| 1 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[folder: Special Episodes/Whole Team Efforts]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | * Why did they replace Buster? Wasn't the whole point of rebuilding him from scratch to make a dummy that would be easier to repair and have a more human response to injury (hence the poplar wood bones, etc)? Getting a brand new crash test dummy will just force them to go through the pain that they had with repairing him when they first got him... |
| 6 | ** He got dropped from two hundred feet into a LAKE. They permanently lost one of his legs. I think the structural integrity was coming into question. Even dummies have elastic limits. |
| 7 | *** That was way back in season 1. They dedicated an entire episode to the rebuilding from the ground up of Buster, complete with aluminum joints, poplar wood bones, and dragon skin gel muscles, and specifically stated that this rebuild was due to the difficulty of rebuilding the ''original'' Buster, plus a need to get a more human-like response from him when they use him in an experiment (the only things from the original Buster was his hands, feet, and head). Hell, they were able to rebuild him after virtually ''exploding'' into pieces after a long fall during the ''Escape Slide Parachute'' myth, because the materials they rebuilt him from were ''designed'' to be easily fixed, hence why I don't understand why they replaced him with yet ''another'' normal crash test dummy, one that would be just as hard to rebuild and fix as the original Buster was. And why are they naming the new one Buster 2.0, anyway? After his rebuild, the original Buster was christened Buster 2.0 by Adam, so technically, this should be Buster ''3.0''. |
| 8 | ** I can think of three reasons why they might have replaced him. Number 1, ratings. Replacing Buster with a new dummy let them do an "OMG we gotz a nu dummee!!!lulz" preview for that particular episode (and also let them pad the episode out by filming the new Buster being unpacked and assembled). Number 2, practicality. At a certain point it was bound to become cheaper and less time consuming to just buy a new dummy rather than constantly putting Buster back together. Number 3, accuracy. After being repaired and rebuilt so many times, Buster's ability to accurately simulate a human body's response to trauma was probably starting to suffer. I imagine that less than 10% of Buster's original parts were still in there when they finally decided to replace him. The rest were parts the Mythbusters fabricated themselves. And since, by their own admission, they are not experts in the field of crash test dummy construction, they no doubt made more than a few small mistakes that decreased Buster's ability to correctly simulate a human body. It's probably no coincidence that as the show dragged on the Mythbusters started using Buster alternatives (such as dead pigs and Ted the Ballistics Dummy) more often for their human analogs when early in the series they would use Buster for just about everything. |
| 9 | ** They might be getting more funding; it seems they are hiring more stuff out now (such as actually going to a crash-test course) instead of building it themselves. Buster 3 may be a succession of new dummies they keep buying. |
| 10 | *** This was this troper's impression as well. As the series went on, and became more popular, well-known and well-respected, the team was able to obtain items they hadn't had access to previously, either for funding reason, fear of what they'd do with it, or both. "Buster" eventually became basically a LegacyCharacter, a name applied to whichever dummy they were using for this experiment, which most often seemed to be tailor-made for testing that kind of catastrophic damage. |
| 11 | * This is a matter of consistency. In "Exploding Pants" Adam and Jamie call myth confirmed when they get a really fast combustion saying anyone who saw it would describe it as an explosion. The build team call the second part of "Sword Cutting a Sword" based on combat in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII busted when the high speed shows the sword bending to the point of snapping when they initially thought it had been cut while watching at full speed. |
| 12 | ** Honestly this is my biggest issue with the two team approach. For example, they recently tested a myth where heated wine bottles fired off like a machine gun and the corks flew 100 feet. They tested the myth, the bottles blew off and sounded remarkably like a machine gun but because the corks of the bottle types they selected went "only" 50 feet the myth was busted. This seems to be a fundamental difference between the two teams: Adam and Jamie will label a partial result as plausible since its possible that a freak variable could have let the corks fly that 100 feet (or, ya know, embellishment). But with the Build Team if it doesn't meet the exact wording of the myth, it's busted which is pretty lame. The sword cutting sword thing was a specific gripe of mine. |
| 13 | *** The 'sword cuts sword' myth was Busted because it required superhuman strength from the sword swinging robot (which was required in all their sword tests). |
| 14 | *** Additionally, it's clear even to a casual observer that the sword was ''not'' cutting the other sword, but snapping it. Especially clear with the rapier, which bent 180 degrees before snapping into three pieces. |
| 15 | * In the episode where the team was testing whether or not swearing/cussing is a natural pain tolerance for people who blurt them out, and they "confirmed" it, I can't help but find something off about that experiment. Yes, I can understand that many (I mean ''MANY'', not ''EVERYONE'', because not everyone knows everybody) curses when they get hurt, angry, and/or surprised, but what I found out was when they do that experiment, they ALWAYS start with not-swearing the FIRST time, and then swear the SECOND time, '''all done by the very same person each'''. So why is it that they don't have some of them do the other way around (swearing first, not-swearing second), each person do the '''very same''' method the second time as they did the first (either swearing/not-swearing twice), and/or at least hire a group of people splitting into two groups (one group focusing on swearing, the other group focusing on not-swearing) and having them doing that experiment ONLY ONCE PER PERSON? For a while, I can't help but noticing that the experiment they did was one-sided, and, from my personal experience, one-sided experiments doesn't prove chicken crap. |
| 16 | ** It's hard to say if they did it this way or not, or only did it once or not, due to the constraints caused by the formatting of the TV show. It was often mentioned that they do a lot more work than gets filmed and not all the things that get filmed make it into the show, so it's entirely possible they repeated the experiment more than once. Also, since pain tolerance is a highly individual trait, having the same person do it twice, once swearing and once using the made-up words, was really the only way to do it. While they could have varied the order a bit, that both wasn't likely to matter much assuming enough distance between trials (and the show has never been 100% scientific) and would've made editing the show a lot harder. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[/folder]] |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[folder: Adam/Jamie Myths]] |
| 21 | |
| 22 | * In the "Car Cling-On" episode, the swerving/turning aspect of the myth is declared "busted" when Adam and Jamie both fail to hang on to the car. Later, driving through a car wash is declared "busted" when both Adam and Jamie manage to stay on the car. I realize that they simply defined the myths differently, but the lack of parallelism still bugs me. |
| 23 | ** I had thought the car wash was to knock off the person, not to stay on. Since they both had stayed on the car, driving through a car wash was busted. |
| 24 | *** Those were essentially two entirely seperate myths, that they put to the test in the same episode: The first myth was that you could hang on to a speeding car. Busted. The second myth was that if you hung unto a car going through a car-wash, you would get knocked off. Also busted. The two myths shared a common element, namely hanging on to a car, but the expected result for one myth was the exact opposite of the expected result for the other myth. |
| 25 | * In Beer Goggles (or whatever the "looks more attractive when drunk was called) why didn't they put in pictures of spouses and a member of the same same sex in the mix? That would have been funny ''and'' interesting data (just set it to show one more picture than normal and have it ignored for the average score if there was concerns about interfering with the data). |
| 26 | ** The reactions to the same-sex picture might have offended some viewers. If Jamie or Adam had been like "Ugh, that one's a dude! Get that outta here!" it might have been interpreted as homophobia. If they had reacted positively to a picture of the same sex, MoralGuardians might have seen it as a casual endorsement of homosexuality. |
| 27 | *** Because being heterosexual is homophobic. |
| 28 | *** That's not what he said, he said it would be INTERPRETED as homophobic. Which it probably would be, considering how prepared most people are to take offense at anything, no matter what their gender and orientation are. |
| 29 | *** It's no joke. It's hard for (at least guys) to look at another guy, and admit he is physically attractive without somebody automatically thinking "GAY!!!". Early Music/DavidBowie WAS good looking and I can understand his sex-appeal (especially in ''Film/{{Labyrinth}}''). I have eyes and I know what is generally considered attractive, yet, around a group of macho guys, I would be stupid in admitting that he was an attractive man. So it's a fair point. People seem to label that simply admitting that somebody as the same sex is attractive as repressed homosexuality. |
| 30 | ** Also, the point was to see if people one ordinarily finds attractive would be ''more'' attractive at different stages of intoxication. One would start with the baseline of the test subject's default sexual preference. If one of the team had been homosexual, they would have shown them exclusively same-gender pictures to get the same sort of baseline data. |
