Let There Be Light: I have to say, Adam's plan for determining how little light the human eye needed seemed overly elaborate and hazardous. A maze of champagne glasses? All that broken glass flying around? Seems risky, or at least needlessly difficult to clean up. Couldn't they have used something else to be knocked over, something that would make noise but not sustain (or potentially cause) damage?
The comparison of metal vs. glass mirrors was fascinating. An interesting point that too good a mirror actually reduces the ambient light because there's less diffusion. But I guess the difference was outweighed by the sheer brightness of the xenon spotlight in the second test. And it looked to me like enough of the light reflecting off the mirrors was spreading out beyond the mirrors -- i.e. the radius of the cone of light where it intersected the next mirror was larger than the radius of the mirror, so there was spillover -- and that would've created the necessary diffusion.
All in all, it's surprising how plausible the setup from The Mummy was. Sure, the actual lighting in the movie was far beyond reality, but that was for the audience's convenience; the basic premise, that sunlight and mirrors could light a tomb enough for people to see its contents clearly, was borne out. Imaigne something from The Mummy being plausible.
Well, except for the obvious fact that it only works for a couple of minutes at a time, in good weather, and depending on how the tomb is constructed, probably only at certain times of year or even times of day. And yeah, Adam had a good point that after 3000 years, the polish would've gone off the mirrors.
I loved the ending. I was wondering what this secret, special thing Jamie wanted to try was... and it was just using his legendary white shirt to scatter the light! And it worked fantastically well! All hail the shirt! The shirt is powerful! Cower before its mighty whiteness!
Bumper Cars: A pretty interesting one in concept. I've seen the "pull ahead and brake" technique used in TV to stop runaway cars going downhill, for instance. Interesting to see it tested for real, though they didn't try it downhill.
It's surprising how effective the technique was, at least on a big empty runway. On a freeway with other occupied lanes of traffic, that sideways swerving on the jammed-accelerator test would mean certain doom. And of course it requires some degree of stunt-driving training.
That "PIT" maneuver (I'm assuming it's an acronym) is one I recall them doing before, and it's intriguing and scary how easy it is to put a car into a spin. And it underlines the fakery of Hollywood action scenes, since in movies and TV, people trying to run other cars off the road always come up right alongside them and push against their center of mass, which obviously isn't going to do that much, and is done partly to be safe and partly to prolong the action scene.
This is one of those myths where it's maybe too plausible, so they run out of tests too soon and have to make up a contrived build-off challenge to pad it out. (I miss the days when they would often do three myths per episode -- less padding.) Although the results were unexpected. Grant's rig was straightforward enough, but I never expected Tory's harpoon thingy to work. I thought it'd just rip off the trunk lid, or tear through it.
I liked the parody of "season finale" promos in the ad for next week's episode (at about :51 in) -- "Who will survive?" Although it's disappointing that the season finale is coming so soon.
The comparison of metal vs. glass mirrors was fascinating. An interesting point that too good a mirror actually reduces the ambient light because there's less diffusion. But I guess the difference was outweighed by the sheer brightness of the xenon spotlight in the second test. And it looked to me like enough of the light reflecting off the mirrors was spreading out beyond the mirrors -- i.e. the radius of the cone of light where it intersected the next mirror was larger than the radius of the mirror, so there was spillover -- and that would've created the necessary diffusion.
All in all, it's surprising how plausible the setup from The Mummy was. Sure, the actual lighting in the movie was far beyond reality, but that was for the audience's convenience; the basic premise, that sunlight and mirrors could light a tomb enough for people to see its contents clearly, was borne out. Imaigne something from The Mummy being plausible.
Well, except for the obvious fact that it only works for a couple of minutes at a time, in good weather, and depending on how the tomb is constructed, probably only at certain times of year or even times of day. And yeah, Adam had a good point that after 3000 years, the polish would've gone off the mirrors.
I loved the ending. I was wondering what this secret, special thing Jamie wanted to try was... and it was just using his legendary white shirt to scatter the light! And it worked fantastically well! All hail the shirt! The shirt is powerful! Cower before its mighty whiteness!
Bumper Cars: A pretty interesting one in concept. I've seen the "pull ahead and brake" technique used in TV to stop runaway cars going downhill, for instance. Interesting to see it tested for real, though they didn't try it downhill.
It's surprising how effective the technique was, at least on a big empty runway. On a freeway with other occupied lanes of traffic, that sideways swerving on the jammed-accelerator test would mean certain doom. And of course it requires some degree of stunt-driving training.
That "PIT" maneuver (I'm assuming it's an acronym) is one I recall them doing before, and it's intriguing and scary how easy it is to put a car into a spin. And it underlines the fakery of Hollywood action scenes, since in movies and TV, people trying to run other cars off the road always come up right alongside them and push against their center of mass, which obviously isn't going to do that much, and is done partly to be safe and partly to prolong the action scene.
This is one of those myths where it's maybe too plausible, so they run out of tests too soon and have to make up a contrived build-off challenge to pad it out. (I miss the days when they would often do three myths per episode -- less padding.) Although the results were unexpected. Grant's rig was straightforward enough, but I never expected Tory's harpoon thingy to work. I thought it'd just rip off the trunk lid, or tear through it.
I liked the parody of "season finale" promos in the ad for next week's episode (at about :51 in) -- "Who will survive?" Although it's disappointing that the season finale is coming so soon.
