Mythbusters 2016 - FINAL SEASON!

[Christopher]

Each lighter may be of stronger or weaker metal.

I think they were using the kind of lighter specified in the myth, though.

What surprised me is that there's cotton inside the lighter. Although now that I think about it, I suppose it makes sense. I figured a lighter just had a hollow space inside for holding the fluid, but I guess there would need to be some kind of wick connecting the fluid to the flame no matter how low the fluid level gets. I guess that's what the cotton would be for.

 

[publiusr]

Speaking of wicks--the Mythbusters could have debunked spontaneous human combustion by showing it is really just the inside out wick effect.

 

[Christopher]

Speaking of wicks--the Mythbusters could have debunked spontaneous human combustion by showing it is really just the inside out wick effect.

Could you explain what you mean by "the inside out wick effect"? I thought spontaneous human combustion was pretty much a tabloid myth anyway. (Although I used to be very gullible about such things, and the idea that I could inexplicably burst into flame at any moment scared the willies out of me.)

 

[Christopher]

So... Gummy bear rockets. Is that even a myth? They used to at least explain where the myths came from. This seemed more like some question the fans asked them to test than a myth per se. Although I guess that describes a lot of their "myths" in the later seasons.

I wonder what was wrong with their hybrid rockets. The control test showed that something was wrong with the hybrid system they were using rather than with the candy fuel. How did that happen, though? Weren't they working with rocketry experts?

I'm not surprised that the candy didn't work as well as proper fuel, even once powdered and turned into solid rocket motors. It does, after all, have a lot of extra additives beyond the stuff that burns well. That's probably why the smoke was black, as well as why the thrust was less -- there were uncombusted particles in the exhaust, just dead weight.

Ditto with Jamie's, err, alternative fuel. No doubt there's a bunch of extra ingredients in that stuff. By the way, Jamie is not the first to propose that spaceship crews might use their waste as propellant to maximize efficiency. Here's a discussion of a similar proposal, although it assumes that solid waste would have to be "gasified" to be usable in an interplanetary ship's engines, but they're assuming solar electric propulsion (ion thrusters), which is more efficient for interplanetary travel -- though useless for getting from a planet's surface into space to begin with, but that's not a phase that would last long enough to require recycling waste to maximize efficiency. So Jamie had the right idea, but not all the facts.

 

[publiusr]

Could you explain what you mean by "the inside out wick effect"? I thought spontaneous human combustion was pretty much a tabloid myth anyway.

The clothed human body acts like an "inside-out" candle
From the wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wick_effect

You can get near total combustion--down to the feet where there are bones, due to wick effect combustion. The wick is actually the clothing on the outside that will sustain a small but prolonged guttering flame that can be destructive over time.

An arsonist may try to soak a victim with too much accelerant--but that will only char the outside.

Now, the body does not go up on its own. Most of these are elderly folks who may have fallen asleep, or had a "spell" and dropped a cigarette on themselves. Some bodies were found in the woods where a murderer used an "inadequate" amount of gasoline--accidently getting the low fuel requirement right.

You can get folks burning down to their feet.

A smart criminal might try for a wick effect, then stay in the house for several hours, dispose of the feet, then kick a gas line and exit. The house explodes, burns, and nothing is left.

No tell-tale fuel.

This may have happened several times. You see some folks who want to be heroes too much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leonard_Orr
Shades of the Chaosium RPG story of Cthugha

You don't just get trigger happy cops after all--even though that's in the news now.

 

[publiusr]

So they did a Reddit special.
'Shoud have filled the inflatable with a methane oxygen mix.

 

[Christopher]

Most of this "Reddit" episode was a waste of time, except for the paper bag myth, which was fun. My one critique is that the version of the taunt I've heard is "You couldn't punch your way out of a wet paper bag," so I wish they'd tried that version. I think it would've been pretty easy, though.

 

[Christopher]

Well, the end is at hand. Entertainment Weekly reports that the series finale of Mythbusters will air tomorrow night at 8 Eastern. Afterward at 9, though, will be a reunion/retrospective special starring Adam, Jamie, Kari, Grant, and Tory, along with some special guests including President Obama, James Cameron, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm hoping there will also be some acknowledgment of Scottie Chapman and recurring experts and honorary Mythbusters like Frank Doyle, Alan Normandy, etc.

 

[Forbin]

And that cute blonde who subbed for Kari when she was on maternity leave!

 

[publiusr]

I seem to remember her and Kari working together on something that came before Mythbusters...

 

[Christopher]

I seem to remember her and Kari working together on something that came before Mythbusters...

I don't think that's possible, since Mythbusters was Kari's first television work. Unless you mean that Kari and Jessi Combs appeared together somewhere before Combs's fill-in stint on Mythbusters in 2009. I can't find any evidence of that, though.

 

[Christopher]

Hold on... Didn't they say in the special at the start of the season that they were going to do a whole episode that was just "Let Jamie do whatever he wants, never mind the myths?" Did I miss that one? I was looking forward to that. Or was that just about the one where Jamie used explosives to try to flatten a car?

Note, though, that the promo and the schedule say that The Science Channel is showing a new episode, "Duct Tape: The Return," at 8 PM tomorrow (Sunday). Followed, apparently, by a separate Science Channel Reunion special. It's bizarre... Wikipedia lists that as episode 10 of this season, but for some reason it doesn't premiere until the day after the nominal finale? Also, apparently the reunion special was episode 11 and the grand finale episode 12, so all three of these episodes are airing in the reverse order. Holy anticlimax, Batman! (Although judging from the promo for it that they incorporated into the reunion special, it sounds like it was held back to be a draw for the "event" of the show's back catalog moving to The Science Channel.)

