Planet Mechanics
Genre	Documentary
Created by	National Geographic UK
Starring	Dick Strawbridge; Jem Stansfield
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	8
Production
Running time	45-50 Minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	National Geographic Channel
Original airing	2008

Planet Mechanics is an English TV programme shown on the National Geographic Channel. The programme was broadcast on Sunday at 7:00pm. Series one has now finished.

[edit] Episodes

1. Air Propelled Sandwich
2. Cow Power - In this episode, they built a bio gas plant which powers an oil extractor to extract oil from Rapeseed. The extracted oil is used to power a wheat dryer.
3. Lake District Dilemma
4. Solar Paella
5. Electric Water Taxi - Dick and Jem made a solar powered boat/water taxi for the busy canals of Venice, Italy.
6. Surf Power - here Dick and Jem build a gadget that gets 'free' wave power to light a caravan, using a Wells turbine. They also made a generator which ran on human power by modifying a bicycle.
7. Heavy Metal House - they built a house using cargo shipping containers and solar power.
8. Tree Powered Car - they modified a pick-up truck to run on wood gas.

[edit] Critics

While proposing some interesting alternative technologies as ecologically friendly, the real environmental impact and actual life span were never verified. An example is the "tree powered car", which, while interestingly using wood as main power, was less efficient (being a dual transformation process wood-gas-mechanical) and produced a larger quantity of CO₂ in comparison to standard gasoline (which has more energy/weight).

However in order to "make" a tree, it collects carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, this is the same carbon produced by burning the tree. The wood burning engine is carbon neutral over a hundred year period as all carbon emitted by the engine would have been released by the slow natural decomposition of the tree anyway.

When the fossil fuel gasoline is burned, carbon that has been locked in long term (millions of years) storage is released creating a net increase in atmospheric carbon.

[edit] External links

• Planet Mechanics Website At National Geographic UK
• Planet Mechanics Website At National Geographic AU

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