Learning Zone Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom

-This is Absolute Genius.

-'We're going to introduce you to some incredible geniuses,

'amazing people who had groundbreaking ideas.'

'And we'll see how their genius shapes the world we live in today.'

'So sit down, buckle up

'and get ready for take off!'

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Ah, you join me in the bath, where today we go inside

one of the greatest scientific minds this world has ever seen.

He was famous for coming up with the genius idea whilst in the bath.

Not only was he a fantastic mathematician and engineer,

but his genius machines are still being used today.

He did all of this over 2,000 years ago.

Why are you in my bath?

I don't... I don't know.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Archimedes.

Why are you in his bath, Dom?

'Archimedes was a Greek guy with a great beard

'born a ridiculously long time ago, around the year 287BC.'

'Archimedes was a genius when it came to maths, physics and engineering.

'He was so clever, he was hired to solve tricky problems

'by the King of Syracuse.'

'He came up with brilliant theories about why objects float.

'And he built amazing machines to help defend the king's city against attack.'

You might know the story of Archimedes being in a bath

and coming up with a fantastic idea that helped him solve a problem that had been puzzling him for ages.

He was so excited about solving this problem

that he jumped out of the bath, nudey, shouting out, "Eureka! Eureka!"

In Greek that means, "I've got it, I've got it!"

But what exactly had he got?

If only Fran, our genius scientist, was here to tell us more.

So, Archimedes was working on a problem he had been set by the king

because the King didn't know whether his crown was made of pure gold or not.

-So it was at that moment in the bath that Archimedes solved the problem?

-Yes.

But why did he get so excited about that?

Well, the solution didn't just allow him to work out

whether crowns were made of pure gold or not,

it allowed him to figure out why things float and why things sink.

And that is much more useful. Come with me.

I mean, we're not complaining or anything, but what's all this got to do with Archimedes?

He knew that different materials could weigh the same

but you get different amounts of material for that same weight.

So what you're saying is, basically,

some light and frothy marshmallows, you get loads of them for 100 grams.

-Yeah.

-Ah, but only a few aniseed balls.

-Exactly.

And Archimedes figured out that the more of the material you get for that certain weight,

the more likely it is to float. If you don't believe me, let's try it.

Ah, sinkage. Get them in.

There we are. Floating!

-Eureka!

-Eureka!

-I'll say!

'Until Archimedes came along more than 2,000 years ago,

'building a ship that would float well was always a trial-and-error operation.'

There's no doubt Archimedes was a really clever bloke.

Look, there's something else here.

He set to catch the full rays of the sun at noon.

He's saying here that he set fire to boats.

'2,000 years ago, Archimedes made a special heat ray

'to defend his city walls against attack from Roman ships.

'By cleverly positioning mirrors, Archimedes caught the sun's rays

'and concentrated them to make one amazingly hot heat ray.'

I've actually got a specially-shaped mirror here for you.

-What can we set on fire?

-I don't know.

-Ah! Just like Archimedes did.

-What?

-Let's set fire to a boat.

-Where are you going to find a big red boat?

-There!

-Oh!

Right, in you come. Pop your safety specs on,

because what we've got here is a heat lamp.

-Oh!

-And we're going to use this along with this other mirror as our artificial sun.

So that's kind of like your sun and this is the reflector

-which is going to be generating the heat, yes?

-Yeah.

We can't exactly set fire to a boat in here, though, can we?

Well, no, that's why I've got two other things to show you.

Firstly, this stuff, fuse wire.

And that we can ignite in here

but then that will take the flame outside where we can light the boat at a safe distance.

-And I've also got this stuff.

-What, cotton wool?

No, no, this is flash wool. You remember me using this stuff as a magician.

-It just bursts into flames and disappears.

-Yeah.

-Go on, then, ready? Oh!

-That's my BBC pass!

'Now, don't copy this at home. We're doing this as a controlled experiment.

'But setting fire to stuff in your back garden is a no-no.'

In three, two, one, go!

-Oh!

-Go on!

-Right!

There she goes, slowly and steadily to the boat down there.

-What's in the boat?

-I'll tell you what's in the boat. A nice combustible bag of tricks.

'This is finally it.

-'Or is it?'

-That boat's absolutely fine.

A failed experiment. No bangs, flashes...

-..whooshes...

-F-f-f-fire!

-Hm?

-F-f-fire!

# I'm on fire

Eureka! We've done it!

FIRECRACKERS EXPLODE

Archimedes, you are an absolute genius.

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

"Two... One... Liftoff! We have liftoff!"

'More than 40 years ago, the world watched

'as Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.'

Yes, this is exactly what it would've been like when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon!

What are you doing? Stop it!

Right, get out!

HE GASPS

'He was the mastermind behind the rocket that blasted Apollo 11 to the moon.'

In the words of NASA, the greatest rocket scientist in history.

We give you... Wernher von Braun.

Let me out!

'Von Braun was born in Germany in 1912.'

With me, it started with the moon. My parents gave me a telescope.

'As a child, he was fascinated by the idea of going to space.

'So were a lot of other people. And they thought rocket power might be the way to get there.

'But probably not in a car.

'Von Braun studied maths and physics

'to understand the science of how rockets work.

'But it would be years before he built one to go to the moon,

'because when he was 20, Von Braun started developing rockets for the German army.

