How Tech Works (2012–…): Season 2, Episode 13 - Episode #2.13 - full transcript
On this episode
of How Tech Works.
Keep your head above water
with this incredible,
inflatable wetsuit.
And... watch out!
This camera takes
all the hits
so the photographer
doesn't have to!
Hello and welcome
to How Tech Works.
I'm Dr. Basil Singer
and you lucky, lucky viewers
are in for a Tech-filled treat
for the next half hour.
We'll visit a lab
that flips and flops
like a carnival fun house,
all in the name of research.
Plus, we'll climb aboard
this record-breaking model train
for its final journey
around the track.
But first... when it comes
to big wave surfing,
it's important to keep
your head above the water.
Inevitably, however,
there will be times
you'll end up under water,
and that can be really scary
and a dangerous prospect.
Well, the invention
you're about to see
could be a life-saver.
For big wave surfers,
danger is just part of the game.
"My God!"
But in 2010,
one wipe-out changed
the way that game is played...
forever.
I took off
on the wrong wave
and had a horrible wipe-out and
the wipe-out was terrible,
I got held under for two waves
and I almost drowned,
and... I sort of had an idea
to incorporate an air bladder.
You know,
just like the airplane one
where you go poof
and it inflates immediately.
Honestly, my initial reaction
was, "Great",
like "Here we go!"
Shane Dorian is
a professional big wave surfer
and Hub Hubbard
is a project manager
at Billabong.
Together, they're making waves
in the world of Wetsuit Design
to keep disasters like Shane's
from happening to others.
They call it... the V1.
I wrote an email to Hub
and I told him my idea
and we kind of went
back and forth about it.
Thought about it for a while
and made some calls...
and... you know it...
became more realistic
that it was something
we could do.
Inflatable life vests
already exist,
but they're designed for use
at the surface,
not to inflate when you're
buried beneath a 30 foot wave.
So Hub made a call
to the experts of Mustang,
a company that specializes
in survival wear
who went to work on a special
polyurethane air bladder.
From there we decided
about... some initial dimensions
on the bladder and I started
to design a pocket...
and just kind of
went from there,
and I think within... you know
two or three hours
we had a... working prototype.
We've added this back pocket
to the suit.
It's got a little zip entry
and you can see
it just holds this
polyurethane bladder
on the inside.
The bladder is connected to--
well, you can kind of see
the manifold right here.
The manifold connects
to the CO2 cartridge.
Also connected to the manifold
is the pull cord
and it runs right out here
on the left shoulder
over the shoulder and then...
kind of sits and docks
right here...
on your upper left chest.
What you wanna do is--
if you get into trouble...
you just find this with
your thumb... and rip it.
Time to take
this suit for a swim!
So I get this box in the mail
with all the cylinders
and all the gear
and all the stuff
and I was so excited
to open this box and,
and I went and did the testing
and I swam down
and I pulled the thing and
as soon as it started inflating
I was just like,
this changes the game.
This absolutely is
a game changer
and then I emailed Hub
back at Billabong
and just said,
"My God, we got it!"
This is absolutely way better
than I was ever hoping
it was gonna be!
When I got a call from Shane...
you know,
I was really excited,
I couldn't believe it.
After a few
small tweaks
the V1 is ready for
its final test.
160 kilometers off
the California coast
at Cortez Bank, the first
big swells of the season
are rolling in
and Shane is ready.
I paddled in
a really big wave
and I had a super bad wipe-out,
I got pushed under super far
and... I thought this is
the perfect time
to test this thing and...
I pulled my cord
and I went from panicking
as soon as it started inflating
I realized how much power
this thing had...
I totally relaxed...
and I stopped stressing out
and I didn't swim, I just let
the thing bring me up.
There was two more
pretty solid waves...
right afterwards, that...
the whitewater rolled over me
and popped me right up,
instead of like pushing me,
it rolled over me
and took me to the surface.
Once we figured out
we had something...
Shane was like,
"We need to get this to
everyone, as soon as possible!"
Although the V1
is still considered a prototype
about 100 suits
are already in use
by some of the world's biggest
wave riders.
For Hub and Shane
this is turning
into the ride of a lifetime.
It's more of an honor,
than anything.
You know, I get to...
number one,
possibly help in
saving someone's life
and also work alongside
with some of my personal heroes.
