygen supply, he'll accompany a team of skilled underwater welders. He'll find out how this unique skill is used to repair pipelines, drilling rigs, ships, barges and even nuclear power plants and how some amazing tools can produce enough heat to melt steel even in the icy cold temperatures of the ocean.
After all his underwater adventures, Tyler is ready to check into one of the most unique hotels we've ever heard of! Jules's Underwater Sea Lodge is exactly that, a hotel underwater! Built in a lagoon some 30 feet underwater, the Lodge has only four rooms, each with its own supply of air sent down from the surface using an umbilical cord device. Ordering air gives a whole new meaning to the term 'room service'. We can only hope Tyler is a good tipper!!
Charlie's adventure is a bit fishy this week when he makes tracks in a swimming pool showing us all kinds of ways to increase our own buoyancy. What kinds of fins give the most speed, what kinds of bathing suits give the most speed and how fish swim…well…like a fish! All on PMK this week!
PMK reaches new heights this week when Tyler joins the Skyhawks: Canada's elite parachute team and jumps out of a plane at 10,000 feet. Just to hedge his bets, he’ll be strapped to the back of one of the Skyhawk jumpers but will get a rare opportunity to see exactly how these tandem jumps are orchestrated and the special skill it takes to execute such a daring adventure. These parachutists are trained to land these dangerous jumps to get medical personnel into remote areas where help is needed such as avalanches, floods, plane crashes and war zones. Tyler gets a first-hand look at one of the toughest jobs in the world.
Not to be outdone by Tyler’s high-flying adventure, Vanessa takes to the skies of California to fly her own fighter plane in a high-speed airborne dog fight! She proves just how daring she can be when she loops, turns and rolls her own plane and then attempts to 'shoot down' an enemy aircraft with high-tech laser beams. Move over Agent 007, Vanessa has arrived!
Back on the ground, Vanessa gets to operate an eight-wheeled army surveillance truck called the Coyote. Able to spy on targets up to thirteen miles away, the Coyote is a state-of-the-art surveillance vehicle used in both military and non-military situations.
And Charlie, our resident Mr. Fix-it, makes his own messenger kite this week and then tries to sail it across the open skies!
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