MYTHBUSTERS 4/13: Blue Ice

[Christopher]

Bourne Magazine: (Was that meant to be a pun on "porn magazine?") Well, as usual, explosions happen far more easily in fiction than they do in reality. At first it seemed somewhat plausible in principle if not detail, since a toaster could ignite a magazine (eventually) and the methane mix necessary to get a kaboom seemed pretty flexible. But I guess real explosions are always more complicated to arrange than movies suggest.

I'm surprised that Jamie and Adam had to put out the fire themselves after that second test at the bomb range. Don't they usually have the fire department on hand for these things? Is it deemed unnecessary if it's at the bomb range where there's nothing around to burn down? Even so, it seems kind of dangerous.

The explosion they achieved at the end was fascinating to watch. The small-scale methane ignitions in slow motion were cool too, but this was much the same in real time -- essentially a blue bubble of combusting methane visibly expanding through the room, then setting flammable things on fire when it hit them and when the room burst open to let more air in. That was really intriguing and kind of beautiful. It just underlines for me how tiresome movie/TV explosions are. They always look exactly the same, a big orange roiling fireball. I got sick of the sameness of movie explosions a couple of decades ago, but Mythbusters has really driven home how much more variety there is to the appearance of real explosions, and it just makes movie pyrotechnicians seem so unimaginative, locked into their conventional approaches.

I think they should've also tested the part in the movie scene where the people in the front yard got blown back by the explosion. They should've arranged a few Busters/Simulaids around the fake building and seen what happened when the blast came.


Blue Ice: It's a little disturbing how plausible this one is (once you weed out the absurd idea that dumping the waste is something pilots do deliberately and routinely). Although it would be very rare for that kind of multiple malfunction in the plumbing to happen, and if it did, the odds of the ice ball hitting anyone would be extremely low.

I was uncertain how well the block of ice from a bucket worked as an analog for the rougher chunk that formed in the wind tunnel test. I figured the shape and texture of that might've made it more prone to breaking up. But they addressed that very point in the "Aftershow" segment on the Discovery website. I'm not 100% convinced by their reply, but they said the chunk from the wind tunnel was pretty solid, and that they decided a consistent shape for the ice projectile was important for comparison across multiple tests (although they only showed one).

 

[Trekker4747]

I would also think the lav water would be a different texture maybe "slushier" or "chunkier" than "solid." I would've been more satisfied if they had taken the chunk that fell off the wind-tunnel test and used that in the sky-diving test. I'm sure there's a way they couldve had it make the transfer without compromising it's consistency and integrity but, yeah, I guess we'll just have to accept their explanation that the chunk in the wind-tunnel was just as solid and large as the bucket one.

Fascinating myth and I'm surprise it was plausible I almost expected them to back-up their findings with re-world accounts of it happening (as they've done before.) The only question I had was one of the atmospheric pressurization of the plane.

From the way the explained it there three different valves/checkpoints between the lav and the sump door. If water is leaking from the lav bowl out the sump door it seems to be the atmospheric integrity of the plane would be compromised and the pilots would know their plane isn't fully pressurized.

Though I may have missed something in the explanations.

It cannot be said enough how hot Kari is. Something was just incredibly cute about her in the skydiving gear.

Interesting that this time around Jamie and Adam got the "movie myth" (which normally the Jr. Mythbusters get) but there tests were good and it was fun to watch even if the results were pretty much expected.

I did wonder how close the toaster was to the one supposedly in the movie. If it was a higher-powered/more efficient toaster it may have been able to ignite the paper sooner. I've not really seen much of the Bourne movies as the last time I saw one I got motion sickness, seizures, blacked out, and woke up a week later following an invasive brain-biopsy.

But I think the 30-seconds rule may have been stuck to too much. We all know movies play fast and loose with time frequently. It's possible that while 30-seconds may have passed on screen a few minutes could have passed in the "reality" of the movie.

Sometimes it even seems to me that movies show a more dramatic effect of something that what would "really" happen because it's more visually interesting or obvious on what happened. Seems to me in ideal conditions such an ignition system could work nicely to ignite your home on fire and probably thwart international assassins.

 

[Christopher]

I would also think the lav water would be a different texture maybe "slushier" or "chunkier" than "solid."

On the surface, maybe, but I'd imagine that the ice deeper down in the clump would've been more solidly fused. I'm thinking of things like the big piles of snow and ice that accumulate in winter when the streets are plowed and that take forever to melt. True, there's a lot of weight compressing the stuff at the bottom, and partial melting and refreezing would solidify it more, so maybe that's not a very good analogy. But I figure a lot of the gaps between bits of ice like you can see on the surface would be filled in deeper down, and once the rougher outer parts were eroded away by wind, you'd end up with a more solid core mass.