We have a core group of guys
that I'm really close to
and everybody wants
to be out there,
everybody wants to charge
huge waves and push the envelope
but I want all my friends
to be safe and I want them all
to come home to their families
every night,
and... I think we've achieved
that and I'm excited about it.
And now we move from
wild waves to wildlife.
Have you ever flipped through
the pages of a wildlife magazine
and looked through the photos
that made you wonder,
how on earth did they
get that shot?
How did they get so close?
Well, our next story features
a photographer from the UK
who created an inventive way to
get up close and very personal.
I present to you,
the BeetleCam.
In the African plains
a very stealthy beast is lurking
and it's on the hunt
to take your picture!
The BeetleCam is
a small remote controlled buggy,
which I mounted my camera
on-top of and I used it
to get close-up wide angle
photographs of African wildlife.
These animals are pretty
dangerous, pretty powerful.
So if you got out of the vehicle
you'd probably get mauled,
trampled, or...
some other form of
a nasty death, so...
So I prefer to send
my camera out,
and me not be actually
holding it at the time.
Will Burrard-Lucas
has traveled
to the ends of the earth
looking for that perfect shot,
but it was here in his small
workshop, back in 2009,
that his most innovative photo
expedition began,
So this is BeetleCam Mark 1
and it's basically
a small remote controlled buggy,
with four wheels,
powered by four motors,
with two big batteries,
and all I do is, I clip
my DSLR camera on top,
like this, and then I've got
a remote control here
which is used usually
for modern airplanes.
I use this to steer the buggy
and fire the camera.
The initial BeetleCam I built
a couple of years ago
and I had no idea weather
it would work or not,
so I just built it
and took it to Tanzania
and I used it,
first on elephants.
And it actually worked
very well
and got some very
promising results.
Elephants were quite cautious
but if I left it still
they'd sometimes be curious
and come right up to it.
Will was getting
closer to his photographic prey
than ever before... but one
animal was still out of reach.
What happened next was
quite predictable.
The lions came straight up
and destroyed one of my cameras.
So back in London
Will goes to work on a new
and improved BeetleCam 2.0.
A custom-made mount lets him
tilt the camera up and down
remotely and a live video feed
shows him
what the BeetleCam is seeing.
That allowed me
to increase my hit rate
and get more
usable photos from it.
Now, for
the crowning jewel.
It's a fiberglass carapace
with an aluminum frame,
which bolts on top to give
the camera some protection.
New tricks,
and a thick armored shell.
But is this cute little robot
ready to face a lion?
OK, we're trying lions... for
the first time since
our old BeetleCam was mauled
and our camera destroyed.
It's very nerve racking.
I'm just hoping the armor works.
These cats
are so curious, playful.
I knew I'd be able to get some
really good close-up photographs
if I could just
lion-proof the BeetleCam.
As the new BeetleCam
flirts with danger
Will snaps one incredible photo
after another.
Even when one large male decides
he's hungry.
The BeetleCam still
gets the shot!
Fiberglass shell 1 - Lions 0.
But eventually
Will does meet his match.
I had these seven
quite old lion cubs
and they were very boisterous
and I was getting some
great shots of them
but then... after about
five minutes or so
things went wrong
and they managed
to flip it over... and from
that point they were able
to pick it up by the wheel
and as soon as they'd done that
they ran off into the bush
with it, all seven of them
and at that point
I thought that was the end.
I didn't think
we'd get it back, but luckily
they dropped it
where we were able
to get into it, between
the trees, with the vehicle,
pick it up again and that was
pretty much the end of the trip.
Out here there may be
few places to hide
but for this tiny paparazzi...
a little danger goes a long way.
There's nothing quite as
exciting as coming across,
you know,
these really good photos
that you'd always
dreamed of getting really.
For
this wildlife photographer,
that perfect shot
has never been closer.
Coming up on How Tech Works.
We'll take a final ride
on a spectacular model train
with tracks almost a mile long!
And this state-of-the-art lab
studies slips, falls
and other everyday mishaps.
Mind your step!
Welcome back to
How Tech Works.
I'm Basil Singer.
It's time to put your researcher
caps on for just a minute.
Imagine,
motion-tracking devices,
3D streetscapes,
climate wizardry
and state-of-the-art
simulators,
all under one roof,
pretty cool toys, right?
Well, for the research facility
in our next story,
those kind of things are just
the regular tools of the trade.
-Hold my battery pack.
-Sure.
And these are...
An early Monday morning.
