Heads up! MYTHBUSTERS season premiere tonight at 9 Eastern!

[Christopher]

Hmm, maybe, but a tie just doesn't look enough like an ascot. Maybe a scarf would've been better.

[Trekker4747]

True, but since you and I instantly, apparently, recognized it as Fred then their attempt worked.

[Christopher]

^Nope -- the only reason I know it was supposed to be Fred is because the only other characters left were a girl and a dog.

[Christopher]

A set of mini-myths this week.

I was surprised to find that "I know it like the back of my hand" actually proved valid. And I was surprised along with Adam that people didn't know their teeth even better, although the difference between the two was only 10/12 vs. 11/12, which is well within the margin of error. Also interesting that recognizing one's own palm gave results no better than a random guess... or, no, wait, I think Adam was wrong about that. After all, it was a choice between ten different palms, not two. So random chance would've given more like 10% correct results, and they got a shade over 50%. So not as good as with the back of the hand, but still significantly better than chance.


On the needle-throwing myth, I don't think the sheet in the viral video looked like glass -- from the way it was punctured, it seemed more like some kind of plastic, or maybe the breakaway sugar glass that's used in TV and movies. Anyway, the best part was the audience of cutouts for the baseball pitcher, including cutouts of Adam, Jamie, an Apollo astronaut, and the Gorn.


On the underwater bike, it was interesting that Adam was more buoyant fully submerged than half-submerged. I guess that's because more of his body was underwater, and since the density of the body is about equal to that of water, and lower than the density of the bike (since the bike sank), that means that the more of the body was submerged, the greater the buoyancy of the combined bike-rider system became.

My first thought about increasing the traction of the bike was to fill the tires with water. That way, the weight is concentrated toward the bottom and the bike would be more stable. Also it would make the wheels more massive and the gyroscope effect would create more stability. (This is an old trick for making a bicycle stay upright without a rider. It was used in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for the live-action bicycle that was being "ridden" by a toon in one shot.) Adam's approach was similar, though he was going for softness and traction rather than mass redistribution (anyone know how the density of corn syrup compares to water?). And the gyroscope effect wouldn't even kick in with the wheels turning so slowly.

I wonder if it would've been possible to modify the wheels with some kind of paddles on the sides. But how to get them past the frames holding the wheels in?


On the, err, other myth, I really don't want to talk about it much, but I did kind of wonder how the differences between male and female anatomy in that, err, region might've affected the results.

[Forbin]

Christopher wrote:

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As I recall, there was water being heated externally and then fed through the tubing into the dummy's body. So kinda like a dialysis machine, except with a heater instead of a filter.

But how's the dog going to tell you whether it detects fear or not?

By attacking?

Or, how do they tell you when they detect drugs and bombs?

[Trekker4747]

Christopher wrote:

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On the, err, other myth, I really don't want to talk about it much, but I did kind of wonder how the differences between male and female anatomy in that, err, region might've affected the results.

Ohhhh. You're no fun. We're all -mostly- adults here. I think we can handle talking about pee in a show where Jamie and Adam have handled dead animals and feces and Tory has even sewn together various bits of dead animals together to make a human analog. Is pee really that much worse than a great deal many other things they've done in this show?

[UssGlenn]

Christopher wrote:

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I wonder if it would've been possible to modify the wheels with some kind of paddles on the sides. But how to get them past the frames holding the wheels in?

I was thinking more along the lines of a couple wings angled to create downforce.

[Christopher]

UssGlenn wrote:

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I was thinking more along the lines of a couple wings angled to create downforce.

That would give you traction, but it wouldn't do much for thrust. Water is much denser than air, so you'd need an extra source of thrust to compensate, some sort of paddles or propellers.

Hmm, maybe the "wings" could be attached to the rear axle and some kind of gear system could make them flex up and down like a whale's tailfin.

[Forbin]

Having the shy bladder, I'm impressed that the guys could pee with everyone standing around outside the TARDI- er, porta-potty.

And they actually aired Tory implying that dancing with Kari gave him a boner!

[Redfern]

You think the producers might have pushed the "pee" myth just so we'd have footage of Kari clutching her "region of wonders" in a comical fashion?

Sincerely,

Bill

[Christopher]

Forbin wrote:

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And they actually aired Tory implying that dancing with Kari gave him a boner!

I didn't get that impression at all. He just said it would be awkward, i.e. embarrassing, if he lost bladder control while he was right next to her.

Redfern wrote:

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You think the producers might have pushed the "pee" myth just so we'd have footage of Kari clutching her "region of wonders" in a comical fashion?

No, I don't think they'd be so immature and sexist. If they were prone to that kind of exploitative thinking, we would've seen evidence by now. If anything, the trend has been in the opposite direction, since the closest focus on her anatomy came in her very first appearance in the show (when she modelled for an artificial posterior), and the episode where she appeared in a bikini was many seasons ago.

[TheSeeker]

Yeah, I agree with Christopher. I think Tori was definitely referring to losing bladder control.

I must have missed the episode with Kari in a bikini. I know she posed for either Stuff magazine or Maxim years ago but that's the only time I can remember seeing her in a bikini.

[Christopher]

It was one of their shark myth episodes where they were out on a boat.

[Forbin]

I need to wash my mind out with soap.

[Christopher]

Mattress dive: I was skeptical of this one the moment I heard it. I'm surprised Adam thought it was counterintuitive that it didn't work. Why would landing on a mattress in a pool be safer than landing in the pool? The mattress is more solid. It's not going to give way as much as the water would.

Anyway, the SynDaver was pretty cool. It is a really effective human analog for measuring injuries and such. And it seemed to behave more naturally on hitting the water than the more rigid Simulaid.

Jamie having to give up on the diving test because of his back and letting the stuntman do it made me realize that this show's been around a long time now, and if it goes on for years longer, the guys may have to depend more on surrogates to do the big stunts for them. Oh, well.


Stone cannonball: I'm pleased they went ahead with this experiment prefaced with an apology for the infamous mishap last December, rather than just burying the whole thing. Showing their test procedure and the safety precautions they took helped to demonstrate what a fluke it was that the shot went wrong. Although I would've liked to see a special episode that was built all around both the experiment itself and an examination of how the accident happened. I guess they thought that would be too exploitative, but as I argued at the time, I think it would've helped make something positive out of the accident if it could've been used as a learning opportunity. Plus it was a classic Mythbusters situation, an incredible fluke event that shouldn't be possible but somehow happened.

Anyway, the actual cannon myth was pretty straightforward aside from all that, although I was surprised at how porous the limestone cannonball was. But what bugged me was Grant saying this was probably the first time in 400 years anyone had fired a stone cannonball -- when Adam and Jamie fired a granite cannonball years ago in their tree cannon episode! You'd think the show's writers and researchers would've caught that.