I would've been more satisfied if they had taken the chunk that fell off the wind-tunnel test and used that in the sky-diving test. I'm sure there's a way they couldve had it make the transfer without compromising it's consistency and integrity but, yeah, I guess we'll just have to accept their explanation that the chunk in the wind-tunnel was just as solid and large as the bucket one.

It would've been hard to preserve it, and it would've been nonrepeatable. Even though they only show one iteration of each test in the episodes, they usually do multiple tests, as they alluded to in the aftershow video, and they needed repeatability.

The only question I had was one of the atmospheric pressurization of the plane.

From the way the explained it there three different valves/checkpoints between the lav and the sump door. If water is leaking from the lav bowl out the sump door it seems to be the atmospheric integrity of the plane would be compromised and the pilots would know their plane isn't fully pressurized.

Well, if it's only a slow drip of water, there wouldn't be any air getting out, since the water would be providing a seal of sorts. The loss of that volume of water would cause a gradual diminution of internal pressure, though, assuming there's no new source of air to replenish it. I'm not sure whether it would be sufficient to signal an alert.

It cannot be said enough how hot Kari is. Something was just incredibly cute about her in the skydiving gear.

Yeah, she did look nice in that.

Unfortunately, the aftershow videos reveal that she's gone blonde since these episodes were shot, which is a shame, because the shade of red hair she has in these past couple of episodes is her best look.

I did wonder how close the toaster was to the one supposedly in the movie. If it was a higher-powered/more efficient toaster it may have been able to ignite the paper sooner.

Well, Adam said he's bought actual props from that movie series and has had contact with its prop supervisors, right? And they've done movie myths before where they (or their researchers) have contacted the actual prop makers from the movies in question and verified what the specific props they used were. I'd assume they did the same here. Heck, they even knew the exact dimensions of the apartment set, which suggests they contacted the set designers too.

And I'm not sure there would've been a way to ignite the paper sooner, not in that configuration. Generally you have to crumple paper up, leave it with a lot of air space on both sides, to get it to ignite quickly. When a magazine is flat and intact like that, with its pages pressed together, there's a lot less surface area exposed to the air and it's not going to burn as easily.

Sometimes it even seems to me that movies show a more dramatic effect of something that what would "really" happen because it's more visually interesting or obvious on what happened.

Yes, but my problem is that I find the conventional flashy liquid-fuel fireball to be less visually interesting than what the real methane explosion in this episode looked like. The explosion from the movie was just the same kind of explosion we've seen a million times in movies and TV, but that ethereal blue bubble of destruction in the real explosion was fascinating.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, Adam said he's bought actual props from that movie series and has had contact with its prop supervisors, right?

Yeah, but props are bought based on appearance, cheapness, and other factors none of which are that the machine is "right for the job." The actual toaster may have been only capable of so much but the "movie toaster" may have been a high-powered model or one that can deliver heat more efficiently. A the $10 Proctor-Silex toaster I have isn't the greatest device ever and prone to un-even cooking and even with the think cranked up to 10 half the time it'll barely char the bread. If I had a higher-end toaster with various settings, digital read-outs, zoned heating and internet-connectivity it'd probably do a better job of cooking things.

Yes, but my problem is that I find the conventional flashy liquid-fuel fireball to be less visually interesting than what the real methane explosion in this episode looked like. The explosion from the movie was just the same kind of explosion we've seen a million times in movies and TV, but that ethereal blue bubble of destruction in the real explosion was fascinating.

Yeah, but you're a smart guy. I find the pressure-wave explosions more fascinating that a fiery explosion, hell the "explosion" Jamie and Adam got with a failed water-heart was the most fascinating thing ever.

But movie makers see things differently and are all about the visuals and to your "average movie goer" that big flashy, orange, "boom" is more interesting that fire erupting out of seemingly nowhere and nearly invisible pressure waves.

Unfortunately, the aftershow videos reveal that she's gone blonde since these episodes were shot, which is a shame, because the shade of red hair she has in these past couple of episodes is her best look.

Damn. It's a scientific fact that blonde hair is less hot than red hair.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, but you're a smart guy. I find the pressure-wave explosions more fascinating that a fiery explosion, hell the "explosion" Jamie and Adam got with a failed water-heart was the most fascinating thing ever.