Researcher Alison Novak,
is in full prep mode.
So I'm just gonna stick
the markers on you here.
What we're doing is tracking
his upper body.
This guy
is about to be put
through his paces.
She plans to track
his every move.
OK, and then these ones
are gonna go on your feet.
And, he will move!
First up...
then off-kilter 20 degrees.
So, you can take a seat
right there.
For the next
few hours
this six meter cube
will be her laboratory.
And with every shift and shake,
her subject's fun house.
OK, we're ready to go.
OK, moving the bridge up.
So, bridge is up.
OK, Susan,
can you bring us to incline?
Yup, bringing you
to incline now.
There might be a slight shake,
OK?
****
OK.
OK, we're starting
to tilt now.
In here...
floors will tilt.
So what
I'm gonna do is secure you
into the harness,
that's first and foremost.
OK, so Dan, I want you
to just walk up and down
a couple of times.
A flight of stairs will feel
like it's booby-trapped!
And this unsuspecting young man,
will receive more
than a few metal-testing jolts,
all in the name
of scientific research,
of course.
We're interested
in foot trajectories,
toe clearances, balance control,
so we're looking at
where your center of mass
of your balance is in space.
Yep, so go on up,
just walk normally.
So, what's your guess?
A study of gravitational forces?
****
Earthquake shake test?
****
Or is it stress management
investigation?
****
The answer is more obvious
than you think!
This is "Stair lab", the world's
most sophisticated study
of stair climbing.
So as you walk up and down
the stairs the markers
that are attached to you
are getting tracked
by... the cameras that
we have placed
in all the corners of the room.
Today's trial
was a simple warm-up
for the groundbreaking
research soon to be underway
now that Toronto's rehab's
new Ceal facility
is open for business.
Ceal is the challenging
environment assessment
laboratory.
It's the... funnest of
the laboratories that we have.
Fun, because each
of Ceal's labs can be mounted
on their top-of-the line
motion base
and then manipulated.
The hope is that this work will
bring about important changes.
Three times
as many people are killed
or seriously hurt because
of falls on stairs
as in motor vehicle accidents.
It's a huge problem...
so we have a stair lab
and there we can take people
up and down stairs
in a very safe way
and we can cause them
to fall off the stairs
in a sadistic way
and study what should be done
about stair design.
Come on in,
so this is winter lab.
Dr. Geoff Fernie
is also passionately
concerned with the pitfalls
of winter.
Now I'm just gonna
hook you up to this...
So he created winter lab.
Accidents in the winter
are a terrible scourge
so we do a lot of work there.
We have real ice floor,
we have cold winds,
we can generate snow
and not only can we do that
but we can pick up the whole lab
and we can place it
on a motion base and tip it
as a hill or something.
If you wonder
what boots might best
keep you from slip-sliding away,
Jennifer Hsu aims to find out.
We have motion capture cameras
all around the room
that can precisely tell exactly
where the markers
that are on their body are
so we can look at
her foot positioning, positions
of her torso.
She can also walk on top of
that platform which is embedded
with force plates
and that tells us
what kinds of
ground reaction forces
she's imparting...
as she's walking.
And this is Ceal's third
challenging environment.
Street lab is actually
a virtual reality system
on steroids.
It's this part of Toronto,
we've recreated it in 3D
with very, very high precision
and for the first time
we've mapped
a perfect sound landscape.
We can study all the elements
of whether or not she's walking
in balance or off balance
and how that's affected by
different elements of sound
and we can manipulate
systematically to see
what that relationship is.
Despite
their sophisticated technology
Ceal researchers
place a high value
on simple solutions.
That's what's driving
people here.
It's applying
the highest technology
but applying it
to practical big problems
to come up with solutions
that very often
are low technology actually.
Certainly we want them to be
affordable and easy to get.
Now we're off to Quebec
to check out
Canada's largest fully
operational model train.
If the level of hand-crafted
detail doesn't impress you,
and it will, get a load
of the sheer size and scope
of the railway,
it's almost a mile long,
One lap of the track
lasts 40 minutes.
It's a labor of love
that started
more than half a century ago.
It's been here for 50 years.
Many people have put
their heart and soul in it.
A fully operational 3D world
of miniature trains
made with eye-popping detail.
I'm proud of certain things
that I did,
like the St. Patricks'
Cathedral, the military cemetery
with the civilian there.