| 31 | * The myth was that two phone books interlaced were basically impossible to pull apart. After much trial and cavorting, Adam and Jamie finally get it apart by using a pair of [[TankGoodness frikkin' tanks]]! They then proceeded to label the myth busted. In reality, the only way anyone could actually replicate those results is if you controlled a military power and were VERY bored, if you're incredibly rich, or if you're the frikkin' Mythbusters! Considering the staggeringly low percentage of the population those numbers actually represent, I'd say it fits the criteria for "basically impossible." |
| 32 | ** Sorry, but no. The myth was that it is '''totally impossible''' to separate two interlaced phone books, not that it is extremely difficult. They proved that it is not in fact impossible, merely very hard. |
| 33 | *** It was very poor wording of the myth, because there could be a myth stating "It is totally impossible to saw through a two-foot thick slab of metal using only butter knives" and, given a stupidly large amount of time and knives, it will eventually be busted. The myth never at any point even had a chance to be "confirmed." |
| 34 | *** I think the unstated pre-condition of the myth was that it is impossible to separate the phone books without destroying them in the process. |
| 35 | *** "Totally" and "impossible" are both absolute terms. So yes, in your example the myth would eventually be busted. And of course the myth had a chance to be confirmed. It just so happened that it wasn't, technically speaking, accurate. |
| 36 | *** "Very hard is winning the Nobel Prize. Impossible is eating the sun." This myth was doomed from the start seeing as they were using the word impossible in it's literal context. Even if they were unable to separate the two phone books, even with tanks, that doesn't necessarily mean that no force in the universe is capable of separating them. I do agree that the myth is essential confirmed in that it is not possible within believable limits. |
| 37 | ** 8000lbf is easily achievable with a 5 ton come-along worth $50. Presumably MB used tanks for the wow factor but it's certainly possible to get the same level of force with much more mundane tools or equipment. They could have used a 5 ton block of concrete and a crane, for instance. |
| 38 | *** For the wow factor, I wish they'd used a locomotive. |
| 39 | *** That was probably what they would've tried next if the tanks failed. |
| 40 | * They tested to see if a (specific) man could take off using a chair using fireworks as his propelling agent. They discovered that he likely blew himself up. Ok. This is the believable result. Now lets assume this man had a protective shielding of some sort and a way to make sure he propelled himself upward and not just hit a series of backflips. Could it happen? We don't know. Why didn't they go to unbelievable lengths then? |
| 41 | ** I assume this is about the Chinese Astronaut myth? A few reasons here. One, this was in the very early seasons of the show before they typically went to extreme measures. Two, adding blast shielding would have increased the weight of the rig significantly, requiring more rockets to lift off (and requiring more shielding). Three, a man sitting on a chair is extremely lacking in aerodynamics and making it aerodynamic would require giving it an aerodynamic shape, like a rocket. Combine all three and you'd just be launching a rocket, not a man in a chair. |
| 42 | *** When they basically revisited this myth later with the 'Rocket Man' who supposedly launched himself then glided down they ran into exactly those problems. |
| 43 | * Why they bothered to build the model of a bridge. The cause of collapsing bridges is the standing wave. I.e. the length of bridge, frequency and material (to be more specific sound speed in material) needs to be correlated. (During physics class in high school we calculated for steel and wood - while marching through wood bridge may destroy it there shouldn't be problems with steel ones). |
| 44 | ** It would be a pretty boring show if it was just two guys and a white board with a physics text. That would be like school. The Mythbusters are there to prove to the people that science is not confined to the realm of lab coats and sterilized beakers and chalk boards. Science is everywhere happening every second and there is no excuse for anybody NOT to go out and do science for no reason, better yet, doing science while knowing exactly what will happen. It bugs me that people think "science" is some sort of "class" at school. |
| 45 | * Mythssion control. The wreck at the end did not look like 1 car hitting a wall at 50mph. It looked like 2 cars hitting a wall at 50mph siultaneously. In fact you'll find that the total compression of the cars equalled the compression of the 100mph crash. Why go to all theeffort of crashing 2 cars together and then only counting one of them? Now consider what the wreck would b like if one car was stationary and one travelled at 100mph; it'd be exactly he same. |
| 46 | ** well, not entirely. Doing the math shows 1 car hitting a wall at 50mph has x energy. 2 cars hitting at 50mph have 2x energy and 1 car hitting a wall has 4x energy. Still not true that 1 car hitting a wall = 2 cars hitting each other at the same speed. |
| 47 | ** Further, the point is that two cars hitting each other at 50 mph is the same as each car getting into a 100 mph collision. It isn't; the collision has 2x the KE spread out over 2 cars, leading to a 50 mph collision with two cars being the same as hitting a wall. |
| 48 | * The episode where they busted the "myth" that you can paint a room using explosives, a la Series/MrBean, is just absurd. It's not a myth because no one seriously expects it to be true; it would be like trying to test the myth of whether you can really defy gravity by not looking down. In other words, it's a non-myth, and it seemed like its only purpose was to pad out an episode. |
| 49 | ** A) It was funny. B) It was requested, ergo it's ''not'' something nobody expects to be true, ergo it counts as a "myth" by the show's definition (i.e. something that may or may not be true but a lot of people believe). C) [[RuleOfFunny It was funny.]] |
| 50 | *** I'd like to meet this person who watches Mr. Bean and honestly thinks it's at all representative of real-world physics. [[ArtisticLicensePhysics It must be a hoot when they watch Looney Toons.]] |
| 51 | *** I doubt there's anyone who thinks Mr. Bean is a scholarly study in real-world physics. But that particular gag can easily ''appear'' physically possible to a layman, and that's really what this show is about. It's like the Finger In A Barrel myth. Nobody thinks Bugs Bunny cartoons are representative of real-world physics. Still, at the back of my mind even ''I'' couldn't help but wonder what would really happen if a gun went off while someone's finger was stuck in the barrel. |
| 52 | *** It's also these myths that are sometimes the most surprising. Was there any doubt in anyone's mind that putting bulls in a confined space with shabbily-built shelves lined with fragile dishes would result in anything but chaos? The only chaos that occurred there was when Kari, Tory, and Grant started smashing their set themselves. The bulls made conscious efforts to avoid them, and greatly succeeded. What about scaring an elephant using a mouse? Adam himself stated that he knew that myth was completely untrue when he got up that morning. Then... two elephants not only take notice of said mouse, but actively avoid it. In light of these, I'm not sure anyone would have been surprised if they had been able to paint a room with explosives, or if their gun barrel had exploded. And didn't the build team establish the possible origin of the barrel splitting myth in a revisit when they used a boresighter stuck in a barrel? |
| 53 | ** A "non-myth" would be the diet Coke and Mentos testing. They know it happens, they were just trying to figure out why. In painting with explosives no one was thinking it would make an even coat even close to what was shown, but it's still largely "What WOULD happen?" It may have been wildly splotchy but still evenly spread out. The testing ended up coming to the conclusion that even the most controlled explosions doesn't have as even a shockwave as you'd think. |
| 54 | * The "can you launch yourself off a waterslide and land safely in a kiddie pool" myth. Not once did they point out that accuracy and distance aside, even if you managed to hit that pool, you'd go right through the ''one foot'' of water in a split second and splat across the bottom of it. ''Not one single time.'' |
| 55 | ** Not necessarily. There's an old circus act where someone jumps off a high dive and lands smack into a kiddie pool without harm. It's tricky and involves very careful technique, but it can be done without dying. |
| 56 | ** Are you kidding me? The circus act involves a performer who knows exactly when and where he's gonna hit, and thus when to tighten your muscles or whatever. Launch yourself at a wading pool and you don't know ''if'' you're gonna hit, much less ''when'' with any precision at all. |
| 57 | *** ...Did you watch the episode at all? They proved conclusively that while the slide didn't have anywhere near the range of the video, it was still extremely accurate. |
| 58 | *** Extremely accurate? Adam said outright that if the floating ring wasn't surrounded by water he'd never even try this stunt. |
| 59 | *** They proved it would hit the same target reliably. That's accuracy where I come from, Adam was simply displaying his common sense about dangerous stunts. You have to remember they found that the Website/YouTube video was fake. |
| 60 | * The first season episode "Exploding Toilet" purports to test the "magic bullet" theory of the [[WhoShotJFK JFK assassination]]. It does not. At all. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory This]] is the magic bullet theory. The name refers to the alleged trajectory of one of the bullets fired during the assassination, which critics of the Warren Commission feel to be wildly improbable, if not outright impossible. What they actually test in the episode in question is whether or not it is possible to make AbnormalAmmo that can kill and then dissolve without a trace. The two ''are not in any way related''. |
