Contents:
Episode 14: Eyeglass Lenses / Granite / Potato Chips / Computer Microprocessors
Episode 15: Honey / Fiber Optics / Bricks / Pipe Organs
Episode 16: Personal Watercraft / Wine / Particleboard Office Furniture / Ice Skates
Episode 17: Winter Jackets / Animation / Mushrooms / Gold Rings
Episode 18: Hydroponic Lettuce / Construction Wood / Recycling / Fishing Flies
Episode 19: Diamond Cutting / Wood Doors / Paintballs / Newspapers
Episode 20: Carpets / Drinking Water / Laser Eye Surgery / Acoustic Guitars
Episode 21: Fiberglass Boats / Clothes Dryers / Bubble Gum / Fireworks
Episode 22: Steel Safes / False Teeth / Airplanes / Maple Syrup
Episode 23: Gummies / Aluminum Cans / Fish Farming / Bronze Sculptures
Episode 24: Aluminum Pots & Pans / Artificial Limbs / Peanut Butter / High Intensity Light Bulbs
Episode 25: Cars / Grocery Carts / Rapid Tooling & Prototyping / Collectible Coins
Episode 26: Ball Bearings / Electrical Wires / Lost Wax Casting / Automated Machines
Episode 15
Honey
It's Winnie the Pooh's favorite treat. It's sweet and sticky. And it's produced by an industrious insect, whose miniature society is one of the most sophisticated in the animal kingdom.
It all begins in a field, where worker honeybees suck nectar from flower blossoms, such as clover. They store it in their honey sack, then return to the hive, where other worker bees suck it out and chew it, breaking down the nectar's complex sugars into two simple sugars called glucose and fructose. The bees then deposit the nectar into the cells of the wax honeycombs they've built. They fan it with their wings until most of its water content evaporates in the warm air of the beehive. What's left is thick and gooey honey. The bees then cap each honey-filled cell with beeswax. That's when the beekeeper steps in.
Bees will sting if taken by surprise, so the beekeeper sprays the hive with smoke from burning pine needles, a scented warning that foreigners are about to enter the hive. Inside the hive are wooden frames hanging side by side, each holding a honeycomb. A hive can house hundreds of thousands of bees, all descendants of the prolific Grand Pooh-Bah of Beedom: the queen bee. She's the big one in the middle. The queen bee lays up to 2,000 eggs a day, creating the work force needed to feed and protect the colony. But the beekeeper tricks the colony's defenders. He replaces the hive's cover with a device called a bee escape that smells like cherries. Bees dislike the scent, so most fly to the bottom sections of the hive. Another warning spray, and the beekeeper removes the bee escape. Now he can escape with the honeycombs.
Inside the honey factory, they put the honeycomb frames on what's called an uncapping machine. Like a razor, it shaves the wax caps off the honey-filled cells of the combs. They scrape off the remnants manually. Then they set the frames on another machine called a honey extractor. It spins the honeycombs until all the honey is forced out of the cells. Afterwards, they filter the honey to remove any pieces of wax capping that slipped through.
Then the honey is ready for bottling. Some beehives contain smaller frames, designed to produce honey that isn't extracted from the honeycomb. Workers remove the frame and cut the honeycomb into pieces as is with a heated knife. That seals the wax around the honey inside. You eat it, wax and all. The beeswax lining of the honeycomb goes to make candles, furniture polish, lipsticks, and other products. When producers have more liquid honey than they can sell, they simply let it granulate, develop sugar crystals, and turn hard and white. Then, when the orders come in, they return it to its original liquid form by heating it to 130 degrees. They vacuum-clean the jars, then fill them.
One beehive can yield up to seven pounds of honey in a single day. That's much more than the bees need for themselves. The surplus is what we end up eating. Honey production today is both efficient and humane. For centuries, the only way to harvest honey from hives had been to kill the bees. Then, in 1851, an American beekeeper invented a way to get the honey, yet spare the bees. His method, with the removable honeycomb frames, is the one we still use today.
Techno Flash
American researchers have invented a plastic that repairs itself when broken. Just apply heat - a simple hair dryer will do - and the break automatically mends itself. This could solve a longtime problem in electronics because when components heat up and cool down, they weaken the plastic around them.
Episode 23
Gummies
There's nothing kids love more than candies they can pull and stretch, which probably explains why gummy candies and licorice have always been stick-to-your-teeth favorites, except with parents who don't have a family dental plan.
Everyone calls this red licorice, but there's actually no licorice root in it. The ingredients are wheat, sugar, and corn syrup, with red food dye and both artificial and natural strawberry flavoring. They cook the mixture for 2 hours at 216 degrees. This slowly forms a thick paste. They cool it down, then put it through extruders. The extruders work like icing nozzles, shaping the paste into a design such as the twirls we see here. A water-lubricated knife slices the continuous strips into 7 and 8-inch lengths. The water also rinses off any licorice buildup on the blade. The cut licorice goes on aluminum trays. The stacks of trays then go into an oven to dry for 8 hours at 140 degrees. As the excess moisture evaporates, the licorice shrivels. Workers weigh the correct amount of licorice for each package.
To make gummy candies, they use what are called printing boards: large sheets with raised shapes. To make gummy worms, for example, they mount the gummy worm board on a stamping machine. The machine then stamps the worm shapes onto trays of cornstarch. This creates a series of cornstarch molds for the gummy worms. While that's going on, another machine mixes gelatin, sugar, corn syrup, color, and flavoring and cooks the mixture at 240 degrees. A machine called the depositor pours the mixture into the cornstarch worm molds. The molds then go into a refrigerated room. In 12 to 15 hours, the candies cool and solidify. A machine then flips the candies out of the trays. The cornstarch molds disintegrate. As they fall downward, the machine sifts out the lumps, then recycles the used cornstarch into new cornstarch trays for the next batch. The candies go through a cleaner. As they spin, air nozzles blast off the cornstarch. The next drum coats the candies with mineral oil to make them shiny. Children love gummy worms because they're gooey and slippery and wiggly, but it's not just kids who are hooked on them. Many fishermen actually use them for bait.
Before packaging the candies, the workers weed out any that are stretched out or stuck together. Wonder if they get to eat the rejects?
Techno Flash
A prion is what causes killer neurological diseases such as mad cow in animals and Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans. It's a protein normally found in the membranes of cells. Scientists are trying to determine what changes that protein to an abnormal form to cause these fatal brain diseases.