It covers
six train yards, 527 switches,
18 bridges and tunnels
and hundreds of tiny buildings
in tiny towns.
More power.
The layout is one of
the biggest in Canada.
And it's all handmade
from plaster, steel,
glass and cardboard.
This is the first volume...
of... model railroader,
and as you see...
it cost ten cents... in 1934.
Spanning two centuries
volunteers from the Montreal
Model Train Club
built a wee helicopter airport,
a mini abattoir,
scaled-down mountains
and tunnels
and dozens of everyday
slices of life.
Incredible Canadian scenery
from the heyday
of steam and diesel trains.
That's my town there,
that's my... working place,
not working
because I had fun doing it,
so I'm not working but
it's my place, you know.
I could put my name on it,
you know, it's good.
But today
isn't about building.
We're basically
taking the place apart.
We have to move.
They're relocating.
And they're here to start
the process of dismantling.
We're ready for the next...
thing to do.
Take off some more people there.
Some of it
is a piece of cake.
Tiny trees are easily uprooted.
The rest is trickier.
Removing figures
as small as a paper clip
without destroying them,
takes the right tools
and the right pressure.
Come in, come in.
Every little light
and some buildings
are electrified.
Val Tessier's job is to
carefully disconnect the power,
which over the years
has become pretty tangled.
Wiring done by dozens volunteers
over nearly 40 years.
Look at them...
it's unbelievable,
this thing worked.
Is full of surprises.
What we're doing here,
we're cutting wires
that... give the illumination
to our... lamps,
to the Molson Brewery e.g.
to all the buildings upstairs.
Before we can take a building
off the layout
we have to make sure
all wires are cut.
The miniature train tracks,
which gave a 40 minute
train ride, won't be saved.
Because these plaster mountains
can't be moved.
Tunnels and rivers
and even the table
are all headed for the dumpster.
It will take these guys months
to finish their large
salvage job.
But before the lights go out...
there's just enough power
for one last train ride
on their beloved track.
We'll do it again
somewhere else.
It is going to be better.
Their next model train set up
won't be an ode
to the 1950's.
Club members want to get
younger people
excited about trains,
so steam and diesel
will give way to electric
and high speed.
You've been watching
How Tech Works.
I'm Basil Singer
and I'll see you next time!
of How Tech Works.
Keep your head above water
with this incredible,
inflatable wetsuit.
And... watch out!
This camera takes
all the hits
so the photographer
doesn't have to!
Hello and welcome
to How Tech Works.
I'm Dr. Basil Singer
and you lucky, lucky viewers
are in for a Tech-filled treat
for the next half hour.
We'll visit a lab
that flips and flops
like a carnival fun house,
all in the name of research.
Plus, we'll climb aboard
this record-breaking model train
for its final journey
around the track.
But first... when it comes
to big wave surfing,
it's important to keep
your head above the water.
Inevitably, however,
there will be times
you'll end up under water,
and that can be really scary
and a dangerous prospect.
Well, the invention
you're about to see
could be a life-saver.
For big wave surfers,
danger is just part of the game.
"My God!"
But in 2010,
one wipe-out changed
the way that game is played...
forever.
I took off
on the wrong wave
and had a horrible wipe-out and
the wipe-out was terrible,
I got held under for two waves
and I almost drowned,
and... I sort of had an idea
to incorporate an air bladder.
You know,
just like the airplane one
where you go poof
and it inflates immediately.
Honestly, my initial reaction
was, "Great",
like "Here we go!"
Shane Dorian is
a professional big wave surfer
and Hub Hubbard
is a project manager
at Billabong.
Together, they're making waves
in the world of Wetsuit Design
to keep disasters like Shane's
from happening to others.
They call it... the V1.
I wrote an email to Hub
and I told him my idea
and we kind of went
back and forth about it.
Thought about it for a while
and made some calls...
and... you know it...
became more realistic
that it was something
we could do.
Inflatable life vests
already exist,
but they're designed for use
at the surface,
not to inflate when you're
buried beneath a 30 foot wave.
So Hub made a call
to the experts of Mustang,
a company that specializes
in survival wear
who went to work on a special
polyurethane air bladder.
From there we decided
about... some initial dimensions
on the bladder and I started
to design a pocket...
and just kind of
went from there,
and I think within... you know
two or three hours
we had a... working prototype.
We've added this back pocket
to the suit.