| 61 | ** I don't think they meant the ''actual'' magic bullet theory. They just called it "the magic bullet" because it sounds good on tv. Also, IIRC they consistently refer to the myth afterward as "ice bullet" not "magic bullet". |
| 62 | ** Some of you may not be aware that while most witnesses to JFK's assasination heard 3 shots, there are more than one who claim to have heard 4 shots yet only 3 slugs were found in JFK's body. There is a theory that says someone shot a 4th bullet made out of something that dissolved so that investigators wouldn't find it...thus making it untraceable. I believe this is the actual myth being tested in this episode. Not the supposed Grassy Knoll shot. |
| 63 | *** No. Just no. Most people base their knowledge of the JFK assassination from Oliver Stone's ''Film/{{JFK}}'', which Oliver Stone himself regrets not making it clearer he was making shit up. Among other things, the "magic bullet's" trajectory is basically a straight line, passing through Kennedy's neck, through the seat and into Connolly's side, hitting his wrist, then into his thigh. There is nothing improbable nor impossible about that. Daly Plaza is an accoustic nightmare, and eyewitness testimony is unreliable at the best of times (unless you're talking about the dictabelt recording, which is A: clearly car doors slamming, and B: the second and fourth are clearly echos); the testimony is contradictory.\ |
| 64 | \ |
| 65 | As to slugs removed from Kennedy, only one(1) bullet was removed, not three. It's mind boggling that people still take that movie at face value. |
| 66 | * The OJ Film Lab myth. The stages they used MAY have worked for [[http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_324/1224350175O9E4DL.jpg black and white film]], which is clearly not what they were attempting to develop. [[http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/7106108800/71061088001009/7106108800100900010/7746417-roll-of-color-negative-film-over-negative-strips.jpg Color film,]] which is what they were trying to develop, requires [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aB8qXU7dkNk#! completely different steps]] involving precisely formulated chemistry that must be kept at a constant temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit at all times. Small wonder it failed. |
| 67 | ** It's likely that Grant and Tory tested this before telling Adam and Jaime to do it. Of course, if they failed to, that would be the source of the problem. |
| 68 | ** My issue with this one is that it didn't fit with the spirit of MacGyvering. Film developing is something you can't really kludge or bash together since it requires a specific series of tasks that must be done in an exact way without error. Compared to the other tasks (opening a lock, orienteering, signalling a helicopter) there's only one way to do it. You either know how to do it or you don't. |
| 69 | * For the salsa escape myth, they mention that they're going to test the various components of salsa ''and'' use bars composed of a number of different metals. And then they fail to comment on ''any'' of these factors, reducing the myth to "can salsa eat away at metal bars?" If they weren't going to actually make use of the additional variables, why bother mentioning them in the first place? |
| 70 | ** I suppose the different bars and different salsas made no difference so they ignored it. |
| 71 | ** Exactly my point. Why bother have the narrator mention the variables at the start of the episode? I'm pretty sure the narration is one of the ''last'' steps, so they already knew the type of metal wasn't going to matter. They could've just crossed off that line of dialogue in the narrator's script. |
| 72 | *** They couldn't just cross it out, because then they would have had to throw out a bunch of footage of Adam and Jaime playing with different types of salsas and different types of metal bars. That's a fair number of perfectly good jokes gone right there. Also, the rig they built included the side-test of different salsas combined with different metal bars right next to the main experiment, and all of it was caught on film. They couldn't just make half the rig disappear into thin air, so they had to explain what was going on with those other tests or viewers would have been confused. |
| 73 | *** Not to mention that they do at one point show the effects of the various substances on the bars. It's not a particularly long scene, but it's not like they left it completely out. |
| 74 | * For the "elephants afraid of mice" myth, did it not occur to them that the elephants might react the same way to ''any'' small white object that suddenly materialized in front of them? I'd be interested to know if the elephants would also be spooked if the Mythbusters had put, say, a white golf ball under the dung instead of a white mouse. Or if a ''brown'' mouse would have been noticed by the elephants at all. |
| 75 | ** The myth wasn't "elephants are afraid of specifically mice and no other small white objects", it was "elephants are afraid of mice." Even if they are afraid of any small white object, that still includes mice, so it's not relevant to the topic at hand. If someone is afraid of anything with more than 4 legs, that doesn't mean they aren't afraid of centipedes. |
| 76 | *** Uh, what? The myth is that elephants are afraid of mice. If elephants are actually nervous about ''any small unfamiliar object'' that kind of makes a big difference for the myth. |
| 77 | *** Actually, he's right. The myth specified if elephants were afraid of mice and only mice. It didn't matter if they were afraid of some other small white object, because the myth wasn't about what elephants were afraid of. Suddenly seeing a mouse scared the elephant and therefor elephants are afraid of mice. There's no reason to sit around all day and test everything elephants are afraid of. |
| 78 | ** Incidentally, why the heck did they use a ''white'' mouse? Any sort of mouse a wild elephant could've ever seen before would be either brown or gray. For all we know, the elephant didn't even realize the tiny white thing on the ground ''was'' a mouse. |
| 79 | ** All can be explained by simply remembering that this myth was done because they happened to be in Africa filming another myth, had some downtime, and had elephants and a (white) mouse available. They didn't have a lot of time to try different things, especially since a great deal of their time was spent just waiting for an elephant to walk through the testing area. I would personally love to see this one revisited with different colored mice and mouse-like objects, multiple mice at the same time, multiple elephants at the same time, etc. (Ever see a cat running from something tied to its tail? I'm picturing an elephant with a toy mouse tied to its tail, and while that would be highly unethical and dangerous to do in real life, I can't stop laughing at the mental image.) |
| 80 | * In the cycling under water myth, why didn't they enlist the help of a pro to see if he could hold the bike going under water? I believe the myth was done in 2010, at which time, there were three American based pro teams (Garmin, HTC, Radioshack)). While not all riders would be available, there should be at a couple of good riders who could be contacted. Furthermore, there were several pro continental teams from North America, and even more continental teams with some rather strong talent. They frequently get help from people in pro sports, what's the difference this time? |
| 81 | ** It could be as simple as a scheduling issue. If the episode has to air by June but the cyclist isn't available for shooting until July, there's not much that can be done. |
| 82 | ** Swimming in Syrup, three seasons before this, gave a very good reason why they wouldn't. In that myth they recruited an Olympic swimmer to swim in the syrup and in the water, but they had to throw out his times in favor of amateur Adam precisely because of his training. He was an expert at swimming ''in water'' and the change in environment was an active hindrance to his extremely refined technique, but Adam, who had no technique, was not similarly hindered. The same thing would have applied here, as a professional cyclist would have their technique thrown off so far by the change in environment (from unencumbered in air to encumbered and underwater) that their skill would work against them. |
| 83 | * In the awning fall myth, they score the awnings to ensure a tear. Doesn't this negate the entire point? As long as it's not an actual person falling, they need to use unprepared awnings, right? Couldn't they just set up an awning in the shop near the floor and toss a sandbag the weight of a person onto it, to see if A. the awning tears and B. the person is falling at a slower speed afterward? |
| 84 | ** They didn't use pre-scorred awnings for the test. All the drops with Buster were with perfectly normal awnings. It was only the last one with Tory where they modified the awnings to show how Hollywood does it. |
| 85 | * The Busted verdict on the "Escaping a frontier jail by means of dynamite" myth in the Westerns episode. They positioned Buster right next to the wall where the dynamite went off in order to avoid shrapnel, so of course the outcome was that there was almost no shrapnel and Buster was killed by the shockwave. They should have repositioned Buster on the other side of the cell where the blast pressures would probably have been much lower/survivable and tried again! |
| 86 | ** There's a reason for that. By placing Buster where he was he would have taken the least blast pressure since the wall of the cell would have absorbed most of the initial blast. The pressure wave coming in through the window and bouncing off the walls was still enough to kill him. If he had been opposite the explosion he would have been even more dead. |
| 87 | * I fail to understand how the [=MythBusters=]' method for replicating the underground bunker explosion in the full-scale Operation: Valkyrie test holds any water. When they set the explosion off, you can clearly see the explosion taking the path of least resistance and blowing out the side of the shipping container they used, as well as launching the buttressing railroad ties a not-insignificant amount of distance. That tells me that the explosion was not properly contained and the Busted conclusion is totally invalid as a result - especially since the small scale tests clearly demonstrated that they should have gotten significantly higher blast pressures with a properly contained explosion than what they ended up seeing. IMO, the test needs to be repeated with the bunker stand-in fully and properly buried on all sides to an appropriate depth. |
