10 That Changed America

It's a whirlwind tour of 10 engineering feats that made our civilization possible. 10 Modern Marvels that Changed America is a show about engineers who've scoffed at the laws of nature. They've defied the naysayers — and sometimes even gravity — by undertaking amazing feats of engineering. Each story in this episode includes a fun physics lesson and a tale of human folly.

We begin at the Erie Canal, a 363-mile-long man-made waterway that was built in the 19th century by thousands of laborers using primitive hand tools. Then we'll show how professional engineers connected our growing nation by building magnificent bridges, intricate rail networks, and a continent-wide system of freeways. And we'll discover the extreme measures that engineers have taken to deliver water from distant rivers to our kitchen sinks. It's easy to take these modern marvels for granted. After all, we usually access our roads, bridges and drinking water effortlessly. But behind many of our daily conveniences there is a clever engineer, and a remarkable story.