It's got a little zip entry
and you can see
it just holds this
polyurethane bladder
on the inside.
The bladder is connected to--
well, you can kind of see
the manifold right here.
The manifold connects
to the CO2 cartridge.
Also connected to the manifold
is the pull cord
and it runs right out here
on the left shoulder
over the shoulder and then...
kind of sits and docks
right here...
on your upper left chest.
What you wanna do is--
if you get into trouble...
you just find this with
your thumb... and rip it.
Time to take
this suit for a swim!
So I get this box in the mail
with all the cylinders
and all the gear
and all the stuff
and I was so excited
to open this box and,
and I went and did the testing
and I swam down
and I pulled the thing and
as soon as it started inflating
I was just like,
this changes the game.
This absolutely is
a game changer
and then I emailed Hub
back at Billabong
and just said,
"My God, we got it!"
This is absolutely way better
than I was ever hoping
it was gonna be!
When I got a call from Shane...
you know,
I was really excited,
I couldn't believe it.
After a few
small tweaks
the V1 is ready for
its final test.
160 kilometers off
the California coast
at Cortez Bank, the first
big swells of the season
are rolling in
and Shane is ready.
I paddled in
a really big wave
and I had a super bad wipe-out,
I got pushed under super far
and... I thought this is
the perfect time
to test this thing and...
I pulled my cord
and I went from panicking
as soon as it started inflating
I realized how much power
this thing had...
I totally relaxed...
and I stopped stressing out
and I didn't swim, I just let
the thing bring me up.
There was two more
pretty solid waves...
right afterwards, that...
the whitewater rolled over me
and popped me right up,
instead of like pushing me,
it rolled over me
and took me to the surface.
Once we figured out
we had something...
Shane was like,
"We need to get this to
everyone, as soon as possible!"
Although the V1
is still considered a prototype
about 100 suits
are already in use
by some of the world's biggest
wave riders.
For Hub and Shane
this is turning
into the ride of a lifetime.
It's more of an honor,
than anything.
You know, I get to...
number one,
possibly help in
saving someone's life
and also work alongside
with some of my personal heroes.
We have a core group of guys
that I'm really close to
and everybody wants
to be out there,
everybody wants to charge
huge waves and push the envelope
but I want all my friends
to be safe and I want them all
to come home to their families
every night,
and... I think we've achieved
that and I'm excited about it.
And now we move from
wild waves to wildlife.
Have you ever flipped through
the pages of a wildlife magazine
and looked through the photos
that made you wonder,
how on earth did they
get that shot?
How did they get so close?
Well, our next story features
a photographer from the UK
who created an inventive way to
get up close and very personal.
I present to you,
the BeetleCam.
In the African plains
a very stealthy beast is lurking
and it's on the hunt
to take your picture!
The BeetleCam is
a small remote controlled buggy,
which I mounted my camera
on-top of and I used it
to get close-up wide angle
photographs of African wildlife.
These animals are pretty
dangerous, pretty powerful.
So if you got out of the vehicle
you'd probably get mauled,
trampled, or...
some other form of
a nasty death, so...
So I prefer to send
my camera out,
and me not be actually
holding it at the time.
Will Burrard-Lucas
has traveled
to the ends of the earth
looking for that perfect shot,
but it was here in his small
workshop, back in 2009,
that his most innovative photo
expedition began,
So this is BeetleCam Mark 1
and it's basically
a small remote controlled buggy,
with four wheels,
powered by four motors,
with two big batteries,
and all I do is, I clip
my DSLR camera on top,
like this, and then I've got
a remote control here
which is used usually
for modern airplanes.
I use this to steer the buggy
and fire the camera.
The initial BeetleCam I built
a couple of years ago
and I had no idea weather
it would work or not,
so I just built it
and took it to Tanzania
and I used it,
first on elephants.
And it actually worked
very well
and got some very
promising results.
Elephants were quite cautious
but if I left it still
they'd sometimes be curious
and come right up to it.
Will was getting
closer to his photographic prey
than ever before... but one
animal was still out of reach.
What happened next was
quite predictable.
The lions came straight up
and destroyed one of my cameras.
So back in London
Will goes to work on a new
and improved BeetleCam 2.0.
A custom-made mount lets him
tilt the camera up and down
remotely and a live video feed
shows him
what the BeetleCam is seeing.
That allowed me
to increase my hit rate
and get more
usable photos from it.
Now, for
the crowning jewel.