| 88 | ** A bit of fridge brilliance on the [=MythBusters=]' part, actually. The real underground bunker would have had the same issue because it would have had doors to blow out. As for the small scales, they don't always scale up well - Conifer Catapult is a good example of this. |
| 89 | *** Maybe, but the doors on a real bunker wouldn't be anywhere near the size of the doors on the shipping container the [=MythBusters=] used. Even with that factored in, the blast on a real bunker still would've been much more contained than what we ended up with. If they can do the engineering right on the various sewer myths that they've tested out in Ione, they certainly can do right by this myth there as well. |
| 90 | *** The doors blown out on the shipping container were not only closed, locked, and half-buried in dirt, but had a pile of railroad ties in front of them. The force it took to move those doors is far greater than it would have taken to blow a regular door out of its frame, so the force inside was likely similar to what it would really be. Plus, building an underground concrete bunker to be truly faithful to the myth would have been frightfully expensive and taken a long time. |
| 91 | * When testing why cavemen made arrowheads instead of just using pointed sticks, Adam and Jaime were unable to come to a conclusion... even though [[CassandraTruth Adam nailed the right answer]] while commenting on a test. An arrowhead would leave a larger, more jagged wound and cause an animal to not only bleed out faster but more often, which not only makes wounds more fatal but aids in tracking. A pointed stick neatly plugs its own hole and actually hinders blood loss. It's the main reason broadhead arrows are still used for bow-hunting today. Why did Jaime dismiss this explanation so quickly? |
| 92 | ** I wouldn't say Jamie actively ''dismissed'' the explanation - they just wanted an excuse for the additional testing that was performed at the archery job, and was perfectly willing to accept it once that was done. |
| 93 | * We'll unfortunately likely never get a re-visit of it with the show ending, but Pancake Car definitely needs another go. They might have overdone it a bit on the amount of ANFO, but a bigger concern was that it wasn't evenly distributed across the top plate the way the detasheet was in the scale experiments. IMO, that was a key element that got overlooked, because an even spread of explosive would be much less likely to breach the plate and vaporize car before it could be crushed (since it would result in an even amount of force applied to all areas of the plate). |
| 94 | [[/folder]] |
| 95 | |
| 96 | [[folder: Tory/Kari/Grant (and their temporary substitutes) Myths]] |
| 97 | |
| 98 | * The ''Hit The Ground Running'' Idiom Test really bugged me (bugs me, actually, since I'm watching it on DVD right now.) Suspending someone above the running surface and flailing their legs in an approximation of running doesn't prove anything, because there's no momentum from that. If I was testing the idiom, I'd have a runner running on a slightly elevated surface (something like a coffee table) that ends a small distance before the predesignated starting point. That way, the tester/runner lands at the starting point and keeps going. That way, they could compare between a person starting from a stationary position for the first test, and someone literally [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin hitting the ground at a running speed]]. |
| 99 | ** But then they're not hitting the ground running; they're already running and then making a running jump. In this case, it would have to be - control (running without jumping) and test (running with jump). |
| 100 | ** They did try that with the zipline, which tripped them up even more than a straight fall. |
| 101 | ** Except that doesn't fulfill what he was saying anyways running after jumping off a zip line doesn't compare to making a running jump which people can do quite easily. |
| 102 | ** It really depends on how you look at the idiom. If you see running off a coffee table and landing and going again as fulfilling the idiom, then yes your right they should've done that. However, I believe they interpreted it as more of a fall and then running. Falling off of a slightly elevated surface after running would sped you up, but from jumping off of a higher surface, the initial run does little but make you fall further. If you see the idiom and falling straight down and then trying to run, which I'm sure they did then they tested it correctly. It's basically all about how you view the idiom. |
| 103 | * The myth about the armoring your car with phonebooks. They called it busted, even though it took them until .338 Lapua, .418 Barrett and .50 BMG to stop a car armored with around four phonebooks, and with the original myth, stuffing a layer of phonebooks inside your door, it stopped all handguns they fired at it (And thus most SMG ammunition, another annoying thing since they brought out a UMP with .40 rounds out for the 4 book car). Apparently they don't understand there's levels of "bulletproof". |
| 104 | ** Um, 'proof' has a very specific meaning, actually. Most things are actually classified as 'bullet resistant' because of this fact. Layers of phonebooks are bullet resistant. They are not bullet'''proof'''. |
| 105 | ** The myth there was that a phone book padding would stop '''all but the armor piercing rounds'''. I can assume that those guns were still packing non-armor-piercing rounds, regardless of their {{BFG}} status. |
| 106 | *** Well, I don't think they make .338, .416 and .50 BMG in hollowpoints, since hollowpoints kinda make high-powered anti-personnel or anti-materiel rifle issue, so yeah, technically they were probably using "armor-piercing" ammunition. It depends on how you wanna draw that line. The .50 BMG round is so powerful that its not normally used on people, but instead on enemy vehicles. |
| 107 | *** Except "armor-piercing" has a very specific meaning. Your standard jacketed bullet (likely full jacket, considering the rifles) is *not* an armor-piercing round and just contains a metal (usually lead) surrounded by another metal (copper or sometimes steel). Armor-piercing rounds are specifically rounds with a ballistic cap meant to break an armored surface just enough to let the solid metal behind it break through the armor. If memory serves, the latter are quite illegal in California. Considering all the stated rounds are pretty decent for hunting dangerous game (elephants, rhinos and the like), it's likely not too difficult to just find standard jacketed rounds that don't have any kind of special armor-piercing capabilities. The biggest reason a .50BMG is good against vehicles is because an unarmored vehicle, like a truck, doesn't have much to get in the way of a very big bullet traveling very, very fast. |
| 108 | ** First, the episode of ''Series/BurnNotice'' this myth was taken from clearly states that the phone books '''are''' bullet resistant, and not bullet proof. Second, in Burn Notice they outfitted the car with bullet proof glass. |
| 109 | ** While the testing they did was certainly fun and interesting, they were testing a claim and not what was actually done on the show. The Burn Notice set-up was bulletproofing a car on a budget (they didn't have the money to do it properly), but they also said you don't want to skimp when it comes to the windows. Bulletproof windows would certainly be much lighter, and they also made modifications to the vehicle such as a more powerful engine and better suspension. The details of them needing the car involved knowing they were going to be in a firefight and what kind of weapons the enemy would be using on them (all part of a BatmanGambit). It would have been interesting to see Mythbusters examine ''all'' aspects of that, but that would be a solid hour-long episode rather than the normal half-episode. |
| 110 | ** Except they ''said'' the myth was taken from Burn Notice (well okay, technically they said "a spy tv show" but if you can name another spy tv show that ever did the same thing I'd love to hear it). And in the Burn Notice episode in question, the phrase they used was bullet ''resistant'', not bullet proof, and they used bullet proof glass. Meaning the two things that ended up "busting" this myth, the weight of the extra books and the fact that phone books aren't totally bulletproof, aren't even relevant to the original myth. |
| 111 | *** The myth was that lacing the car with phone books would make the car bulletproof short of armor piercing rounds. They were able to achieve full penetration with non-armor piercing rounds rendered the myth busted, the added weight rendered the myth impractical as well. The scenario of shooting at the van in the quarry was just having fun, they weren't using it as a genuine experiment that would influence the verdict. |
| 112 | * What's the point of episode of finding mind control chip? If state did have the technology they could for sure prevent emitting the episode/trick them into thinking they did not find it out and alter the tapes/just buy them/... - internet by virtue of its decentralisation would be much harder to block. Of course the not-existing of the chip would give the same results. |
| 113 | ** I think they were busting the specific myth that a man gave blood, then detected a chip under his skin using a stud finder. That's what [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2003_season)#Stud_Finders_.26_Mind_Control_Chips The Other Wiki]] says, anyway. |
| 114 | *** Key words - mind control. They could just be controlled to report they found nothing. (Not that I believe that there are any chips - but experiment from the point of viewers the results would be same. |