'Then, in 1939, the Second World War started.'

'Von Braun led the team that developed the V2 missile

'used by the Nazis during the war.

'The V2 could hit targets up to 200 miles away, killing thousands of people.

'As a weapon of war, it was deadly,

'but as a rocket design, it was groundbreaking.

'So, in 1945, when Germany was defeated and the war ended,

'America secretly hired Von Braun and other Nazi scientists like him

'to work for the US.'

'Von Braun's genius idea was the Saturn V,

'the world's most powerful rocket.

'It stood 111 metres tall,

'and fully-fuelled, weighed about the same as 400 elephants.'

'And in 1969, it helped land men on the moon

'in the Apollo 11 spacecraft.'

"It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

'Now, we can't get to the moon,

'but we have made it to the home of the East Anglian Rocket Society,

'or EARS for short.'

'We've asked one of their finest rocketeers to help us build and launch a rocket of our own.'

Rockets normally have a tube that forms the main part of the body.

Fuel goes in the back, pointy bit goes on the front,

and that's kind of it.

'Our rocket is almost ready to fly.

'It just needs some rocket fuel and a name.'

We're going to name this rocket Pat!

Oh, for goodness sake!

'We're leaving Ben to add the rocket fuel and get Pat ready to fly,

'but what we still need to find out is exactly how rockets work.

'If only there was a friendly scientist around to explain.'

Ah! Fran! We would like to know how rockets go up.

To make something go up, all you've got to do is push something else down.

-Agh!

-Not like that! But we're going to do it with this pop bottle here.

It's got some water in and we're going to push that water down

and then that'll push the pop bottle up.

-I've seen these in toy shops.

-Yep. And to make the water go down,

-all you've got to do is pump some air in.

-Pump it! Right.

-Pumping!

-Do you want to put your foot on there, as well?

-Keep pumping. That's it. Keep going.

-Come on!

-Keep going!

-Agh!

-Great!

-That was brilliant.

'But not as brilliant as our very own rocket, Pat!'

Three... Two... One...

-Pat! Pat! Pat!

-Blast off!

Ohhh!

-Brilliant!

-That's it! It's gone!

'That was genius! But we don't want to stop there.

'Inspired by Von Braun, we want to send a man all the way to space.'

I did a bit of number crunching. We can't afford a bigger rocket to send into space,

so instead we're going to be using a balloon!

And here's the man we're sending up, Diddy-Dom, complete with tin-foil spacesuit

-cos we couldn't afford a real one.

-And a massive slap-head.

'To help get our idea off the ground, it's Steve Randall,

'an expert in high altitude ballooning.'

We want to try and send Diddy-Dom here up to the outer rim of space.

-No trouble.

-Is it possible?

-Yeah, absolutely.

-Great. How?

-Well, we'll stick him into this rig.

-Oh, OK.

'Diddy-Dom will sit in his own polystyrene space pod.

'We're using mini cameras to film him.

'The helium balloon should lift Diddy-Dom thousands of metres to the edge of space.'

This is it! Three... Two... One...

-Blast off!

-Whey!

'Just seconds after launch, he's already 275 metres high.'

'We're tracking Diddy-Dom's flight using Steve's GPS system and sat-nav.'

'Diddy-Dom is floating almost 30,000 metres above Earth.

'So high, the blue has disappeared from the sky.

'And he can see the curvature of the earth.'

-No way! That is awesome!

-It almost seems unreal!

Von Braun, it was you that inspired us to do this.

We salute him because he is an absolute genius.

I am! Thank you!

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Today we're going to introduce you

to one of the greatest scientists ever to live.

A genius who helped uncover the invisible force

that controls not only how everything in the world moves, but everything in the universe.

-From this bouncing ball...

-To the stars and moon in the sky.

Ladies and gents, we give you the man who discovered how gravity works,

-Sir Isaac Newton.

-Oh! Get me down!

All right, then.

-There you are. Gravity.

-Aghh!

'Newton was born in 1643,

'when the laws of nature and the universe were a big mystery.

'It was the early days of modern science.'

'Newton made many advances

'in our understanding of the universe, maths and physics.

'But it was here where he began to make his groundbreaking discoveries

'about gravity.'

And with this apple. Well, not this apple, the original is a bit mouldy by now,

but with an apple. Watch this.

Did that give you any genius thoughts?

-No.

-Well, it did for Isaac, because he started thinking,

why did the apple go downwards instead of upwards or sideways?

He started to think that there was some kind of invisible force

that was pulling the apple and everything else towards the ground.

And this force was gravity.

'Newton's genius idea was in understanding how gravity works.

'He realised it's a pulling force that makes apples fall to the ground

'and stops people floating off into the sky.'

'And he discovered gravity's force even tugs on the moon,

'keeping it orbiting the earth. Genius!'

-Hey, Fran! How you doing?

-Hello!

-We've been learning about gravity

but we want to know how it affects us as people.

-Well, first of all, step on these scales, Dom.

-Right. OK.

75 kilograms, yeah? Let's say that.

-Is it too many dirty kebabs?

-I have.

-You have eaten a bit much.

Is there any way by science you can make me lighter?

Yeah, there is. Here on Earth, gravity is what it is, we can't really change it.

But what we can do is there's another way to change your weight,

by changing the push and pulls on your body, and that's called G-force.

