Big, Bigger, Biggest - Season 3 (2011)

The Panama Canal is set to double its capacity almost a century after it opened. Find out why its success lies in four key breakthroughs that enable ever bigger ships to navigate landlocked areas. It has been called: "The Mother of All Shortcuts"!

Find out what made it possible for the world’s largest icebreaking ship to smash through solid ice a metre and a half thick and pulverise blocks of ice the size of a car with its huge propellers.

Over 4 million people use the London Underground every day. Find out how four key inventions in a series of landmark metro systems helped it become the biggest subway in the Western world.

Modern prisons are brimming with technology. Explore the inner workings and incredible stories behind four landmark prisons that allowed engineers to build safer, tougher and bigger prisons.

China’s Canton Tower required great leaps in technology to build. Explore the way key historic towers like the Eiffel Tower and Washington Monument made these engineering breakthroughs possible.

France’s TGV has been pushed to 575 kilometres. Examine four iconic trains and the breakthroughs that enabled the development of the fastest train on the planet.