| 115 | *** That, however, ignores everybody else involved in the show. Also, the initial statement is a poor argument as having mind control technology doesn't make it any easier or possible to completely cover it up; that's two unrelated things. And, as they noted in the anti-gravity episode, they can't prove a negative. They can only disprove a very specific set of conditions. In this case, it's not that the technology is possible, its whether the act of donating blood causes some sort of anomaly to occur. |
| 116 | ** Here's the part that bugs me about it: why blood banks, specifically? Is that actually a common conspiracy theory? I thought the usual conspiracy theories concerned injections, which would be a more logical method if you were actually trying to conceal microchips. After all, it'd be a lot easier to add something being injected via syringe than trying to make a blood draw kit also inject something at the same time, and delivering such a thing via intradermal injection (like with veterinary microchips) or intramuscular injection would be a lot less risky overall than the intravenous method. Would be a bit harder to cover up such a thing if foreign objects keep causing fatal blood clots, after all. |
| 117 | *** While the 'They're injecting us with mind control chips' conspiracy today (in 2020/2021) focuses around injections and vaccines, that doesn't mean it did back when the episode was filmed in 2003 - Conspiracy theories are always evolving, after all. To the second point, conspiracy theories have rarely been deterred by being illogical, impractical, or impossible. This meant the myth was less 'blood banks and mind control' and more 'can a stud finder detect a microchip?' |
| 118 | *** The poster of the previous question here. In retrospect, the fact that injection would be more sensible as a method for shenanigans than blood donation is probably giving the people thinking these things up too much credit. Personally I'm still curious if that was ever an actual conspiracy theory floating around back then. But while I haven't personally heard of it, these days it's by no means the most absurd claim out there. |
| 119 | * The gunpowder engine thing really irks me. Why build these historical engines that are of dubious workability, when they use gunpowder engines constantly, GUNS. The only difference between a machine gun and a single stroke engine is a machine gun drives bullets rather than a piston. Modify one and you've got your engine. |
| 120 | ** You either grossly misunderstand how either engines or guns work. I'm not sure which. |
| 121 | ** No, I don't think there is a misunderstanding here. A machine gun's reload mechanism is for all intents and purposes a piston engine driven by gunpowder, so I'm sure it would be technically feasible to modify the mechanism of a machine gun to make it do useful work like an engine. However, in real life machine guns cannot sustain continuous fire for very long without overheating and/or running out of bullets. And that does not a practical engine make. In fact, the main functional difference between the historical engine they tested and a gun was the fact that in a gun the gunpowder fuel is physically separated into pre-wrapped packets, all of uniform size. Also, modifying a gun in that manner may have been considered too dangerous for the crew to attempt, or they may not have had the training to be allowed to attempt such a thing legally. |
| 122 | *** Ever heard of "Dragon Breath" rounds? They're essentially what you're talking about (gun fire without the bullet, because instead they're full of phosphorus). They're horribly unreliable in semi-automatic or fully-automatic weapons (as are blanks, it's why blanks are typically used in revolvers) because they don't have enough kickback to cycle the action. An engine whose pistons were essentially brass loaded with gunpowder (since the alternative method of just sending gunpowder into a chamber is notoriously unreliable)would not only be horribly weak but also not be able to run very far (unless you want to change 6 hundred round magazines every forty feet to run your V6) |
| 123 | ** The part of that episode that bugged me was the way Grant modified the existing engine for use with gunpowder. By providing a steady stream of fuel and replacing the spark plug with a glow plug, he completely destroyed the engine's timing - a fairly vital part of the process. By the time he was done with it, it wouldn't even have run on gasoline - its intended fuel - so the fact that it wouldn't run on gunpowder proves nothing. |
| 124 | *** You have to remember why it didn't work. The gunpowder got gunked up with the lubricant to the point it wouldn't light. No matter what they did to the engine, there was no way it was going to work, unless you could find a way to get it to light with having in contact with any of the fluids in the engine. |
| 125 | *** I agree with that assessment, but it still hurts the experiment to try it on an engine that's been rendered inoperable. It never had a ''chance'' to succeed. |
| 126 | *** I was thinking something similar to bullets, but with an old-fashioned roll of cap-pistol caps. |
| 127 | |
| 128 | * In the recent driving tipsy and driving tired test, it irritated me that there was no control test to compare to Tory and Kari's tipsy and tired tests. The huge differences between Kari's and Tory's driving in both tests seems to indicate to me that Kari in general probably isn't that great of a driver but we wouldn't know that because they didn't drive the course sober and rested first! They've always had control test in the past why not this time? |
| 129 | ** It was a bit sloppy, but they weren't really testing how driving tipsy or tired compares with driving while sober and well-rested. They were testing to see whether driving tipsy is better or worse than driving tired. A sober and rested control might have been interesting but was not strictly necessary as a point of comparison. |
| 130 | ** But how do they know that during these tests the subjects aren't driving as well as they would have awake and sober? From a scientific stand point, they can't. |
| 131 | *** No they can't, but neither do they need to. That was not the question they wanted to answer. And they've already previously done the comparison between sober and tipsy as part of the sober vs drunk vs distracted by cell phone episode. |
| 132 | ** Again, it's not about how tipsy driving and tired driving compares with awake and sober driving. All that matters is whether tired driving is better or worse than tipsy driving. A third set of data would be nice to have, but isn't strictly necessary for this particular experiment. |
| 133 | ** The sober/rested control is necessary for the results to mean anything because there are two different subjects with unknown baseline driving ability. You could get away with only 2 tests if you used the same subject for both, but with different subjects the comparison is worthless. |
| 134 | *** Except the subjects are being compared against themselves, not each other. |
| 135 | * The Build Team attempts to build a rig to launch someone over a lake using hundreds of fireworks. The model was clearly rear-heavy and failed to fly straight. The Website/YouTube comments were annoyed that they didn't perfect the design before going full-scale. I can't blame them. That surfboard clearly needed a few more model iterations. |
| 136 | ** It could be a casualty of the television format. They need a test to film so the network can show it, and the time needed to perfect the design may have been time they didn't have in this instance. |
| 137 | *** I disagree, but only because it was repeatedly stressed that the launch vehicle was something an average Joe built in his garage without much refinement or engineering knowledge, so the final design had to reflect that. When they eventually retested it a couple of years later, they were free to refine the design because the aim of the retest was to determine whether the concept could work, rather than all of the specific circumstances of the myth as in the original test. |
| 138 | * This is less about the show and more about a result from the show, but in the "Talking to Plants" myth, it was demonstrated that plants talked to grew better than those that weren't and that ''death metal'' (or otherwise loud, energetic stuff) was the best to use. Can anyone give a plausible explanation as to why this might be? |
| 139 | ** Experts disagree on why, but [[http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/talkingtoplants.html there is evidence suggesting that plants respond to sound in some fashion]]. |
| 140 | ** Considering that plants can and do respond to touch, gravity, sunlight and temperature it's not really a stretch to assume that they can respond to sound as well (basically just a modified sense of touch). One reason I can think from the top of my head is that the more noisy an environment is the more likely it is that there are herbivores around. If the plant grows fast (especially if it's a plant that can reproduce more than once per year) it gets to reproduce faster and thus might not get eaten before that. Just a thought. |
| 141 | * The Blue Ice myth. They manage to create a lump of loose ice in the lab, akin to clumped refrozen snow. Then for the full scale test they use a chunk of solid ice. A lump of loose ice will break apart in free fall much easier than a giant ice cube. A totally inaccurate experimentation method. |
| 142 | ** Somebody actually asked them the same thing, and they addressed it in the Blue Ice after-show; the "lump of loose ice" was still solid as a rock when they picked it up, as was most of the ice still clinging to the fuselage. |
| 143 | * I've always wondered why the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy872Fb1ad8 "Instant Convertible" myth]] was concluded as "plausible" and not as "busted". The first argument against plausibility is that, if the driver of the car ducks before the top of the car gets torn off, he's either driving completely blind, or has to let go of the steering wheel. Alternatively, if the driver -- or anyone else on board -- isn't wise enough to duck, [[OffWithHisHead decapitation is inevitable]]. In either of these two cases, there is virtually no control over the car's acceleration and/or steering. |