So, here I have got Mr Newton,

and we can see how much he weighs on these scales.

What we're going to do to Mr Newton is speed him up and slow him down.

And that will subject him to different pushes and pulls and it should change his weight.

-Get on the swing.

-All right. Here we go.

Oh, yeah. It's getting heavier. Is that right?

Yeah. He should be getting heavier when you speed up.

-When you slow down, he should get a bit lighter.

-Yes.

-And that's G-force.

-Agh!

Ohh! SMASHING

Oh, painful!

'We want to experience some proper G-force,

'so one of us is about to go on this, the human centrifuge.

'And it's not going to be me!'

-You look quite nervous now, to be honest.

-Good.

'A human centrifuge is used to test the effect of G-force on the body.

'The kind of G-force experienced by jet pilots.'

'Jet pilots can experience up to 9 G.

'It makes their bodies feel incredibly heavy with the blood inside pulled downwards.

'Some people experience blackouts or G-LOC,

'that's G-induced Loss Of Consciousness.'

'Is it any wonder I'm looking nervous?'

Stand by.

No, no, no.

I'm going to be honest, I can't bear it.

Let's do it one more time.

So this time they're starting out a lot slower, so he gets used to it.

So this is 1 G. Come on, Dom.

'At 2.6 G, the centrifuge will make Dom weigh

'around two and a half times his normal weight.'

My cheeks are really coming down now.

-I'm having to push against the floor to stop blacking out.

-Look at his face!

It feels like this bag is made out of solid metal.

'He's done it! Dom's made it up to 2.6 G in the human centrifuge!'

Slowing down now.

-HE SIGHS

-Wow.

-Happy with that?

-I'm glad I did it. I don't think I want to do it again.

'We've seen G-force make Dom go very heavy.

'Now we're ready to take on gravity itself.'

We are going to defy gravity in what is quite cosily known as

-the wall of death!

-It's quite frankly nuts.

'Riding the wall of death is a daredevil stunt that dates back to the early 1900s.

'It involves motorcyclists defying gravity

'by riding around circular vertical walls.

'But before we do our challenge,

'we've got to learn how the bike will stay on the wall.

'So we're off to Cambridge University, where Newton studied.'

'And Dr Hunt is going to show us how it works.'

I want to show you what force it is that's pushing you out onto the wall of death.

I can feel it a bit. I'm holding myself here really tight.

It's getting harder! Agh!

OK! Whey! THEY LAUGH

-Whoa!

-THEY LAUGH

That force pushing you out is holding your bike onto the wall.

'So, the bike's pushed outwards by a force.

'But it needs something else to help it stick to the wall and defy gravity.'

You need friction for your wall of death to hold you up, to stop you falling down.

-Now, put that glass of water on my tray here.

-Yes.

-What's he doing now?

-The guy's a lunatic!

-I know, that's the idea.

THEY LAUGH Here he goes!

'Friction is helping hold the water in place.

'And that same friction should help Dick's bike tyres stick to the wall.'

ENGINE REVS

'Dick will now defy gravity by riding the wall of death!'

'We're off the ground! Just.'

That's enough. Can we come down now?

Why are you taking it off?

-I'm done.

-You are such an absolute wuss!

'Ladies and gentlemen, using what Newton taught us about forces,

'I will now attempt to beat gravity.

'But will I be able to go higher than Dick?

'We're picking up speed.

'Moving off the floor.

-'Getting higher.'

-I can't watch.

'This is unreal.

'I'm defying gravity.

'The bike's being pushed out to the wall and friction's helping the tyres stick.

-'This really is genius!'

-Genius!

-Now do you know what I mean?

-Big wussie!

-Do you know what I mean?

-No! It was like riding a bike!

-DICK LAUGHS

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Today we're going to introduce to you a real bright spark.

Yeah, a genius who helped us understand electricity.

Without him, this show might have looked like this.

-What? No! Don't do that...

-CLATTERING

'Our whole world is alive with electricity.

'If it hadn't been for today's genius and other pioneers like him,

'we might never have understood its amazing possibilities.'

'So who is today's genius?'

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Michael Faraday.

You all right?

'Faraday was fascinated by electricity, but what is it?'

'Electricity is a form of energy.

'We depend on it for just about everything.

'But more than 200 years ago when Faraday was young,

'scientists were only just beginning to unlock the incredible potential of electricity.'

'Faraday was intrigued.

'So he came to the Royal Institution, the home of scientific research.'

-Don't touch it!

-'Here he made some of his greatest discoveries.

'You can almost smell the genius in the air.'

Can you smell a genius?

'Faraday's genius idea was to work out the powerful relationship

'between magnets and electricity.'

'Faraday found out you can use magnets to make electricity.

'All you have to do is move a magnet near a wire

'to get the electricity flowing and... bingo!'

We want to learn the basics of electricity today.

Here we've got a coil of wire around this tube.

Inside the tube, we've got some very strong magnets.

And here we've got a light, but there aren't any batteries in that.

-If I just do a bit of simple shaking...

-Look at that!

-Why was this discovery so important?

-Well, this exact same thing,

a magnet moving through a coil of wire,

is used in gas power stations, coal power stations,

even wind turbines, to generate the electricity we all use.

