Who edits the show? TLC or RDF? My suggestion, Lose some to the intro with the goofy looking guy with the side grinder, don't show the team just standing there during the competion (hovercraft) and show more of the build. A lot of things happened during the diving and hovercraft show without an explanation, at least to my feeble mind. As always my opions are not necessaraly those of TLC or RDF.

-- b Dudley (bdudley@industrialmechanical.com), January 18, 2001

Answers

I personally like the editing style of the show. It is quickpaced and entertaining, two traits necessary for survival on TV (even for TLC). I think a better solution would be a companion web site with a tight link to the show itself (several different technologies come to mind, WebTV, even that Digital Convergence doo-hickey). The web site could delve into the details of each project and the issues and solutions with a heavy emphasis on the mechanical principles et al. I could see high school science teachers using a combination of a playback of the show plus web access to teach lots of really cool engineering stuff!

Oh, and the web site should DEFINITELY have the outtakes from each episode (you KNOW they got to be funny and bizarre)!

-- Frank Conforti (frank.conforti@bentley.com), January 18, 2001.

Channel 4's Scrapheap site contains a lot of details about the science behind each episode. Hopefully TLC will emulate their example in the future.

(Don't go looking for it, though, unless you want spoilers for the current JYW season.)

-- YCDK (ycdk@hotmail.com), January 19, 2001.