It's a fiberglass carapace
with an aluminum frame,
which bolts on top to give
the camera some protection.
New tricks,
and a thick armored shell.
But is this cute little robot
ready to face a lion?
OK, we're trying lions... for
the first time since
our old BeetleCam was mauled
and our camera destroyed.
It's very nerve racking.
I'm just hoping the armor works.
These cats
are so curious, playful.
I knew I'd be able to get some
really good close-up photographs
if I could just
lion-proof the BeetleCam.
As the new BeetleCam
flirts with danger
Will snaps one incredible photo
after another.
Even when one large male decides
he's hungry.
The BeetleCam still
gets the shot!
Fiberglass shell 1 - Lions 0.
But eventually
Will does meet his match.
I had these seven
quite old lion cubs
and they were very boisterous
and I was getting some
great shots of them
but then... after about
five minutes or so
things went wrong
and they managed
to flip it over... and from
that point they were able
to pick it up by the wheel
and as soon as they'd done that
they ran off into the bush
with it, all seven of them
and at that point
I thought that was the end.
I didn't think
we'd get it back, but luckily
they dropped it
where we were able
to get into it, between
the trees, with the vehicle,
pick it up again and that was
pretty much the end of the trip.
Out here there may be
few places to hide
but for this tiny paparazzi...
a little danger goes a long way.
There's nothing quite as
exciting as coming across,
you know,
these really good photos
that you'd always
dreamed of getting really.
For
this wildlife photographer,
that perfect shot
has never been closer.
Coming up on How Tech Works.
We'll take a final ride
on a spectacular model train
with tracks almost a mile long!
And this state-of-the-art lab
studies slips, falls
and other everyday mishaps.
Mind your step!
Welcome back to
How Tech Works.
I'm Basil Singer.
It's time to put your researcher
caps on for just a minute.
Imagine,
motion-tracking devices,
3D streetscapes,
climate wizardry
and state-of-the-art
simulators,
all under one roof,
pretty cool toys, right?
Well, for the research facility
in our next story,
those kind of things are just
the regular tools of the trade.
-Hold my battery pack.
-Sure.
And these are...
An early Monday morning.
Researcher Alison Novak,
is in full prep mode.
So I'm just gonna stick
the markers on you here.
What we're doing is tracking
his upper body.
This guy
is about to be put
through his paces.
She plans to track
his every move.
OK, and then these ones
are gonna go on your feet.
And, he will move!
First up...
then off-kilter 20 degrees.
So, you can take a seat
right there.
For the next
few hours
this six meter cube
will be her laboratory.
And with every shift and shake,
her subject's fun house.
OK, we're ready to go.
OK, moving the bridge up.
So, bridge is up.
OK, Susan,
can you bring us to incline?
Yup, bringing you
to incline now.
There might be a slight shake,
OK?
****
OK.
OK, we're starting
to tilt now.
In here...
floors will tilt.
So what
I'm gonna do is secure you
into the harness,
that's first and foremost.
OK, so Dan, I want you
to just walk up and down
a couple of times.
A flight of stairs will feel
like it's booby-trapped!
And this unsuspecting young man,
will receive more
than a few metal-testing jolts,
all in the name
of scientific research,
of course.
We're interested
in foot trajectories,
toe clearances, balance control,
so we're looking at
where your center of mass
of your balance is in space.
Yep, so go on up,
just walk normally.
So, what's your guess?
A study of gravitational forces?
****
Earthquake shake test?
****
Or is it stress management
investigation?
****
The answer is more obvious
than you think!
This is "Stair lab", the world's
most sophisticated study
of stair climbing.
So as you walk up and down
the stairs the markers
that are attached to you
are getting tracked
by... the cameras that
we have placed
in all the corners of the room.
Today's trial
was a simple warm-up
for the groundbreaking
research soon to be underway
now that Toronto's rehab's
new Ceal facility
is open for business.
Ceal is the challenging
environment assessment
laboratory.
It's the... funnest of
the laboratories that we have.
Fun, because each
of Ceal's labs can be mounted
on their top-of-the line
motion base
and then manipulated.
The hope is that this work will
bring about important changes.
Three times
as many people are killed
or seriously hurt because
of falls on stairs
as in motor vehicle accidents.
It's a huge problem...
so we have a stair lab
and there we can take people
up and down stairs
in a very safe way
and we can cause them
to fall off the stairs
in a sadistic way
and study what should be done
about stair design.
