Extreme Engineering

It examines the concept of constructing a giant tower in Japan that wouldnt be a just a building, but a public city in the sky. At the end it talks about what a fire in the building would be like and how the fire department would handle it.

The concept of building a tunnel across the Atlantic Ocean is talked about. It talks about the problems involved, and how it might someday be possible. At the end it examines the concept of a submarine hitting the tunnel, and how hopefully this wouldnt ruin it.

Imagine driving across a bridge near the North Pole, or going from New York to London in just an hour through a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean. These are just some of the awe-inspiring projects of todays builders and engineers. Jaw-dropping computer animation illustrates the largest, most outrageous projects ever conceived. As students learn about stretching the boundaries of modern engineering, they also gain understanding of the technological design process and come to understand how physics and chemistry are utilized to solve modern human engineering challenges.

Hong Kong has outgrown its small airport and quickly needed a new one in order to maintain its high traffic flow. The only place to put this new world class airport... 16 miles out in the ocean. This would require 22 miles of new super highway. It was predicted to take decades, but engineers were only given 7 years to build it.

Bostons new transport system, which features a multi-lane underground highway and the worlds widest cable-stayed bridge

The Turning Torso is the worlds largest residential structure, rising 190 meters above Malmö, Sweden.

Covers the docking of a container ship at Long Beach (California) and the operation of the water front docks, where several thousand containers need to be unloaded and loaded in 48 hours. Also covered is the building of the Adrian Maersk, the worlds largest container ship. While the scale of these gigantic ships has to be seen to be believed, the construction must be precise to millimeters.

Around 200 miles northeast of the capital, Reykjavik, engineers are hard at work drilling 72km of tunnels deep in the mountains. Three full-face boring machines have been specially shipped from the US to this remote site, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The tunnel’s purpose is to guide water to the valley floor from reservoirs that are also currently under construction. The cascading water will drive six turbines, each with a rated output of 115 megawatts. With a total capacity of 690 megawatts, it will be the biggest hydropower plant in Europe.

Connecting the bustling port city of Charleston and Mount Pleasant in South Carolina, the Cooper River Bridge will be the longest cable-stay bridge in America. The structure stands on one of the most seismic spots on the East Coast, it also faces the frequent threat of 300kmph hurricanes.

In northern Minnesota, the operators of the worlds largest open-pit iron mine commission the construction of a $10 million custom-built super-shovel in the hopes of making excavation more efficient.

Engineers are building the Ngong Ping 360, the worlds longest detachable cable car system, on Hong Kongs mountainous Lantau Island, spanning the South China Sea.

The Gotthard Base Tunnel underneath the Swiss Alps will be the worlds longest rail tunnel upon completion in 2015.

The series takes a look at the construction of the new stadium for the NFLs Arizona Cardinals. The state-of-the-art structure is scheduled to be completed in August 2006. It will feature North Americas first slide-out tray field, a "pie-slice" construction method and a unique steel-ribbon outer shell.