'Thanks to Faraday's generator, electricity can be made

'on a massive scale, so we can all have it in our homes.

'It's transported by miles of cables

'connected up with pylons and substations.'

'The people who look after the network

'often have to work with high voltage electricity.

'High enough to cause a deadly shock.

'That's where Faraday's genius strikes again.'

'He discovered people can be shielded from its harmful effects

'by a metal screen, known as a Faraday Cage.

'Live-line workers wear a type of Faraday Cage

'as their suit contains metal thread.'

'So, the suit is a Faraday Cage,

'containing positive and negative charges.

'Positives, which are drawn to the electricity from the power lines,

'and negatives, which are repelled in the opposite direction.'

'In all the kerfuffle, they cancel each other out.

'The inside of the Faraday Cage becomes a charge-free zone. Genius!'

'So, to test Faraday's Cage to the limit

'with a human volunteer - Dick.

'Our challenge - to see how well it protects him from almost a million volts of electricity.'

'Our problem - if Faraday is wrong...

'Let's not even go there.'

-ELECTRICITY BUZZES

-Agh!

HE LAUGHS

On the head! THEY LAUGH

THEY LAUGH

What will I feel like, then, in here?

-You'll feel nothing.

-At all?

-Nothing at all.

You'll possibly smell something.

-Like what?

-Your own trouser juice.

THEY LAUGH

'I'm putting all my trust in Faraday's genius discovery.

'Faraday, don't let me down!'

ELECTRICITY BUZZES

'It's working! All those positive and negative charges

'rushing around the metal of the cage are actually cancelling each other out.

'No nasty shocks for Dick after all.'

ELECTRICITY BUZZES

I'm shaking! The strangest part is the smell.

The smell of copper just gets really strong.

-That's not copper.

-THEY LAUGH

Michael Faraday, you are an absolute genius.

Go on, it's late. Turn off the lights, will you?

-Not that one!

-ELECTRICITY BUZZES

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Today we're going to introduce you to a genius with a difference.

A real trailblazer who helped revolutionise

the way that modern music was made.

Pioneering techniques that produced sounds that we'd never heard before.

And she produced possibly one of the most famous pieces of music in this country.

-DR WHO THEME TUNE PLAYS

-'Today's genius helped create

-'the most iconic TV theme tune of all time, Dr Who.'

-What did you say?

'And when Dr Who hit our screens back in 1963,

'it was the first time that most people had ever heard electronic music.

'It was groundbreaking.'

'But she didn't just come up with a catchy tune.

'In fact, she didn't even write it. It was the way she made it.'

-Ladies and gentlemen, we give you... Delia Derbyshire.

-Hello, chaps!

'This is a journey into sound.'

'Born in 1937, Delia grew up during World War II.'

'Delia loved music, but music back then was very traditional,

'played by orchestras and nothing like the electronic tunes that she'd go on to create.'

'Along with music, maths was her other passion,

'and she graduated with a degree in, yep, you guessed it,

'maths and music from Cambridge University.'

First it's the simplest sound of all, which is a sine wave.

'Having finished university, she got a job at the BBC

'in a new department called the radiophonic workshop.'

'The workshop's purpose was to provide unusual music and sound effects for TV and radio.'

'Of course, shows had used music and sound long before the workshop existed,

'but it all tended to be much more traditional.'

Oh, hello darling. How was your day?

Marvellous, thank you. I went to market.

-Oh! Did you see anything nice?

-Yes. I bought a horse called Brian.

Brian the horse? COCONUTS CLOP

Stop this!

Of course, traditional sound effects like these were very effective

and are still used today in radio plays to Hollywood movies.

But by the early 1960s, TV programmes were getting more adventurous and needed sounds and music to match.

'Back then, space travel was new and exciting.

'The public was fascinated by the idea of new worlds.'

'And all this was happening at the same time as Dr Who was launched.

'But programmes about aliens needed alien sounds.'

Thankfully, though, new technology meant that by the time Dr Who was ready to hit our screens,

there was a brand new generation of young, new musicians.

'And these geniuses were Delia and the radiophonic workshoppers.'

'The radiophonic's genius idea was to make music and sound effects

'that no-one in the world had ever heard before.'

'Using unusual recording equipment, they created strange sounds,

'such as the sounds of spaceships, monsters and aliens,

'and, of course, the sound of the TARDIS.'

No. Still don't get it.

-'We needed some serious help.'

-Is this really important tape?

'And we found it in the form of genius composer Mark Ayres,

'who worked at the radiophonic workshop and even knew Delia.'

We've been looking around the building at all these machines, but what do they actually do?

Well, these machines, these are quarter-inch tape machines.

-On here I've got a very simple tone.

-LOW NOTE

-One note.

-If I double the speed of the tape machine...

-HIGHER NOTE

It's gone up an octave. If I halve the speed of the tape machine...

-LOWER NOTE

-It's gone down an octave.

If I play it and start varying the speed while we do it...

PITCH GOES UP AND DOWN

So you can actually make a tune by just...

That is a bit of a tune, just by going faster and slower.

And that's the start of making music with tape.

'And what a start it was.

'But Mark was about to pull something out of the bag that would blow our minds.'

-Guess what that is.

-What is it? Let's have a look.

-That is the original master tape.

-The original theme tune?

-Wow.

-What year is this from?

