Mythbusters 7x02 "Alaska Special 2" - Discuss and Grade
- Thread starter Hermiod
- Start date
Great! I've been interested in Pykrete for a long time now (don't really know what it has to do with Alaska though), should be fun to see what they do with that. 
IIRC, Pykrete is basically ice with other stuff mixed in.
When was the first Alaska special? I thought I'd seen every episode but I don't remember seeing that. Was it a long time ago?
Maybe two years?
Probably not even that long ago.
They tested Cabin Fever, dynamyte burrying a car in a frozen lake and if speeding "through" a moose limits the damage to your car.
(Echo-induced avalanches may have been in that specail too.)
EDIT.
The Echo Avalanche wasn't in the first Alaska special which aired a year ago, less a week.
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I definitely want to see this. I recorded The Alaskan Experiment after Deadliest Catch last night as I couldn't stay up until 11.
I'm kinda getting my fix with this Alaska Week stuff. I've wanted to go there for 10 years or so and am finally going in a little less than 2 months.
I'm kinda getting my fix with this Alaska Week stuff. I've wanted to go there for 10 years or so and am finally going in a little less than 2 months.
I sort of remember the cabin fever one. Maybe I just saw snippets of the episode or something. Hmm.
Pykrete boat: I recall this being discussed a lot on the Unofficial Mythbusters Fan Club forum; nice to see that the people pushing for this myth finally got their wish. I'm impressed by how well the stuff worked, and allowing for that, not too surprised by the outcome. I think that maybe Mr. Pyke only intended his hypothetical craft to be used in "the icy waters of the North Atlantic," to quote The Middleman. It seems unlikely that he ever would've intended it to be operated outside of freezing conditions. Aside from that, I can't add anything to what Adam & Jamie said. And it was very clever upgrading to newspaper.
Snowplow split: Not surprising that it didn't work; it's pretty much intuitively obvious that you can't slice an engine block in two that easily. But it was actually very surprising that it essentially worked on everything except the engine block. If that second car had been engineless, I'm sure it would've torn into three pieces: right side, left side, and roof.
That testing facility with the embedded track was impressive. They could've used it in some of their earlier myths.
Kari's pregnancy is definitely showing, most clearly in the bit where she was talking with the test-facility guy about how fast the car could get. But in the host segments, they were clearly trying to hide her pregnancy, or at least to hide how much more advanced it was than in the other scenes. But they're obviously not calling attention to it.
I've been wondering if there are any pregnancy-related myths that they could ethically, safely test with Kari's help.
Snowplow split: Not surprising that it didn't work; it's pretty much intuitively obvious that you can't slice an engine block in two that easily. But it was actually very surprising that it essentially worked on everything except the engine block. If that second car had been engineless, I'm sure it would've torn into three pieces: right side, left side, and roof.
That testing facility with the embedded track was impressive. They could've used it in some of their earlier myths.
Kari's pregnancy is definitely showing, most clearly in the bit where she was talking with the test-facility guy about how fast the car could get. But in the host segments, they were clearly trying to hide her pregnancy, or at least to hide how much more advanced it was than in the other scenes. But they're obviously not calling attention to it.
I've been wondering if there are any pregnancy-related myths that they could ethically, safely test with Kari's help.
last week's episode was fun: especially the bus....this episode is mediocre at best....i love mythbusters and i watch it as much as i can but sometimes i almost makes me want to sleep....
Interesting episode. I was impressed with the "pykrete" even though it has no practical uses.
The splitting the car in two was an obvious one that wouldn't work and I figured they'd have to resort to "helping" it by making the blade of the blow more likely to split the car by altering its shape/point and sharpening it. If the blade of the plow tidn't have an "upwards ramp" to it or had been taller it would've likely sliced the roof as well, but nothing would get through the enigne block.
It's always neat to see cars get destroyed though.
I guess I don't have many complaints or see any flaws in their logic this week.
But imagine this: You're in high-school. Your principal or teachers tell you that the Mythbusters are coming and they want your help testing a myth! Cool!! Oh. You have to handle an endless bulk of dirty, inky, wet newspapers.
The splitting the car in two was an obvious one that wouldn't work and I figured they'd have to resort to "helping" it by making the blade of the blow more likely to split the car by altering its shape/point and sharpening it. If the blade of the plow tidn't have an "upwards ramp" to it or had been taller it would've likely sliced the roof as well, but nothing would get through the enigne block.
It's always neat to see cars get destroyed though.