Come on in,
so this is winter lab.
Dr. Geoff Fernie
is also passionately
concerned with the pitfalls
of winter.
Now I'm just gonna
hook you up to this...
So he created winter lab.
Accidents in the winter
are a terrible scourge
so we do a lot of work there.
We have real ice floor,
we have cold winds,
we can generate snow
and not only can we do that
but we can pick up the whole lab
and we can place it
on a motion base and tip it
as a hill or something.
If you wonder
what boots might best
keep you from slip-sliding away,
Jennifer Hsu aims to find out.
We have motion capture cameras
all around the room
that can precisely tell exactly
where the markers
that are on their body are
so we can look at
her foot positioning, positions
of her torso.
She can also walk on top of
that platform which is embedded
with force plates
and that tells us
what kinds of
ground reaction forces
she's imparting...
as she's walking.
And this is Ceal's third
challenging environment.
Street lab is actually
a virtual reality system
on steroids.
It's this part of Toronto,
we've recreated it in 3D
with very, very high precision
and for the first time
we've mapped
a perfect sound landscape.
We can study all the elements
of whether or not she's walking
in balance or off balance
and how that's affected by
different elements of sound
and we can manipulate
systematically to see
what that relationship is.
Despite
their sophisticated technology
Ceal researchers
place a high value
on simple solutions.
That's what's driving
people here.
It's applying
the highest technology
but applying it
to practical big problems
to come up with solutions
that very often
are low technology actually.
Certainly we want them to be
affordable and easy to get.
Now we're off to Quebec
to check out
Canada's largest fully
operational model train.
If the level of hand-crafted
detail doesn't impress you,
and it will, get a load
of the sheer size and scope
of the railway,
it's almost a mile long,
One lap of the track
lasts 40 minutes.
It's a labor of love
that started
more than half a century ago.
It's been here for 50 years.
Many people have put
their heart and soul in it.
A fully operational 3D world
of miniature trains
made with eye-popping detail.
I'm proud of certain things
that I did,
like the St. Patricks'
Cathedral, the military cemetery
with the civilian there.
It covers
six train yards, 527 switches,
18 bridges and tunnels
and hundreds of tiny buildings
in tiny towns.
More power.
The layout is one of
the biggest in Canada.
And it's all handmade
from plaster, steel,
glass and cardboard.
This is the first volume...
of... model railroader,
and as you see...
it cost ten cents... in 1934.
Spanning two centuries
volunteers from the Montreal
Model Train Club
built a wee helicopter airport,
a mini abattoir,
scaled-down mountains
and tunnels
and dozens of everyday
slices of life.
Incredible Canadian scenery
from the heyday
of steam and diesel trains.
That's my town there,
that's my... working place,
not working
because I had fun doing it,
so I'm not working but
it's my place, you know.
I could put my name on it,
you know, it's good.
But today
isn't about building.
We're basically
taking the place apart.
We have to move.
They're relocating.
And they're here to start
the process of dismantling.
We're ready for the next...
thing to do.
Take off some more people there.
Some of it
is a piece of cake.
Tiny trees are easily uprooted.
The rest is trickier.
Removing figures
as small as a paper clip
without destroying them,
takes the right tools
and the right pressure.
Come in, come in.
Every little light
and some buildings
are electrified.
Val Tessier's job is to
carefully disconnect the power,
which over the years
has become pretty tangled.
Wiring done by dozens volunteers
over nearly 40 years.
Look at them...
it's unbelievable,
this thing worked.
Is full of surprises.
What we're doing here,
we're cutting wires
that... give the illumination
to our... lamps,
to the Molson Brewery e.g.
to all the buildings upstairs.
Before we can take a building
off the layout
we have to make sure
all wires are cut.
The miniature train tracks,
which gave a 40 minute
train ride, won't be saved.
Because these plaster mountains
can't be moved.
Tunnels and rivers
and even the table
are all headed for the dumpster.
It will take these guys months
to finish their large
salvage job.
But before the lights go out...
there's just enough power
for one last train ride
on their beloved track.
We'll do it again
somewhere else.
It is going to be better.
Their next model train set up
won't be an ode
to the 1950's.
Club members want to get
younger people
excited about trains,
so steam and diesel
will give way to electric
and high speed.
You've been watching
How Tech Works.
I'm Basil Singer
and I'll see you next time!