But movie makers see things differently and are all about the visuals and to your "average movie goer" that big flashy, orange, "boom" is more interesting that fire erupting out of seemingly nowhere and nearly invisible pressure waves.

But see, the thing is, I used to love those big fiery explosions, but I got tired of them even before I knew how unrealistic they were, simply because they always look the same. So it's not even an issue of intelligence or education, simply of the desire for novelty. I'd think that good filmmakers would want to find ways to do something fresh and original and visually unexpected rather than just rehash the same old visuals ad nauseam. They keep looking for new ways to shoot gunfights or martial-arts scenes or what-have-you. So why aren't they willing to be more experimental when it comes to pyrotechnics?

I keep hoping that eventually, as we get a new generation of fans and filmmakers who grew up on Mythbusters, the orange fireball explosion will become something of a discredited trope and there will be a demand for a fresh approach to cinematic pyrotechnics, something that better represents the diversity of real explosion types.

 

[Forbin]

I can't recall what I was watching last week, but it featured a tiny explosion to blow a lock off a door - but the sound effects guy used a standard, generic "huge echoing blast" sound that would have fit just as well with a whole building blowing. It made me laugh.

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, Hollywood sound-effects editors are just as trapped by cliche and convention as the pyrotechnicians, stunt coordinators, etc. What I'll never understand is how they always have thunder sound at the exact instant the lightning flashes. I mean, it's not esoteric knowledge that thunder is heard after the lightning is seen. It's something that essentially everyone on the entire planet, including Hollywood sound editors, has first-hand experience with. So how could they possibly get it wrong?

Then there was that Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode in which an actual plot point, discussed in dialogue, was that the characters were estimating the distance of a huge enemy cannon by timing how long it took for the sound to reach them after they saw it fire -- and the sound editor still put in a boom sound at the same instant the cannon was seen firing!!!

 

[Roger Wilco]

I was a little surprised about both myths this week. I thought gas explosions are more impressive in a real-life scenario (without an exact gas-air mixture) and not so much just a flame; even though it's Hollywood, that scene on Bourne didn't appear outrageously unrealistic to me.

And the ice-myth: I never really thought about it I guess, but when I was younger I believed that the waste just gets dumped out of the bottom of the plane (like it was in trains when I was a kid, seriously, you could look at the tracks through the hole in the toilet while flushing ); but it still has to be a super super freaky unlucky coincidence if someone gets actually hurt/killed by such an ice-block, I mean, crazy unlikely.

 

[Trekker4747]

^Yeah, Hollywood sound-effects editors are just as trapped by cliche and convention as the pyrotechnicians, stunt coordinators, etc. What I'll never understand is how they always have thunder sound at the exact instant the lightning flashes. I mean, it's not esoteric knowledge that thunder is heard after the lightning is seen. It's something that essentially everyone on the entire planet, including Hollywood sound editors, has first-hand experience with. So how could they possibly get it wrong?

Then there was that Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode in which an actual plot point, discussed in dialogue, was that the characters were estimating the distance of a huge enemy cannon by timing how long it took for the sound to reach them after they saw it fire -- and the sound editor still put in a boom sound at the same instant the cannon was seen firing!!!

Hell wasn't it a bit of a plot point or at least mentioned in Poltergeist?

 

[Trekker4747]

Watched the After Show(s).

Oh! Kari's hair doesn't look that bad it still has some red highlights in it. Infact I think she's had the hair style/coloring before.

 

[Christopher]

Still, it's just not the same.

 

[Trekker4747]

Still, it's just not the same.

Nope.

 

[LitmusDragon]

The blue ice myth is one time when I wished that they would still cover the folklore angle on this show. I would have been interested to see where the myth originated, if there were any real accounts in the news, etc. I miss that aspect of the show sometimes.

This was one of the more "sciency" episodes in a while and for that I liked it.

 

[Christopher]

The blue ice myth is one time when I wished that they would still cover the folklore angle on this show. I would have been interested to see where the myth originated, if there were any real accounts in the news, etc. I miss that aspect of the show sometimes.

I agree. It was cool when they actually engaged with the myths as myths -- as elements of folklore that revealed something about the way a culture viewed itself and its world. That way, they had a bit of sociology, cultural anthropology, and historiography going along with the "hard" sciences.

But they did show what appeared to be news video of a reputed "blue ice" incident -- shots of a damaged house and of people displaying a chunk of blue-tinged ice to the camera. So they touched on it, even if they didn't actually discuss it per se.