Blind driving with a navigator: I'm a bit bothered by the experimental design, with the navigator sitting in the back seat. In the scene from Scent of a Woman they're trying to replicate, the navigator (Chris O'Donnell, I think) is in the front passenger seat. That would give him a different eyeline, a different sense of perspective, from the driver's seat or the back seat, and affect his perceptions. I've become aware of this since, within the past few months, my father had to give up driving and I had to learn. And he's told me that, now that he's seeing the road from the passenger side, he keeps thinking I'm too far over in the lane, because his perspective has shifted. Which tells me that it isn't easy for someone in the front passenger seat to correctly gauge the position and motion of the car in order to navigate it well. But by sitting in the back seat in the middle/left, Adam and Jamie aren't replicating that same difficulty that O'Donnell's character would've had, so it's not really an accurate test of the scene. (Yes, I know driving instructors can navigate from the passenger's seat, but they're trained for that. I'm assuming O'Donnell's character wasn't a driving instructor by trade.)
That abandoned military base is a cool location, but it's kind of puzzling that it exists. I mean, this whole huge swath of land is just empty? Nobody's moved in to rezone or develop it? Why not? If there were something dangerous left over like toxins or unexploded mines, I assume they wouldn't let the Mythbusters tape there.
Anyway, their guest driver Jerry did a lot better than I did my first day -- but then, I probably would've been less nervous on completely empty roads like those. I wonder, is he someone who was formerly sighted and has past experience driving, or was this his first time ever behind the wheel of a car?
Golf/tree: First off, Kari was cute in the golf togs. Second -- that's not a robot Grant built, it's just a simple air cannon! I was expecting some mechanical wonder with a pneumatic actuator swinging a club. Phooey. Third, if the volume of a tree were 90% air, that wouldn't mean the surface cross-section was 90% empty, so the explanation of the premise of the myth was flawed.
Golf/lightning: It was pretty obvious that metal cleats wouldn't attract lightning -- I mean, they're way down at ground level. This was just an excuse to play with the lightning-generating facility again.
Golf/Caddyshack: Again, it was pretty obvious, at least to veteran Mythbusters viewers, that a real C4 explosion wouldn't produce big bright fireballs, which are only produced by liquid-fuel explosions. A long-lasting fireball means a low-energy explosion; anything with real kick is going to burn up or blow apart anything combustible in a split-second and just have a brief flash. As for the shock wave not knocking the ball in, that's a little surprising, but I guess the ground is soft and flexible enough to absorb the blast. Maybe with firmer ground, or a slightly different shape to the surface immediately around the hole, or with more luck, the ball would've fallen in.
That abandoned military base is a cool location, but it's kind of puzzling that it exists. I mean, this whole huge swath of land is just empty? Nobody's moved in to rezone or develop it? Why not? If there were something dangerous left over like toxins or unexploded mines, I assume they wouldn't let the Mythbusters tape there.
Anyway, their guest driver Jerry did a lot better than I did my first day -- but then, I probably would've been less nervous on completely empty roads like those. I wonder, is he someone who was formerly sighted and has past experience driving, or was this his first time ever behind the wheel of a car?
Golf/tree: First off, Kari was cute in the golf togs. Second -- that's not a robot Grant built, it's just a simple air cannon! I was expecting some mechanical wonder with a pneumatic actuator swinging a club. Phooey. Third, if the volume of a tree were 90% air, that wouldn't mean the surface cross-section was 90% empty, so the explanation of the premise of the myth was flawed.
Golf/lightning: It was pretty obvious that metal cleats wouldn't attract lightning -- I mean, they're way down at ground level. This was just an excuse to play with the lightning-generating facility again.
Golf/Caddyshack: Again, it was pretty obvious, at least to veteran Mythbusters viewers, that a real C4 explosion wouldn't produce big bright fireballs, which are only produced by liquid-fuel explosions. A long-lasting fireball means a low-energy explosion; anything with real kick is going to burn up or blow apart anything combustible in a split-second and just have a brief flash. As for the shock wave not knocking the ball in, that's a little surprising, but I guess the ground is soft and flexible enough to absorb the blast. Maybe with firmer ground, or a slightly different shape to the surface immediately around the hole, or with more luck, the ball would've fallen in.