-1963.

-Wow!

-Don't drop it!

-'Surely it wouldn't still work, though?'

-DR WHO THEME TUNE PLAYS

-'Of course it did. '

That sounds like the tone I was playing with earlier.

Absolutely. It was done exactly the same way,

varying the speed of tone and adding some echo to it.

'Her music was so ahead of its time

'that it still inspires electro music acts today.

'Like Orbital, who, with a little help from the Doctor,

'played their version of Delia's famous tune at a recent festival.

'The truth was that, although we love our music, we're more about the dancing.'

But what we have found out is that, Delia Derbyshire,

you were an absolute genius.

Thank you, boys!

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Today we're going to introduce you to an amazing man

who came up with a genius solution...

TOILET FLUSHES

..to a very whiffy problem. I'd leave it for a minute if I were you.

Yeah. Thanks to him, whatever was in there has now gone

and we don't have to worry about where it is.

Just leave it to today's genius,

who invented London's first giant sewer system.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you

Sir Joseph Bazalgette.

-HE GASPS

-Do you mind? I'm rather busy!

'Have you ever wondered what happens when you flush the loo?

'All the waste that goes down your toilet

'ends up underground in the sewer where it's safely carried away.'

'But more than 150 years ago in London,

'there was nowhere for raw sewage to go.

'So it was dumped straight in the River Thames.'

'And in the hot summer of 1858, the smell became unbearable.

'It was called The Great Stink.'

'We're recreating the River Thames in Victorian London.

'This represents the poo produced by two and a half million Londoners.'

Look! That's splatted on my trousers!

Let's recreate the moment

to see what the river would've looked like back in the day.

-See if it flows.

-There you go.

Oh, someone had a bad night there, somewhere in East London.

THEY LAUGH

'But it was no laughing matter.

'People were getting sick and dying.

'At first, they blamed the smell.

'But disease was actually being spread by harmful bacteria

'leaking from the river into people's drinking water.'

'To find out more about the bacteria in poo,

'we've come to the University of Reading.'

'We want to examine our own stool to see the bacteria inside.

'Well, not ours, someone lent us one.'

I think we should give a name to our donator.

-Do you? What would you like to call it?

-Er, Steve.

Steve? All right. I'll just pick up Steve's sample.

-Steve's not been very well.

-DICK LAUGHS

-So just take a small amount.

-'Some bacteria in poo is harmful,

'so we're wearing protective gear.

'Examining your own stools at home is not recommended.'

Right, let's see how much bacteria Steve's sample has on it.

-All these little shapes that you see here are bacteria.

-Ah, OK.

'Human waste contains billions of bacteria.

'That's why we wash our hands after going to the loo.

'But in Victorian times, people were washing in and drinking

'dirty water contaminated by sewage.

'The Great Stink was the final straw.'

'Enter Joseph Bazalgette,

'London's chief engineer, with a background in building railways.

'Parliament gave him the job of solving London's sewage nightmare,

'and what he came up with was a genius piece of engineering.'

'Bazalgette's genius idea was to build a system of big sewerage pipes

'to catch London's waste before it flowed into the river,

'and London's drinking water.'

'The sewage was then carried eastwards and pumped out to sea.

'No more stink. Genius!'

Right now we're here at London's glittering Leicester Square.

We're not going to be going to a premiere. Oh, no.

No, no. We're going underground into the sewer.

'Not many people get to go inside Bazalgette's sewers,

'so this is a real treat.'

DICK LAUGHS

OK. I can't even describe the smell in here.

A little bit soft under foot, isn't it?

'Bazalgette's genius sewer system took over ten years to finish.

'It used 318 million bricks

'and involved 82 miles of new underground sewers

'linking to more than 1,000 miles of street sewers.'

-Is this Bazalgette's exact design?

-Yeah.

-Why did he make it so big?

-It's what you call forward planning.

It's what you call... Well, he was a genius.

'Bazalgette predicted the population would grow,

'so he designed his sewer tunnels big enough to cope.'

And breathe! Phew!

London air has never smelt so good.

Glad you liked my tunnels, boys. Now go and get washed!

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Today we bring you a man who had a very special kind of genius.

He took an invention that had been around for more than 50 years,

the steam engine, and made it a shedload better.

He also made a shedload of cash.

So good was he that you can still find his face on a 50 quid note.

And also, the first letter of his surname you will find

stamped on pretty much every light bulb around the house.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you... James Watt!

All right, boys?

'James Watt was born in 1736 in Greenock, Scotland.

'The story goes that as a boy,

'he was fascinated by the steam pouring out of a boiling kettle.'

'When he grew up, he became a mechanical engineer

'and started to eagerly explore how steam engines worked.'

'James Watt's genius was to take the steam engine,

'an invention that had been around for many years

'and make it work better and more efficiently

'than anyone else had managed.

'And make himself a shedload of money in the process.'

'Watt's engines were the first to power big machines in factories,

'paving the way for the industrial revolution.'

'This is a Newcomen steam engine.

'They were used to pump water out of mines

'and were invented nearly 25 years before James Watt was even born.'

Watt had his first bit of genius inspiration

when he was given a small Newcomen engine to repair.

And while he was doing this, he came up with an idea for his own steam engine

that would be even better than the Newcomen engine.