| 144 | ** They don't have to be ducking for the entire run-up. Only for the part of time that they go under the trailer. And how, exactly, would letting go of the steering wheel (which they wouldn't have to do--it's a ''wheel'', they can hold onto the sides and bottom) give them no control over acceleration? "Busted" would mean it's impossible. It's plausible inasmuch as the car would still work, and a person could survive. |
| 145 | * Why is it in Conifer Catapult do they only test and use American tree species? The Douglass Fir wasn't introduced to Europe until the 1800's and the point of the myth was if a tree could have been used against castles in the medieval period? Now this troper doesn't believe for a second that this myth is true (since it was never discussed in history). But why not actually test tree species that are in Europe. |
| 146 | ** In order to do that they would have to actually go to Europe. And they can't justify that kind of expense for a silly myth like this. So they used the closest North American equivalent tree. |
| 147 | *** Plus there were issues with the test as presented (cutting too much off the top of the tree, high-speed showing that the stopping tether didn't work as effectively as it could have) that were likely bigger factors in its failure than the type of tree anyway. |
| 148 | * On episode 155, in the myth "Gas Room Boom" the team are testing if the muzzle flash of a gun can detonate a room full of methane gas. After proving that this was impossible with methane, they move on to hydrogen gas, which is much more flammable. The problem here is that the narrator, when describing its flammability, says something to the effect of "After all, they use this stuff for hydrogen bombs". The thing is, hydrogen's use in hydrogen bombs has ''nothing at all to do with its flammability'' and everything to do with its ability to undergo nuclear fusion relatively easily. Good grief, the hydrogen used in hydrogen bombs isn't even elemental, it's in compound with lithium. |
| 149 | ** I think they were just trying to emphasize that it's a very scary thing, and the fact that it both becomes a fiery explosion and a nuclear explosion are not directly related. |
| 150 | * It occurs to me that in Battle of the Sexes - Round 2 when they tested men and women's ability to multi-task, the test they used emphasized domestic tasks like childcare, ironing clothes, cooking breakfast, etc. Most of those activities are stereotypically "feminine" jobs that women are generally more familiar with than men. Does this invalidate the results? Should they have included an additional round of testing where men and women were asked to multitask a series of stereotypically "masculine" jobs? |
| 151 | ** I thought it might have been useful to break down the participants by parental status, since it seems likely that parents of either sex would have to learn how to multi-task better in order to handle childcare while getting anything else done. |
| 152 | * MAJOR problem with the "Phantom Ring Punch" myth from the Superhero Special. The team busted the myth on the basis that they crushed their pig skin-covered skull analog before any scarring occurred, but the fact of the matter is that the analog NEVER would have scarred under any circumstances because of what scarring *is* (the result of wound repair *over time* by a *living* being - dead pig skin isn't capable of repairing itself!). The myth probably wasn't even worth testing because the only way they could have potentially gotten the result the myth talks about would have been for someone to volunteer to actually be punched! |
| 153 | ** The tests ''did'' show that none of the rings they made was going to create a wound in anything remotely resembling the shape of the ring's imprint, as opposed to simply gouging a ragged hole into the skin. If there's not a wound in even a vaguely recognizable shape, they don't need to watch the skin heal to know that the scar isn't going to be recognizable as the ring's imprint either. |
| 154 | *** Well, that brings up ANOTHER issue with the test, and that's the ring that they're shown using to test is of a poor design as far as leaving a mark of a specific shape is concerned: It's a flat design with the design carved out of the metal, whereas the reverse (non-flat surface with the design projecting outwards) is FAR more likely to get the desired result. It's possible that they could've tested with such a ring, but if that were the case, it would make the most sense to actually *show* the best-case scenario. |
| 155 | *** That might be because they were testing a particular hero's gimmick and that hero happened to use a ring of similar design. |
| 156 | ** It's not. They showed panels of the hero's actual ring, and it was not designed the way theirs was designed. |
| 157 | * I have a big concern with how the clown car drop ("Party Balloon Pile-Up") was tested. In the setup, Kari specifically states that the driver was wearing a seat belt and thus, in her own words, "he's fine". However, when they do the control test crash at 35mph, it results in a ''fatal'' g-load for the driver (150 g, with it being stated that anything over 100 g = death), which the Build Team proceeds to '''completely ignore'''. Since it's more likely for the speed of the collision to be misreported than whether or not the driver ''survived'', why didn't the team adjust the speed of the crash downward until they established a control speed where the driver survives? The team just barely came up short of a survivable g-load (115-130 g) in their tests with the unbuckled passenger, so it's obvious that a lower-speed crash might have been the difference in getting a test result under 100 g and thus having a plausible, rather than busted, myth. |
| 158 | * What was the point of the ''Wizard of Oz'' aluminum test described on the JustForFun/TropesExaminedByTheMythbusters page? The myth was that a particular kind of makeup was harmful to an actor. But, ''because it was harmful'', they used the stuff that was used on the replacement actor, which was chosen specifically because it was ''less harmful''. And then they said the myth was busted when Kari was fine. Um... that doesn't bust anything! If you can't test the actual substance on humans, find some way to replicate lungs and test it that way, or just don't do that myth because there's no safe way to test it! |
| 159 | ** They were testing the myth that it was because the stuff covered the skin and left it unable to breathe - This was a revisit of the Goldfinger myth they'd tested earlier in the first or second season. You're referring to the problem that inhaling large amounts of fine metal particles is bad for you, which is not what they were testing (as there are well-known medical conditions caused by this, e.g. silicosis or black lung disease). |
| 160 | *** Nitpicking but both silicosis and black lung disease have nothing to do with metal. Silicosis is from inhaling silicon, black lung is from carbon. But the general underlying lung disease is the same, called pulmonary fibrosis. You can develop it by inhaling metallic particles also, however. |
| 161 | ** They weren't testing the ''Goldfinger'' myth, they'd done that twice (first time with Jaime, second time with Adam). What's more confusing is that before even testing (or at least, in the "blueprint room" segment explaining the test), Kari explains the myth. . . ''then explains that it's wrong''. The first actor dropped out not because of an allergic reaction to the makeup, but because they used white clown makeup and then applied aluminum dust, and he got sick from breathing in that dust. For the replacement actor, they used makeup with aluminum dust already mixed in to avoid that problem, and that's the makeup they test. So it was Busted even before any testing. [[{{Fanservice}} Really, it was probably just an excuse to get Kari in a skimpy silver bikini and paint her silver.]] Though if you want to be charitable, you could say they were testing if the modified makeup could have been harmful. |
| 162 | * The second defibrillator myth. As they themselves said, in a hospital setting, a bra or piercings would very likely be removed before the defibrillator would be used. Additionally, their improvised defibrillator paddles were placed extremely close to the bra's wire/the piercings, which a trained nurse/doctor would never do. So why was this myth ruled "Plausible" instead of "Busted"? |
| 163 | ** It's "Plausible" insomuch as its "possible but unlikely". While I agree a trained doctor/nurse would (almost) never do such a thing, someone untrained/less-trained and, for example, using an emergency first aid defibrillator might make this mistake, especially if they're panicking. |
| 164 | * For the Russian ice cannon, there's two factors the Build Team failed to consider that might have gotten them to the point of a successful, repeatable firing: 1) Why didn't they try reinforcing aggregates (hemp, sawdust, etc.) for the building of the cannon itself instead of abandoning them completely when they proved unnecessary for the ice cannonballs? As Jamie & Adam's work with pykrete and the build of the frozen newspaper boat for Alaska Special 2 showed, using aggregates would likely have greatly improved the structural integrity of the cannon and allowed it to stand up to the use of gunpowder. 2) Did they completely forget the lesson they learned during Spinning Bullet about the importance of replicating the environment as closely as possible? Yes, they did appear to test this during the colder months in California, but it wasn't anywhere close to the conditions of a Siberian winter, and an environment similar to what they needed to succeed with Spinning Bullet would also have aided significantly with the cannon's structural integrity. |
| 165 | ** On point one, that wasn't the myth. The myth was that it was an ice cannon, not an aggregate cannon; modifying it by making extreme changes to construction material would have changed the myth entirely. Yes, they did this with the leather cannon, but in that case they specifically mentioned there were two different myths about it and they were testing them both. On point two, that likely would have made it fail even worse. The colder something gets the harder it gets, and the harder something is the more brittle it gets, which means a colder ice cannon would have been even more likely to explode. |
