Mythbusters 7x07 "Seesaw Saga" - Discuss and Grade
- Thread starter Hermiod
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Really ? What channel ? I'm in the UK.
Discovery Channel - I asked the same question (are we getting it first) last week
Sorry about that, I would have responded if I'd seen it. What time ?
I keep missing these because Virgin cable tv keeps changing the channels we can get in our house. National Geographic and discovery keep on changing around, sometimes you can get them both, other times you cant get any. its the same with most channels on Virgin. I think its plausible. eh, people thought they couldn't polish poop!!
We're getting new episodes on Mondays at 8pm, and these polls seem to go up on the wee small hours of Wednesday morning... Which seems to imply the US is getting the same episode on Tuesday or Wednesday
^I put the polls up on Wednesday mornings or afternoons UK time. The episodes air in the US on Wednesday evenings, so the polls are timed to go along with that.
For me, as there's only one room in my house with Sky I might not be able to see it until Thursday anyway (i.e. after the US airing) but it's good to know it's on over here earlier.
I will start the polls on Mondays from now on. although I will add a spoiler warning in the title as well.
Edit - according to the Radio Times and the Discovery website the next episode is 7x02 "Alaska Special 2" on the 24th while the next episode in the US is 7x08 "Car vs Rain" on the 27th so it looks like the UK is going to drop back behind the US again.
For me, as there's only one room in my house with Sky I might not be able to see it until Thursday anyway (i.e. after the US airing) but it's good to know it's on over here earlier.
I will start the polls on Mondays from now on. although I will add a spoiler warning in the title as well.
Edit - according to the Radio Times and the Discovery website the next episode is 7x02 "Alaska Special 2" on the 24th while the next episode in the US is 7x08 "Car vs Rain" on the 27th so it looks like the UK is going to drop back behind the US again.
Cool! A show we get first!
Um, hang on, haven't we had this episode here as well - it's the one where they see if driving a convertible fast keeps the rain out off the seats, right? Someone lends them a nice silver Porsche, yeah? We had that a couple of weeks ago...
So I guess they're showing them out of order in the UK as well as ahead of the US... Weird.
Ooh, cool, it's rare that we get to see the two teams working together anymore.
And this sounds like another cartoon trope being tested. I like those.
Later this season they'll test to see if when George hits the "hers" button in the remote dresser if it's really possible for him to be dressed as a woman and not know it until he gets to work.
From the ads, it looks like this will be one of the better episodes from this run. I'm looking forward to it.
Average -- nothing special here, though seeing if they could see-saw the girl onto a building was fun.
Not a cartoon myth after all. Somebody on the fan site is apparently alleging that this really happened. But it's so obviously based on cartoon assumptions of physics. Adam didn't specify, but he's implying the skydiver survived, which is a blatant impossibility about on a par with jumping to survive a falling elevator (which they already busted quite spectacularly a few seasons ago).
As for the rest, okay, the first test did send the "girl" about two stories high, and that was with the deformation of the seesaw absorbing a lot of the energy. And then came Adam's scale test, which gave surprising results.
Although come to think of it, it's not that surprising that the "girl" flew higher than the lead ball was dropped from. It's basically the law of action and reaction. The doll had less mass than the lead ball, so if the lever (seesaw) transferred the ball's full momentum, it would've imparted a greater velocity and thus sent the doll to a greater height.
Still, she went pretty much straight up, so I doubt landing on the roof of an adjoining building is going to happen. Unless there's a mighty gust of wind or something.
The skydiver's camera suit is interesting. I can see why a camera operator shooting skydiving footage might have a need to adjust the speed of one's dive. What I don't get is why Grant and Tory had to jump at all when they weren't the ones in the suit. Sometimes this show goes overboard on having the hosts be the ones doing stuff rather than leaving it to the experts.
Not to mention the bungee jumps. Did they actually gather any data at all by jumping themselves? That was really just for show.
Jamie's heavy-duty seesaw is impressive, and a hilarious amount of effort to put into a seesaw, but if you have to go to such extreme lengths of engineering to achieve the result, doesn't that bust the myth right there?
"And yes, I do know what guts feel like. I've been on this show for years."
The bungee acceleration to terminal velocity was a good idea. I was thinking some kind of downward-pointing air cannon. Anyway, the full-scale test gave very impressive results. And I can see why the doll flew in an arc here rather than straight up and down. I mean, look at that monstrosity Jamie built -- that's not a teeter-totter, that there's a catapult. I think this result demonstrates more about Jamie's engineering skills than it does about the myth.
