Archimedes Ray 3.0: I like the idea of this, the President talking about the importance of science education and citing the Mythbusters as a positive example. I just wish it had been a new myth instead of a retest of one that's been done twice already. It seemed that the whole thing was basically just an excuse to do something that would let a lot of schoolkids participate in the myth, which I guess is worthwhile in the context of the President's message, but doesn't necessarily make for the most entertaining myth.
Still, it had a couple of high points. Adam's epiphany about using the net as an aiming system was inspired. It let everyone's beam of light serve as its own gunsight, since you've got two points of illumination, the one on the net and the one on the sail, to keep aligned. That was terrific.
I was also intrigued by Jamie's observation at the end, about how you can learn new things from an experiment that doesn't go the way you expect. That was an intriguing thought, that maybe the purpose of the weapon wasn't to ignite enemy ships but to blind and disorient the enemy. So it could be that Archimedes did come up with something like this, but historians exaggerated or misunderstood its purpose. That new insight on Jamie's part made this revisit worthwhile.
Hellboy punch: This one was kind of interesting, in that the scene from the movie struck me as something that did kind of seem to make sense; I didn't think about it in detail, but it wasn't the kind of stunt that jumps out at me as obviously bogus physics. But then, as the Mythbusters actually tested it and broke it down, they illustrated just how many flaws in the idea I hadn't considered.
One problem that struck me was one they didn't even mention but that I thought was evident from the high-speed shots. Namely, a car has a suspension system that absorbs shocks; it's not a rigid lever arm. So that's going to work against the kind of transfer of momentum that they were looking for. It's not easy to get the wheels to leave the ground, because the suspension is specifically designed to keep them on the ground in spite of sudden shocks.
Now that I think about it, I think the reason it seemed plausible to me on first blush, and maybe why the filmmakers imagined it happening that way, is because it reminded me of what happens when a bicycle's front wheel hits an obstruction (something that Tory famously experienced some seasons back thanks to a little red wagon, and that I've personally experienced thanks to... well, I'm still not entirely sure what caused it). But of course the parameters are rather different there; most importantly, the center of mass is a lot higher.
Still, it had a couple of high points. Adam's epiphany about using the net as an aiming system was inspired. It let everyone's beam of light serve as its own gunsight, since you've got two points of illumination, the one on the net and the one on the sail, to keep aligned. That was terrific.
I was also intrigued by Jamie's observation at the end, about how you can learn new things from an experiment that doesn't go the way you expect. That was an intriguing thought, that maybe the purpose of the weapon wasn't to ignite enemy ships but to blind and disorient the enemy. So it could be that Archimedes did come up with something like this, but historians exaggerated or misunderstood its purpose. That new insight on Jamie's part made this revisit worthwhile.
Hellboy punch: This one was kind of interesting, in that the scene from the movie struck me as something that did kind of seem to make sense; I didn't think about it in detail, but it wasn't the kind of stunt that jumps out at me as obviously bogus physics. But then, as the Mythbusters actually tested it and broke it down, they illustrated just how many flaws in the idea I hadn't considered.
One problem that struck me was one they didn't even mention but that I thought was evident from the high-speed shots. Namely, a car has a suspension system that absorbs shocks; it's not a rigid lever arm. So that's going to work against the kind of transfer of momentum that they were looking for. It's not easy to get the wheels to leave the ground, because the suspension is specifically designed to keep them on the ground in spite of sudden shocks.
Now that I think about it, I think the reason it seemed plausible to me on first blush, and maybe why the filmmakers imagined it happening that way, is because it reminded me of what happens when a bicycle's front wheel hits an obstruction (something that Tory famously experienced some seasons back thanks to a little red wagon, and that I've personally experienced thanks to... well, I'm still not entirely sure what caused it). But of course the parameters are rather different there; most importantly, the center of mass is a lot higher.