I guess I don't have many complaints or see any flaws in their logic this week.
But imagine this: You're in high-school. Your principal or teachers tell you that the Mythbusters are coming and they want your help testing a myth! Cool!! Oh. You have to handle an endless bulk of dirty, inky, wet newspapers.
I'm wondering if there's a way to improve on the newspapers. Maybe long, continuous reams of paper direct from a paper mill? And instead of just laying them atop one another, weave them together. Although that would probably be hard to do with paper that's saturated with water.
They made a couple mistakes about the Pykrete-"myths" imo, firstly that material wasn't intended to be used for an actual ship, but something like an artificial island. More or less stationary, not constantly moving like a carrier and possibly miles long - which I'd guess is also the reason Pykrete is originally made from woodchips, because it's simply easier to manufacture on a big scale that way than with the newspaper-version the Mythbusters used.
Operation Habakuk
Operation Habakuk
Weaving them would work. I aslo would think a studerier "paper" if not thin cardboard would add some structure to it (i.e. what they built would be rendered floppy as it "melts.")
I still don't see it as a practical building material.
On bi-secting the car, I wonder what would happen if it was just a sharp blade stuck in the ground for the car to impact. Not like a plow or triangular piece just a tall, straight, blade (with some sort of structure on top of or around it to make sturdy). The problem with the blow was that it was ramped up which pushed the car upwards (meaning the roof didn't get cut) and the structure of the blade smahed up the car as much as it sliced it.
But, really, I can't think of anything "wrong" in this episode. That track-based crash-test system would be ideal to use though for myths where the accuracy of the impact is important. Like in last week's "pancaked" car myth.
But, again, I can't really think of anything to comment on this episode. Not a lot of "substance" in this episode as the myths were testing and absurd accident scenario that I think we all know isn't possible (who drives 50 miles an hour in a blizzard white-out conditions? Plus they had to "help" the myth a lot for it to work) and a fascinating and interesting if impractical and useless building material.
Next week looks to be mediocre episode too. One of the "myths" I've already seen tested on a similar themed show on Food Network -and I also think we know it's an exagerated "myth."
Above Average from me.
For the record...
It is possible to build a boat out of Pykrete - Plausible (but ludicrous). The Pykrete proved to be bulletproof and was able to hold a weight of over 300lb. Their Pykrete (constructed using a modified version of the material using newspaper instead of saw wood) boat was able to reach a speed of 23mph before springing several leaks. It was said, however, that the material is highly impractical.
Car Splitting Snow Plow - Busted. A front engined car only suffered a broken bumper and the "driver" did not survive. A heavily sharpened and improved plow split a front engined car with the engine moved to the back to the engine block but still did not split it completely and there was no way the driver or the passenger could have survived.
For the record...
It is possible to build a boat out of Pykrete - Plausible (but ludicrous). The Pykrete proved to be bulletproof and was able to hold a weight of over 300lb. Their Pykrete (constructed using a modified version of the material using newspaper instead of saw wood) boat was able to reach a speed of 23mph before springing several leaks. It was said, however, that the material is highly impractical.
Car Splitting Snow Plow - Busted. A front engined car only suffered a broken bumper and the "driver" did not survive. A heavily sharpened and improved plow split a front engined car with the engine moved to the back to the engine block but still did not split it completely and there was no way the driver or the passenger could have survived.
Indeed. The stuff "works" but it's just not practical. It's "possible" but just not useful.
Yeah. The thing is the body of a car is made out of plastic and sheet metal -even the chassis isn't made of much more than sturdy light-weight thin metal- but the engine is a big, heavy, block of sturdy, dense metal that's got to be resilient to extreme temperatures. There's going to be no sharpened piece of anything that's just going to slice through it like the compratively weaker rest of the car's bulk -most of which is empty space!
It was just another "fun" myth full of destruction and mayhem and wrecking cars. Which is fun enough.
I did like how the pykrete boat myth was edited in the show alluding to the raincoat Alkatraz raft from way back in the first season. That was the episode that got me hooked on this show.
I don't think it's practical either, but especially not in the way the Mythbusters used it. The thought the British military had regarding Pykrete in WWII was essentially making one gigantic ice-cube out of it and float it somewhere in the North Atlantic, not use it as a replacement for steel as a regular ship frame.
The finished project was supposed to have a displacement of over 2 million tons and be at least 600m long. They made a small scale 30x60 feet model weighing 1000 tons - which took three years to melt...
Can anything be added to water to raise its melting point?