| 166 | * The Paper Armor myth saw a rather glaring oversight. In their initial testing, they used a flanged mace, a sword, and a bow, with the paper doing fine against the latter two but remarkably worse against the mace. In their later battle testing they omitted the mace in favor of an early gun. This meant they never really tested paper armor's effectiveness against bludgeons like hammers, maces, or even axes, against which it showed incredible comparative vulnerability. If it was weak to that kind of attack that would be an excellent reason why it wouldn't be more widely-used. |
| 167 | * In the Bull in a China Shop myth, my issue had to do with the flooring. They just used the dirt from the pen, but when I imagine bulls in a china shop, I see bulls slipping and sliding on linoleum floors rather than just walking through the aisles. Due to animal safety issues, I understand why they couldn't use hard flooring, but just declaring it busted is only for a dirt floor. |
| 168 | [[/folder]] |
| 169 | |
| 170 | [[folder: General Experimental Approach and Decision Problems]] |
| 171 | |
| 172 | * In recent reasons I've noticed they've "busted" myths based on an almost arbitrary level of magnitude |
| 173 | ** Exploding wine: they got corks to fire 50 feet in their setup, but because a newspaper report specified 100 feet, they called it "busted". |
| 174 | *** According to Website/TheOtherWiki, the criteria for "busted" is "when the myth's results cannot be replicated via either the described parameters, nor reasonably exaggerated ones". So in this case, because they couldn't replicate the 100ft range the myth was busted by their definition. But I agree that this probably should have been labeled plausible. The newspaper article could have easily exaggerated or misquoted the distance the corks flew, and the Mythbusters have made allowances like that in the past. Like in Exploding Pants where they declared the myth confirmed even though the pants didn't technically explode, just burned rapidly. |
| 175 | ** Grease fireball myth: they got rather close to 30 feet several times and it looked like the wind was a negative factor, but they nevertheless tossed it in the "busted" bin. |
| 176 | ** Exploding bumper: It certainly did explode, but it didn't make it 50 feet, so... |
| 177 | *** Because the distance or height is what they're testing. Pouring water on grease causes a fire. We know that, everyone and their brother knows that. They're testing whether you can get up to the 30 feet. You can't. Exploding bumper. It can happen. It has happened. We know that. They were testing the distance. |
| 178 | *** Even in the grease fire one they did it poorly, for several reasons. 35+ foot ceiling in a kitchen is going to be very, very rare... and their test setup was heavily flawed in that the barrier/measuring scale didn't block the wind above it, so all the fire that hit that level was blown off to the side, thus 'failing'. |
| 179 | * When testing whether or not video games can teach real-world skills, they picked golf, a ''sport''. Only the most ardent of video gamers will argue you can get better at a sport by playing a video game due to the highly physical nature of sports. The things video games generally are said to help with - Surgery, piloting, soldiering - rely on completely different skills, especially situational awareness, subject knowledge, and quick decision-making. They busted this myth based on a near-worst-case scenario rather than a more realistic application. |
| 180 | ** Those aren't specific skills, though; its testing if video games improves situation awareness and hand-eye coordination. The idea was to test if you can gain real world skills (in this case, a better golf swing) using virtual practice. And while yeah its true that it might be obvious that a real world golf pro and real golf club will obviously be a better trainer, deciding not to test it on those grounds isn't science. |
| 181 | *** 'Real-world skills' is an extremely broad category. If anything, this myth played out like the 'Dragon Lady' myth, which they didn't call busted or confirmed because they didn't test any other planes. In this case though they called the entire concept busted after only testing one skill, which isn't good science either since it doesn't account for the fact the concept may work for other skills. |
| 182 | ** Rewatching this during the yearly marathon shows the real reasons this was a terrible experiment. One, their experiment had a sample size of two people. Two, they tested only one skill, golf, instead of a variety of skills. Three, they only tested one piece of software. Four, they changed the criteria halfway through to focus entirely on one subskill, the golf swing, overlooking other aspects of the game such as choosing the right club. While testing all of these thoroughly would be impossible within the scope of the show and nobody would expect them to go that far, not compensating for ''any'' of them results in something totally meaningless. It would be like claiming that people getting hypothermia in cold water is busted because you did the Ice Bucket Challenge without getting sick. |
| 183 | * In the No Pain No Gain episode there was a problem with the approach they took to 'Does swearing make you more tolerant to pain?' The words they chose as non-swear words were often words with more than one syllable, like 'Lightning' and 'Piston,' which are somewhat hard to say without thinking, while most swear words are short, sharp, and single-syllable, which makes them easy to say and much easier to shout. It could very well be the act of yelling is what diminishes the pain, which was also not tested. |
| 184 | [[/folder]] |
| 185 | |
| 186 | [[folder: Specific Mythbuster Questions]] |
| 187 | |
| 188 | * Does Kari actually do any building? OK, so obviously [[MsFanservice the show's ratings would plummet without her]] but Grant and Tory seem to do all the actual work. |
| 189 | ** It 's handy to have someone when they need to torture Grant and Tory. |
| 190 | ** Plus, she has been shown doing welding and such lately. Looks like she's picked up a few skills hanging around the crew. |
| 191 | *** She already ''had'' skills, or she wouldn't have gotten hired at a special effects company to begin with (that's what M5 used to be before it was Mythbusters HQ). |
| 192 | *** Yeah but those skills are artistic skills that are useful for SFX work but never seem to be utilised in the show. |
| 193 | *** The Superhero episode - where she designs the rings for the Phantom Mark tests - says "Hi." |
| 194 | ** I know she seemed to do a lot of building with the bamboo ultralight in the ''Series/{{MacGyver|1985}}'' episode. |
| 195 | ** Her artistic skills include putting together the zombie dog, branding the various vehicles they eventually crash. But in all reality her first job was to pose while they took a picture of her butt for the airplane toilet myth. She seems okay with being [[TheSmurfettPrinciple the only girl]], and it is unlikely that Grant or Tory would be effective without Jamie and Adam around. That's part of the reason of a FiveManBand, everyone has their part even if it isn't a big role. |
| 196 | *** That was her first ''on-camera'' job. She had already been working (or interning) at M5 for some time when they borrowed her butt. |
| 197 | ** It occurs to me ... I don't know how long she was trying to get pregnant, but a lot of the stunting on the show involve things a pregnant woman Should Not Do. Firing a blowgun from the bottom of a swimming pool is OK, but I'm certain the insurance company demanded a pregnancy test before she did "Beer Goggles". We'll be able to check this with the upcoming episodes -- judging by the baby bump in the announcement video, I'm guessing she was pregnant during most of the filming. |
| 198 | *** The observant viewer will note that many (possibly the majority) of the myths are not aired in the same order they are filmed, and the "blueprint room" skits are almost certainly all filmed long ''after'' the myth(s) are tested and busted/confirmed (the fact that they're so obviously scripted suggests as much). So there's really no way to know exactly when the Beer Goggles myth was filmed. That said, given what the Mythbusters do on a daily basis, I'm sure the insurance company requires ''regular'' health screenings for ''all'' members of the cast, male and female. |
| 199 | *** Also, I'm not sure she was trying. In the 'Top 25 Myths' episode, she mentions being pregnant during the car-drop, unbeknownst to her. She says that may or may not be why she was "OMG so excited!!!" |
| 200 | ** She's a professional artist outside of the show, working in mixed-media sculpture (you can see some of her work [[http://www.karibyron.com/ here]]. She also has a degree in Film and Sculpture. |
| 201 | ** And besides all that, building stuff is the easy part, the hard part is coming up with what to build and I bet having someone with a different skill set is way helpful. |
| 202 | ** In any given experiment, we see a few minutes of several hours, sometimes days, of work. Kari obviously has applicable skills because she had been working behind the scenes before she slowly became an on-screen cast member. I'd expect tropers to be savvy enough to know that [[ManipulativeEditing editors don't care about reality]]. |
| 203 | ** Kari graduated magna cum laude with a BA in sculpture and film. Pretty good pedigree if you ask me. I mean just look at her sculpting prowess! |
| 204 | ** Special effects work, which is really what the show does, requires a good measure of artistic work. Also, more than once the show has shown Kari serving as a "stage manager" of sorts, which, ask a theater professor, is a crucial and unforgiving job. |
| 205 | * One thing that bugs me about Kari... she's got no problem messing around with bones, blood, pig corpses, etc. (and even commented in one episode that she thought blood was beautiful), but she freaks at a little bit of meat! Yeah, I get it, she's vegan and all, but seriously, with all the other stuff she handles in her day-to-day duties, you'd think a little bit of muscle fiber clinging onto a pig's spine wouldn't bother her too much... |
| 206 | ** Two possibilities. Either it was because that was before she got so used to it, or, given the delight the show was taking in her reaction, she was asked to continue the "I'm a vegetarian" grossed-out-ness after that one comment. |
