UK Centre for Materials Education
Working with you to enhance the student experience
Working with you to enhance the student experience
The first episode will be shown on BBC2 at 9pm on Friday 29 November when Chris and Caroline are challenged to build a submarine. For one hundred years the submarine has been a vital weapon, but records show that the first one might have been built almost four hundred years ago. According to the history books, a vessel made entirely of wood rowed by twelve men disappeared under the Thames one day in 1621. The crew rowed underwater for seven miles from Westminster to Greenwich. But how did they breathe? How did they navigate? How did they cope with ten tonnes of water trying to crush them?
Chris and Caroline must bring together a team to try and "build the impossible", this seventeenth century submarine. The original inventor, Cornelius Drebbel, was so secretive he left no account, not even a picture. Not surprisingly, having to build something with no knowledge of what it looked like creates an immediate problem for the team, plus they have just a few months to complete the project. The final test is to row it underwater.... but without harming anyone inside.