It also demonstrates how unlikely it is that the skydiver could actually land on the seesaw at all. However much they replicated the results, this myth was obviously a load of rubbish from the get-go. Made for a fun episode, though. I'd love to see more whole-team myths like this.
Oh, and that was a cruel shot at the end there, with the girl's little dolly falling to the ground. Ouch!
As for the rest, okay, the first test did send the "girl" about two stories high, and that was with the deformation of the seesaw absorbing a lot of the energy. And then came Adam's scale test, which gave surprising results.
Although come to think of it, it's not that surprising that the "girl" flew higher than the lead ball was dropped from. It's basically the law of action and reaction. The doll had less mass than the lead ball, so if the lever (seesaw) transferred the ball's full momentum, it would've imparted a greater velocity and thus sent the doll to a greater height.
Still, she went pretty much straight up, so I doubt landing on the roof of an adjoining building is going to happen. Unless there's a mighty gust of wind or something.
The skydiver's camera suit is interesting. I can see why a camera operator shooting skydiving footage might have a need to adjust the speed of one's dive. What I don't get is why Grant and Tory had to jump at all when they weren't the ones in the suit. Sometimes this show goes overboard on having the hosts be the ones doing stuff rather than leaving it to the experts.
Not to mention the bungee jumps. Did they actually gather any data at all by jumping themselves? That was really just for show.
Jamie's heavy-duty seesaw is impressive, and a hilarious amount of effort to put into a seesaw, but if you have to go to such extreme lengths of engineering to achieve the result, doesn't that bust the myth right there?
"And yes, I do know what guts feel like. I've been on this show for years."
The bungee acceleration to terminal velocity was a good idea. I was thinking some kind of downward-pointing air cannon. Anyway, the full-scale test gave very impressive results. And I can see why the doll flew in an arc here rather than straight up and down. I mean, look at that monstrosity Jamie built -- that's not a teeter-totter, that there's a catapult. I think this result demonstrates more about Jamie's engineering skills than it does about the myth.
It also demonstrates how unlikely it is that the skydiver could actually land on the seesaw at all. However much they replicated the results, this myth was obviously a load of rubbish from the get-go. Made for a fun episode, though. I'd love to see more whole-team myths like this.
Oh, and that was a cruel shot at the end there, with the girl's little dolly falling to the ground. Ouch!
Ok, so say the girl *could* control her "flight" or that she was close enough to an adjacent building (say the seasaw was in a playground next to an apartment building) that she could land on its roof. Wouldn't she survive since she'd be falling a few feet rather than several stories?
Intersting episode overall, I was surprised by that, suprised by the result and I liked seeing the whole team working together. Although I didn't think thus was a "big enough myth" to warrant the team effort when the much larger, grander, myth of airplane on a conveyor belt only had Adam and Jamie working on it.
Intersting episode overall, I was surprised by that, suprised by the result and I liked seeing the whole team working together. Although I didn't think thus was a "big enough myth" to warrant the team effort when the much larger, grander, myth of airplane on a conveyor belt only had Adam and Jamie working on it.
In the test, she flew upward nearly twice as far as the specified 70 feet, so she would've been falling something like six stories before landing on the roof. Still probably lethal.
If the seesaw had deformed just enough, or the parachutist had landed just indirectly enough, to cut the imparted force by just under half, and if it had sent the girl in the right direction, then it's vaguely possible. But the odds against it are astronomical. Also, with a more conventional seesaw design, you're not going to get the catapult effect of Jamie's complex rig, but just a straight upward vector as in Adam's test. That's what seesaws do -- they send you more or less straight upward. Watch a demonstration of circus acrobats. A normal seesaw just isn't going to have enough rotation to end up throwing someone in a wide arc. The only way it could possibly work is if the seesaw were directly next to the edge of the building.
Thinking back on it, aside from the final test, all the junior team did was the stunt work -- the skydiving and bungee jumping. And things associated with that, like building the skydiver analogue and testing the bungee rig. I wonder if maybe the insurance people aren't letting Adam and Jamie do things like that, or if they're just too old for the daredevil stuff.
That would be my guess - they definitely showed 7x08 a couple of weeks ago, so they'd have to have swapped it with something.
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