Hang on a bit. Backtrack a bit.

I didn't... I'm having problems piecing it all together anyway.

Yeah, me, too. I mean, how does something as flimsy as steam

move big slabs of metal about, like we saw with the steam engine?

Yeah, I know. If only Fran, our resident genius scientist, was here to tell us...

-Hi!

-Hi!

This is my model of a steam engine.

Doesn't look anything like a steam engine.

Well, we've got a sealed chamber at the bottom and a moveable plunger at the top.

-So this plunger's like the piston or something?

-Yeah, exactly.

And we've got a little bit of water in the bottom.

I'm going to heat up that water. Some of it will turn into steam

and let's just see what happens. Goggles on.

-Whey!

-Ohh!

-Ohh!

-Look at that!

'When the heated water turns to steam, it pushes the plunger up.'

'And when the steam cools and turns back to water,

'the plunger is pulled back down again.'

-Whey! There it goes! Look!

-It's going down.

And the same pushes and pulls can move something as strong as metal.

And I've got something to prove it.

So over here I have got a can that's got a little bit of water in it

and that water is boiling away and producing lots of steam.

'Fran's an expert. This is not something to be messed with at home.'

OK, I'm going to dunk it in this ice water here.

And let's cool it down as quickly as possible, so dump that ice on it.

All right. METAL BANGS

-Pop it on top.

-Agh!

Brilliant! Look at that!

'That sudden cooling of the can

'turned the steam back into water really quickly,

'creating what's called a vacuum, a powerful sucking force

'strong enough to crush metal!'

'But back to James Watt and his genius ideas for improving steam engines.

'As we've seen, these engines were a new way of getting lots of power 250 years ago.

'But they used an incredible amount of coal as fuel.

'Watt reckoned he could do a lot better, so he invented his own steam engine.'

'And if you want to see what he came up with,

'then there's no better place than this - the Crofton Pumping Station in Wiltshire.'

What we're looking at here is James Watt's separate condenser,

his most important invention.

The original engine by Thomas Newcomen,

you have to heat up the cylinder and cool it down

every time the engine works, which is incredibly inefficient.

And what James Watt did, he said, "I'll leave that bit hot

"and I'll put the cold bit in here."

-So the engine stays hot all the time, saving money!

-Yes!

'In fact, Watt's brilliant separate condenser

'meant his steam engines used 75 percent less coal than other engines.

'His engines were also more powerful.'

'Together, that meant they could be used to power all sorts of different machines

'in factories across the world. Genius.'

Aye, it was pretty clever, wasn't it?

'But Watt's genius was about more than just clever machines.'

Back in Watt's time, horses did a lot of the jobs

-that machines do for us today.

-So Watt had to try and prove

that his steam engines could do everything that a horse could.

His answer was to come up with a measurement of power that we still use today, horsepower.

-Ta-da! Ready?

-Giddy up!

-Giddy up. Agh!

'In those days, one of the jobs horses did

'was to lift coal out of coalmines.

'Watt worked out that your average horse could shift 150 kilos of coal up a mineshaft

'a distance of 30 metres over one minute.

'He called that one horsepower.'

-Stop. Billy, stop, stop.

-Hey, for goodness sake, stop it.

I think we need something with a lot more horsepower.

This Jaguar racing car can get to a top speed of 167 miles per hour.

Yeah, that's cos it's got an incredibly powerful engine.

265 horsepower.

'So, what does all that horsepower feel like?'

-ENGINES REV

-Ohhh!

'This is terrifyingly fast.

'These engines are way more powerful than anything from Watt's day.'

Seriously, that was one of the maddest things I've ever done.

Now, it's not just engine power where our genius James Watt left his mark.

Oh, no. We use his very name, Watt, as a way of measuring electrical power.

For example, the bulb inside here is a 60 Watt.

And our cameraman, Pat, is using a lamp there

that's 40 Watts of power so that you can see us.

Yeah. So, there you go. When it comes to measuring power,

-Watt is your man.

-Genius.

Too kind, boys, too kind.

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Today we're going to introduce you to a scientist who had a real appetite for experiments.

A genius who helped us to understand what's in our food

and also what food to eat to stay fit and healthy.

In fact, her recommendations helped this country

to become the healthiest it's ever been.

-Ladies and gentlemen, we give you...

-Elsie Widdowson.

Hello, chaps.

'Widdowson was born in 1906 in the days when food was something people just ate.

'They didn't know too much about what's in it and how it affects our bodies.

'Widdowson's genius idea was to write a book

'that told us what's in our food.

'It listed things like how much energy all our foods were giving us.

'She wrote it with her partner in science, Robert McCance,

'and it was called The Chemical Composition Of Foods. Catchy, eh?'

'And she didn't just look at energy. The book also listed important nutrients,

'like the carbohydrates, protein, fats and minerals

'that we find in all our foods. Genius!'

So, we're going to do an Elsie. We're going to take some food

and recreate the experiments that she did.

-A little pepperoni pizza there and some other stuff.

-Urgh!

Not urgh! Carrot, broccoli and beans? Good for you.

Now, all of these foods would've been very familiar to Elsie.

I wanted to try something that she wouldn't have tested.

Lift that lid!

-Oh, my goodness, look at them!

-It's got maggots in it!

These are mealworms.

'And, believe it or not, you can make a meal out of them.

