Customer Reviews

Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters (History Channel)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Finally, what I was waiting for: a large collection of case studies (18 episodes in total; at least two disasters in every episode - sometimes as many as six) taken from a large variety of engineering areas. As a chemical engineer and as an instructor, I found this collection very interesting, full of different "case studies" and lessons to learn in a very amusing way.

The episodes includes:
- New Orleans: Hurricane Katrina.
- The fire at Las Vegas MGM Hotel.
- The collapse of Seattle's Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge.
- The flaw that grounded the first commercial jet.
- An entire lake and the surrounding land are sucked into a Louisiana salt mine.
- Exxon Valdez incident.
- The Ford Explorer/Firestone rollovers.
- The fire on the Piper Alpha offshore oirlig.
- Computer errors that brought the world to the brink of accidental nuclear war.
- The explosion of a jet-fuel plant in Nevada.
- The Union Carbide explosion in India.
- A devastating flood in China that killed 145,000 people.
- Denver baggage system nightmare.
- Patrior missile failure
- etc.

The only drawbacks are that the DVDs come with no closed captions and no subtitles. Thanks HC.

Many of the major engineering disasters of the past century are covered. Each episode provides about 5 disasters and during the 8-10 minutes is provided the effect (disaster), the cause and the solution. The dvd menu lists each disaster, so one can go quickly to the disasters of their interest.

The episodes included are #4 through #20, plus Hurricane Katrina is provided as a bonus single disaster episode. Which begs the question, what happened to episodes #1, #2, and #3, as they are not in this set? These early three episodes were generally an overview containing a wide number of disasters in brief detail. I suspect, since these episodes were so good, A&E expanded the series to provide much greater detail and limit each succeeding episode to just 5 disasters.

This set also needs an index of every disaster, either on the dvds, or with a paper insert. I loved the menus as they are so simple and easy to follow, without dumb pictures cluttering the screen.

This has been one of my best DVD purchases; I highly recommend it.

I bought this for my boyfriend who is an engineer and he loves it, and so do I. I was very surprised and intrigued with the variety of engineering disasters that were presented along with the footage. Some of the best ones I've seen so far were the salt mines (the footage of the barges being sucked towards the whirlpool was unbelievable), the Love Canal, and many of the oil rig disasters. I also learned that underground salt deposits make great natural propane storage tanks.

In each episode there are multiple stories not just one or two; it is definitely worth the money.

Modern Marvels in general is an extremely well made production. Modern Marvels-Engineering Disasters has to be my favorite series EVER!!!! I am an engineer, but have found that many non-engineers seem to enjoy these equally. I think this series of Modern Marvels should be a course taught for all engineers to take!

I don't know how they do it, but Modern Marvels seems to be able to make everything interesting! When I see the title of other series (like irrigation, or chocolate), I think "well, there is absolutely nothing interesting about that", but every time, I am very impressed!

I can't believe how cheap these are! I highly recommend them for anyone interested at all in engineering, human mistakes, or simply structures collapsing!!!

Such a great deal for a reasonable price. Great content, some parts have grainy VHS quality but they are 80s era film and are therefore acceptable, overall good compilation. Would have given it a 4.5 if I could.

Interesting setof videos. My son just loves them. I'm not sure most kids would enjoy these videos. They are geared for adults.

As a scientist, a longer discussion of each disaster might have made the dvd even better. But the stories are well presented and interesting, and there were some technical details that were appreciated. Overall I thought this was a great dvd.

I bought this DVD set for my boyfriend who is a Mechanical Engineer as a present, and I must say that we have thoroughly enjoyed this series. It is educational and interesting to see the disasters unfold over the years. Overall good length for a documentary and easy to relate to since the time line varies.

This material is going to be use in the National Technological University(The biggest Technical University of Argentina), in which I am Professor of several maters. It's an excellent material to understand that there is no paradise in Engineering. It will be better to offer this DVD in Spanish or subtitle

These movies are very well documented, the speaking voice is pretty dull but if you can get past that it shows a lot of old and new engineering disasters.