I'm afraid I found the finale somewhat disappointing. It was mostly just spectacle and nostalgia and "mayhem," with little in the way of actual science or investigation. It just shows how much more superficial the show has gotten over time. I wish they'd gone back to their roots and finished the way they began -- by actually busting myths, by tackling some questions they've never answered before. By actually learning something and letting the audience learn something along with them. All this destruction doesn't mean anything if it's just done for its own sake.

And why bracket it with two separate "let's blow up a vehicle" segments? Why not use the cement-mixer revisit for the ultra-high-speed camera test, and free up some time for something else that would've given more substance to the finale?

The reunion special was a far better retrospective, largely because Kari, Grant, and Tory were there (and it was nice to see them incorporated into the final-season main title sequence). But it makes the finale seem even more pointless by comparison. Why do a whole hour that's just nostalgic spectacle if you just have another hour of nostalgia after it? And the reunion special underlined the thing that made MythBusters important and that the finale lacked: The scientific method, the critical thinking, the asking of questions and the search for the answers. Like Tory said, the explosions and the spectacle were there as a tool that served the science. It's a shame the finale skipped that part. But the reunion special made up for it. That was a good, meaningful sendoff.

Well, I guess I'll be back here tomorrow to post about the -- ahem -- post-finale new episode on The Science Channel.

 

[intrinsical]

Honestly, what myth do you believe is worthy of being in the grand finale?

 

[Christopher]

Honestly, what myth do you believe is worthy of being in the grand finale?

That's what I wanted them to show me! Just something that was an actual experiment, an actual testing of a myth with a Confirmed, Plausible, or Busted result, rather than just a bigger rehash of something they'd already done. Ideally, something like the most important experiments they talked about in the special -- like the underwater car myth that's actually saved lives, or the methane-explosion and bullets-fired-up experiments where they added something substantial to the scientific literature. Something that illustrated the show's real substance as a science show, rather than just the superficial spectacle of crashes and booms. And maybe something big enough that they needed to bring back Kari, Grant, and Tory to work with them on the build, something in-depth enough to be the singular focus of the entire episode and be followed from start to finish as an illustration of their methodology, like they did with the tanker car collapse myth. That one would've been a solid finale in itself.

 

[Redfern]

I know they've done it three times, but I half expected (read: hoped) they'd attempt the JATO/RATO car myth one last time, this time finally replicating the results described in the myth and "bookending" the series.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Christopher]

At one point, when they were touting how they were setting off their biggest explosion ever, I had the idle thought that their last myth should've involved the one kind of explosion they've never worked with: a nuclear explosion. Sure, I know there are treaties banning aboveground nuclear tests, but hey, President Obama said he wanted them to let him blow something up, so maybe he could've pulled some strings....

 

[Push The Button]

At one point, when they were touting how they were setting off their biggest explosion ever, I had the idle thought that their last myth should've involved the one kind of explosion they've never worked with: a nuclear explosion. Sure, I know there are treaties banning aboveground nuclear tests, but hey, President Obama said he wanted them to let him blow something up, so maybe he could've pulled some strings....

That would have been awesome...

 

[Christopher]

Of course, in keeping with my earlier complaints, I would've wanted it to have some actual scientific/mythbusting value. So what kind of myth involving nuclear weapons could they have hypothetically tested -- without actually endangering human lives in the process? Maybe something about blast damage to different types of structure?

Ooh, ooh, I have one -- The common TV/movie myth that you can protect computers and electronics from EMP just by turning them off. In fact, the EMP itself induces a current in conductive materials, so they'll still be burned out even if they're powered down. You need electronics that are properly hardened (shielded) against EMP.

You know, there could be something to this. Maybe, instead of actually setting off a nuke, they could've used some device that would've let them simulate an EMP and test its effect on devices. Or maybe done some kind of scaled-down miniature build to simulate blast effects. They could've done a whole episode about "At last, the Mythbusters go nuclear! (Not really.)" It's the ultimate "Don't try this at home."

 

[Nerys Myk]

Of course, in keeping with my earlier complaints, I would've wanted it to have some actual scientific/mythbusting value. So what kind of myth involving nuclear weapons could they have hypothetically tested -- without actually endangering human lives in the process? Maybe something about blast damage to different types of structure?

Something with a fridge.

 

[ATimson]

Note, though, that the promo and the schedule say that The Science Channel is showing a new episode, "Duct Tape: The Return," at 8 PM tomorrow (Sunday). Followed, apparently, by a separate Science Channel Reunion special. It's bizarre... Wikipedia lists that as episode 10 of this season, but for some reason it doesn't premiere until the day after the nominal finale? Also, apparently the reunion special was episode 11 and the grand finale episode 12, so all three of these episodes are airing in the reverse order.

Rather than being held back to advertise the Science Channel reruns, I suspect that the Duct Tape episode was held back because Discovery was only willing to pay for the initially contracted episodes. It was that or the Reunion Special, and they chose the Reunion Special.

On my DVR it looks to me like the Science Channel reunion special is the same one that aired on Discovery yesterday.

While the Reunion Special may have been intended as episode #11, I think it worked better as the real finale, for the reasons you described. (And I also appreciated the touch of including them in the main titles.)

Holy anticlimax, Batman! (Although judging from the promo for it that they incorporated into the reunion special, it sounds like it was held back to be a draw for the "event" of the show's back catalog moving to The Science Channel.)

Except it's not really moving, it's been there for at least a couple of years.