'Here's some Stefan prepared earlier.'

-Now, these are ready to eat.

-Don't look, lads.

There's some of your mates over there. They're looking a bit crispy.

'Time to give them a try. But, as I'm vegetarian, I'll leave that to the others.'

Ready, lads? OK.

Yes?

-Weirdly, they're quite nice.

-They taste very much like crisps.

-They're actually pretty tasty.

-Really?

-Seriously.

'We already know how many calories our everyday foods contain.

'But how many calories are in mealworms?

'To help us do our own experiment,

'we've turned to genius assistant Rosie.

'She's used a nifty bit of kit called a bomb calorimeter.'

What's the final calorie content of those lovely little worms?

Erm, it's not as low as you think. It's 421 calories.

-What?

-Per 100 grams.

-Wow!

'That's almost as many calories as in a big bag of crisps.' That's quite a lot!

-So there you go, right? No more mealworms for you.

-No more mealworms for me.

-Just stick to pizza.

-THEY LAUGH

'So, with the help of Elsie, we can find out exactly what's in our food.

'But what does our body do with these calories?'

How do you think you get that energy from the food? What do you do to it?

-Eat it.

-Yeah, you eat it.

-Digest.

-Yeah.

But then it makes energy parcels.

'We're using these bottles of lemonade and some mints

'to create our own energy parcels.'

When you digest the food, it's broken down into those really small bits.

Then they react with oxygen to make little energy parcels

that can then be moved around your body and used whenever your body needs to.

'Energy parcels ready. Time to release that energy!'

-Yes! Yes!

-I'm dropping, I'm dropping!

-Ohh!

-OK, right, leave it a bit. Go on, go on, go on!

-Yay!

-There you go! ALL CHEER

# Come on, show them what you're worth #

-And that's how you get the energy from food.

-She did it!

'Widdowson's genius book told us exactly how many calories

'and other nutrients were in all the different foods we eat.

'This information became essential during the Second World War.'

'Food was scarce and the government rationed supplies.

'Widdowson helped work out the basic foods each person needed to stay healthy.

'Here's the plan! Our genius idea - to fuel up on World War II inspired food rations.'

'Our challenge - to complete a series of physical tests,

'including battling an assault course and scaling a 12-metre wall.'

'Hopefully our rations will give us enough energy to run across the countryside

'all the way to the finish line.'

'There wasn't much meat around during the Second World War.

'Widdowson's advice was to eat loads of fresh veg to stay healthy and full of energy.

'So we've been rationed to a meat-free pasty.'

'Is that it? A vegetable pasty?'

-'Yep. About 500 calories worth.'

-Come on, eat it up!

'Fuelled up and ready to go, it's finally time to put those rations to the test.'

-Go!

-'Come on, pasty, give us some energy!'

Go, go. Keep going.

Come on, Dom. Up you get. Burn those rations.

'Hang in there, Dick, we're almost there!'

'I can see the finish line!'

'Think of Widdowson! We're doing it for her.'

It's the finish! Let's go!

-'We've done it!'

-'But I've no idea why. One thing's for certain, though.'

Elsie Widdowson, you are an absolute genius.

Oh, thank you, boys. You're very kind.

Right, double cheeseburger, triple...

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

-Today we introduce you to a man that had not one...

-Not two...

..but hundreds of genius ideas

that were hundreds of years ahead of their time,

-like the futuristic flying machine.

-Boots that enabled you to walk on water.

But you and I know him better as a painter.

Mm. But not any old painter. This guy painted

one of the most famous pictures the world has ever seen,

the Mona Lisa.

Come on over here and please meet Leonardo Da Vinci!

Ciao, Dick and Dom!

'Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452

'near the town of Vinci in Italy.

'His name actually means Leonardo of Vinci.'

'So we've learnt that Da Vinci was awesome at painting.

'But he also fancied himself as a bit of an inventor.'

'And how do we know all this? Because Leonardo left behind

'thousands of pages of notes in his secretive journals.

'Da Vinci's genius idea was to invent stuff

'that was centuries ahead of its time.'

'His secret journals were packed full of incredible designs.

'There were flying machines, a parachute,

'a robotic knight and even a tank!'

Check me out! I'm going to blow you up from the 16th century!

So, which one's your favourite idea so far?

I've got to say, instantly, I think the robotic knight.

-It does look quite awesome, doesn't it?

-I don't understand,

cos that'll need power and there was no electricity in those days.

Well, it worked a bit differently. He had rope, he had a series of pulleys,

and he could make the arms move, make the robot sit down and stand up.

What about if we go big with the tank?

I do like this tank. And like most of Leonardo's ideas, this was really revolutionary.

No-one had ever seen anything like it before.

-Have you got a model of it?

-I haven't.

But I do know somewhere you can go to find out all about tanks.

'This place has got the biggest collection of tanks in the world!'

'It was time to get inspired. It was time to get serious!'

98. 99.

So would you say Da Vinci's designs would've worked?

He's got protection on the outside, he's got a cannon for firepower.

The only one that might be a bit of a doubt is the mobility,

because it's human power trying to manoeuvre a big vehicle along.

So that may be one of the issues you might have to have a look at.

'Our genius idea - to build a tank based on Da Vinci's designs.'