| 207 | *** Maybe it was just the manner in which Tory was playing with the pig spine that grossed her out so much. |
| 208 | *** If you look at the earlier episodes with Kari, she's much more grossed by the dead animal chunks -- I think she's just getting numb. |
| 209 | *** "Vegan" seems to be the incorrect term here, as she was seen eating Cheese in the Cheese Cannonball segment. In one episode, she specifically stated she was a Vegetarian, not the same thing. |
| 210 | *** And according to an interview, during her pregnancy she craved (and, yes, ate) lots and lots of beef stew. |
| 211 | *** In other interviews, she stated that she just says vegetarian because that's what people understand; she is actually pescatarian. |
| 212 | *** If we're talking specifically pig spine, that was a Season 3 episode ("Ming Dynasty Astronaut," testing the "Ceiling Fan of Death" myth), so it was still early days before Kari had started getting used to meat being involved in [=MythBusters=] tests. |
| 213 | * Does Jamie actually ''like'' any of his staff? Adam seems to get on his nerves an awful lot. He shares more screen time with his mysterious 'Myth-tern' Jess than Kari. And if his idea of 'messing around' is what Adam gets up to, then how does he react to some of the stunts Tory pulls? Grant seems to command more respect than the rest of them put together. Or is Jamie just a [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold nice guy]] really? |
| 214 | ** I've seen some behind the scenes stuff, and a speech by Adam at a convention, and it sounds like, according to the rest of the cast and crew, Jamie is actually a nice guy, just fairly anal about certain things (like cleanliness) |
| 215 | ** He likes them, he's just not very warm. This [=INTJ=] troper is told he's the same way. |
| 216 | *** INTJ = I'm Not The Jamie? Elaborate! |
| 217 | *** It's the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator Myers-Briggs Type Indicator]]. It (supposedly) means he's an Introverted, iNtuitive Thinker who Judges (instead of Perceiving). Myers-Briggs is popular but it's a very crude tool if it measures anything useful at all. |
| 218 | ** Adam and Jamie did "[=MythBusters=] Live" as a benefit for the High School where Jamie's [=RL=] wife works. During the Q & A, Adam said firmly "We're not friends; we don't hang out, we don't go to dinner together." But I did get that they respected each others' skills. |
| 219 | *** That said, this troper gets the feeling that they would be better friends if they weren't spending sixty hours a week together. The amount of laughter they manage to get out of each other would be pretty unrealistic if they didn't at least like each other. |
| 220 | ** I believe Jess was hired by Jamie for M5 from viewer challenge episode and they tried to work her into the show, but she was mostly a third wheel with the build team and could barely fit in between Jamie and Adam. |
| 221 | ** He does; but their personalities are a lot different. They have warmed up to each other a little more in recent years, notably. (Watch some of the like 2006 episodes then compare them to a recent episode) |
| 222 | ** It's probably just a matter of dissimilar lifestyles/interests rather than any sort of like/dislike. Like the person at work you get along with, respect, and otherwise get along, but beyond work, you have little in way of reasons to do anything with. After all, they do have very different personalities and while they're probably very professional at work, it's pretty plain that in casual life, such personalities might have a lot more friction without that focus on work. |
| 223 | * Why are Kari, Grant and Tory called the "Build Team"? Adam and Jamie build stuff too. |
| 224 | ** I think it's a legacy title, back from before they were full-on cast members. They used to do a lot of grunt work behind the scenes and were called the "build-team" back then, but got more and more screen time but the term stuck. |
| 225 | ** They really aren't called that anymore; the narrator just uses their three names. I kinda wish they had ''a'' official name, though. Yes, they are Mythbusters, but "''The'' Mythbusters" are Jamie and Adam, not them. |
| 226 | * Why is Adam called a redhead in the "No Pain, No Gain" myth? His hair is dirty blonde! |
| 227 | ** He's gone gray since the show started (gee, I wonder why?). His hair is much redder in early episodes, and remember that film clip of his Charmin commercial appearance? I think that's a trait of red hair; my brother is a natural redhead, and as he's aged he's gone very close to Adam's current hair color. |
| 228 | * So, if Jamie Hyneman is the Walrus (goo goo g'joob), then who among the cast is the Eggman and who is the Carpenter? |
| 229 | ** Adam Savage's shiny forehead probably qualifies him as the eggman. The carpenter could be any of the cast, really |
| 230 | ** I think Jamie is all three. Bald head: Eggman. Mustache: Walrus. Mad engineering skills: Carpenter. The function of the beret is obviously to keep his apocalyptic powers in check. |
| 231 | *** Just for the hell of it: I believe the sound you're looking for is "goo goo g'joob." "Coo coo kachoo" is from Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson." |
| 232 | ** This troper always thought Jamie was really Dr. Eggman from the Sonic series in disguise... |
| 233 | ** Eggman is ''also'' all three: walrus mustache, bald head and engineering genius. If these two ever meet, they'll be an unstoppable [[TakeOverTheWorld world domination]] team. |
| 234 | ** Most importantly, what would Jamie do if someone got his bukket? |
| 235 | *** He'd whine for a few seconds, and then come to his senses and build a better bukket, with a motion sensor, a secret compartment, and a cupholder. |
| 236 | *** Then he'd [[MadBomber blow it up]]. |
| 237 | ** TheWalrusWasPaul. |
| 238 | ** Wait a tic...If Jamie's the Walrus and Adam's the Carpenter, then that must mean...the myths are the oysters! And Discovery Channel is Tweedledee/Tweedledum! And ''we're'' Alice! And the Red Queen is FOX! |
| 239 | ** And EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory! |
| 240 | Eh... Myth Plausible.... |
| 241 | * Is any of the things about Jamie's past described by the cast actually true? |
| 242 | ** Probably the first few to have been named. Then they ran away with it! |
| 243 | ** You can probably trust the ones that manifest in the show itself. For instance, no amount of pretending to be a scuba instructor would get me to trust him sitting behind me in a sinking car with my safety air. If you try, you can live a fairly varied life, you know; it doesn't have to be forty years of office jobs if you don't want it to be. |
| 244 | *** Yes it does, unless you're already rich. |
| 245 | *** Actually, Jamie's "real" jobs, according to Wikipedia, include boat captain, scuba instructor, machinist, and linguist. Those are all well-paying jobs. |
| 246 | *** No it doesn't, unless you're obsessed with making money and/or were born without a personality. |
| 247 | *** Or you don't want to, at best, barely scrape by, hoping that you don't lose your home. |
| 248 | ** Very true. I knew a guy who had been a pastor, an English teacher, and a driving instructor during different parts of his life (he did driving when I met him); somewhere in there he'd also managed to snag an important position in a bookstore, get married and have kids. |
| 249 | *** To be fair, if you're already a Main/HighSchool teacher, adding "driving instructor" is easy. Sometimes the trick is ''not'' getting stuck teaching summer Driver's Ed. |
| 250 | ** Anything's possible, my dad has managed to be both an undertaker's apprentice, pastry chef, staff seargent, shooting instructor, private detective, free boxer, private security, ticket checker and... busdriver. Yes, he is very old. Sadly, he have to this day never fulfilled his biggest dream, being a sailor. |
| 251 | *** You don't have to be very old: I'm only 43 and a former soldier, firefighter, lobster fisherman, DJ, and television camerman. Right now I'm simultaneously geologist, fire ''chief'', writer, and 3D modeller/artist. I fully expect to add a few more in the future. |
| 252 | ** I'm pretty sure that much of his prior careers are noted on Website/TheOtherWiki, and are verified true. |
| 253 | ** Personally, I'd take anything Adam says not with a grain of salt, but the whole salt shaker. He admitted in an online interview to deliberately making up Jamie-history. ([[http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/mythbusters_interview_par.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890 Want the link?]] ) |
| 254 | ** Theodore Roosevelt, nuff said. |
| 255 | *** Jamie was Theodore Roosevelt? |
| 256 | ** I'd imagine anything that isn't played for laughs. I'm pretty sure he didn't use to be a 19th century miner or a hitman for the mob, but the more reasonable things like scuba instructor and pet shop owner. |
| 257 | ** After the guy mentions he's trained goldfish in the past, ''as he is using that experience to flawlessly train goldfish again to bust a myth'', anything is possible. |
| 258 | * Is there a reason why the team (specially Scottie) hates Christine? I remember in the "Talking to the Plants" myth Scottie sent an insult to her. |
| 259 | ** Really? I never got any feelings that they hated her or interacted with her in any negative way. The 'insult' was just for a myth IIRC. She honestly really didn't get any camera time except with Jamie. What made you think that? |
| 260 | * Does anyone know why the narrator kept referring to Grant as an 'battle-bot champion', despite the fact he never won anything? (His best was coming second in the first season, but there was only 3 rounds in that competition, and his victories was against an thwack-bot and an walker so i wouldn't call that particularly impressive) |
| 261 | ** Grant was a dominant competitor in his division, and while the title of 'Champion' is inaccurate (as, indeed, he was never the champion) calling him a champion is far fewer words than explaining his actual position and role while still being close enough for the show's purposes. As an interesting side-note, Adam and Jamie ''are'' Battlebots champions, having been awarded the title in 1995. |
| 262 | [[/folder]] |
| 263 |
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