'Our challenge - to test its mobility,

'its firepower and its protection.'

'Our problem - we haven't a clue where to start.'

'What we did know was that Da Vinci's design was a wooden shell on wheels.'

'There were no engines back then, so it would've been driven by men turning wheels by hand.'

'To help us build our version of Da Vinci's tank,

'we've enlisted engineer Grant Cooper.'

So what's your solution instead of hand power?

I think a much more efficient method is using normal bicycles.

'Screws had been tightened, tyres had been pumped.

'So, the time had come to test our version of Da Vinci's tank.'

THEY GROAN

-It's not easy, is it?

-No.

-'It was all going so well.'

-'Until...'

THEY SCREAM

-CLATTERING

-Mobility - potentially a fail.

On Da Vinci's tank design, he had cannons. We have paintball guns.

Three, two, one, go!

Go on! Go on!

Move onto the next gun!

-Oh, yes! Score!

-All of them?

-Come on!

-Da Vinci would be pleased with that.

-I think so.

'So, things were looking up.'

-What's that noise?

-ALL YELL

-Er, stop.

-Who are you?

We're His Grace the Duke of York's retinue.

-Don't be so silly! What's your real name?

-Oh. Dave.

Oh. So, I mean, what would an army like you do with weapons like that

-to something like this?

-Smash it to bits.

-Right. Off you go, then.

-Wait!

We've got to get out, haven't we? Silly men.

-Right, stop! Leave it alone!

-Silly men.

-All right, back to your castle. See you later, lads.

-Come on, lads.

'The tank had withstood the arrows. OK, not the assault.

'So in our books, that's a pass!'

Da Vinci, we can most definitely say you were an absolute genius.

Grazie, Dick and Dom!

-I wonder how this tank would fare against a modern-day tank.

-Doesn't matter. We'll never find out.

THEY SCREAM

'Three, two, one, liftoff.'

Today we're going to introduce you to

a truly great man and a great Briton.

One of the best engineers this world has even seen.

Yeah. He could build and design pretty much anything.

-Bridges, tunnels.

-Ships, railways.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you...

Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Good day!

'Isambard was born in 1806 in Portsmouth, England.

'His dad, Mark, was a very good engineer

'and taught his son everything he knew about the job.'

'In the 1820s, Isambard and his dad were working together

'on the banks of the River Thames in London.

'They were attempting what no engineer had previously achieved.'

'Their incredibly ambitious plan was to dig the world's first ever tunnel under a river.

'And here, in the streets of Rotherhithe, East London,

'is where it all started.'

Now, what a lot of people don't know is that Brunel and his dad

had a very unique way of digging a tunnel.

-But it was a lot cleverer than using a bucket and spade.

-Mm.

-SMASHING

-Ohh.

Until then, engineers, if they wanted to dig a tunnel,

would just dig a big trench and then stick a roof on top.

But, of course, you couldn't do that for a tunnel under the Thames,

because if you did, the river would flood in and everyone would get wet.

-Very wet.

-So they needed to dig down right underneath the river bed.

But in order to do this, they had to burrow a really massively long hole.

The Brunels took their inspiration from a creature that's very good at burrowing.

-And I'm not talking about a rabbit.

-No.

-Believe it or not, it was a worm.

'Meet top marine biology dude, The Blowfish.'

'He's brought along something called a shipworm.'

I'm not surprised the Brunels found some inspiration from this guy.

The shipworm lines his burrow with calcium.

'As Dom will now demonstrate.'

-This is your calcium cocoon.

-No, it's a sheet.

-It's a sheet of calcium.

'Let the tunnelling begin!'

-Go! That's it! Go on, son, dig that earth! Go on!

-He's doing well.

-THEY LAUGH

-This is stupid!

This means nothing, it's achieving nothing, no-one's learning from this!

-Stop this!

-THEY LAUGH

'Dom may struggle to dig like a shipworm,

'but the tunnelling technique of that creature is very similar to what the Brunels used for their Thames tunnel.

'It's time to go underground.'

So is this the first tunnel that went underneath a river, ever?

Yes, the first in the world.

'And when it was finally finished in 1843, there was great excitement!'

'They even had dinner in the tunnel and invited all their friends.'

The idea of walking under a river the size of the Thames

-is like walking on the moon.

-Right.

Well, that really was absolute genius.

But Brunel didn't stop with the Thames Tunnel.

'Brunel loved building bridges.

'And here in Bristol is his most famous one of all.'

The Clifton Suspension Bridge.

'When it was designed, it was the highest and longest suspension bridge in the world.

'End to end, it stretches 214 metres!

'Nearly 12,000 cars cross it every day.'

The weirdest part for me is that we're on this bridge

and it is moving slightly in the wind.

When the cars go across, as well. Is that normal for a bridge this high?

Of course it is. It is a suspension bridge.

It hangs. And this is where I can show you where it moves.

-Wow.

-And it's meant to do that?

-That's right.

'And that's the brilliance of Brunel.

'This whole bridge was designed to be flexible,

'to move and to adapt to changing weather conditions.

'Sheer genius.'

Very kind of you to say so, boys.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

THEY LAUGH

-DOM SHOUTS

-Ohh!

-It went right through me!

-Oh!

-Don't wobble it!

-I'm not doing anything!

-Just stand still, then!

DICK LAUGHS

.