MythBusters - The Lost Experiments

theLorax writes "From Discovery: "If you like the MythBusters here are some videos they just posted of some of the out takes and things that didn't appear on the show. Cola bits (cleaning things with cola), water torture, otter ping pong, live power lines, cement build up and plywood flight." Here is the interview we did with these guys in December.

a step removed

From the summary, it sounds like these guys are a step removed from Jackass. But seriously, when are they going to deal with the myth that Java "is just as efficient as C++ these days"

Re:a step removed

They only have about 15 minutes per myth. That just isn't enough time to start up your typical Hello World! application written in Java.

Re:a step removed

They only take on myths that are remotely possible. Nobody believes that about Java.

Reason

I am just thinking of the reason behind these videos being released. Is it because they enjoy communicating with, and appreciate their fans? Or is it simply a marketing plan created by the Discovery Channel.

Don't get me wrong, I love watching them, I just prefer to keep that squishy feeling in my heart that they really love us, and the interview they did here helped that along, with this pushing it further.

Re:Reason

It can't be both?

What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

I have relatives in the US who recently told me about the lack of quality on the Discovery Channel. I recall watching very good shows on it around a decade or so ago. True to their name, they focused on content that most traditional channels wouldn't bother to touch.

However, what I've been hearing now is that the Discovery Channel is moving away from their specialty programming, more towards content that will appeal to a wider range of people. This change does being a decrease in quality, according to my cousins.

I think I know what they mean. Shows like American Chopper and American HotRod, which I have watched over here in the UK, are more like soap operas than educational, enlightening shows. The two or three minutes of engineering in each episode is overshadowed by 57 minutes of workplace drama and commercials.

While a show like Mythbusters isn't as bad, it still lacks the quality that previous shows on the Discovery Channel had. None of the hosts have much engineering or scientific experience, and it shows. Even watching just one episode, one will hear numerous factually incorrect statements (especially when it comes to chemistry or physics). Perhaps it is entertaining, but educational it is not.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

Obviously, there's nothing left to discover.

Mythbusters is Good

Cyric, you are terribly off base! These guys are professionals who have a huge amount of hands on experience in material science. And these guys are doing a great job of introducing the basics of expiremental method to a wide audience. Is it perfect? Of course not. But you are comparing apples and oranges. While I would certainly appreciate some in depth programs on paricular aspects of science, just becuase Mythbusters is not this, does not make it worthless. I usually watch TV to relax. If I wanted a textbook education in physics I'd take a college course, not watch Mythbusters. While the information gained from the show may often be trivial, there are nontheless a great many useful tidbits to be gained from watching. Anf these guys are funny too!

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

That is not the arguement though. The arguement is not if Mythbusters is a good show, it is the question of are they playing appropriate shows on the Discovery Channel (as to their reputation)

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

the assumption people usually make when they bring up the subject is that discovery channel programs are produced by the discovery channel. they are genuinely suprised to find out that e.g. mythbusters isn't produced by them.

discovery channel can only show whats being produced. if shit is being produced then shit is all they have to air. people seem to think they know exactly what is available for discovery channel to purchase for broadcast. keep in mind that junkyard wars, the program discovery channel fanatics always bring up as an example, (aka scrapheap challenge) was a purely accidental find.

if you know specific programs discovery channel should be airing, tell them.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

Are these shows educational? No.

If you're arguing that Mythbusters isn't educational, you haven't watched enough episodes. Yes, they make mistakes. So do over half of all peer-reviewed scientists' papers, last I read. But it's still a very educational show, and more importantly, one that gets the watcher thinking instead of passively being entertained.

Even if the show contains a greater proportion of entertainment to education than some might like, I think it educates more than some of the old dry shows, because more people watch them. Just to use some silly math, if a show is 90% educational and is watched by 100K people, let's say it has provided 90K education-people worth of education to the world. If a show is 60% educational and watched by 1M people, it's provided 600K education-people worth of education! How's that for a Mythbusters-style estimate?

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

What a narrow-minded view.

These folks never pretended to be Great Scientists. They can and do, however, come up with clever ways to perform experiments that would otherwise be expensive or dangerous.

They sometimes do the dangerous stuff anyway.

I think it's a superb show. I like the way they often go back and revisit things that people say they got wrong. You know, kinda like scientists are supposed to.

I have an extensive science and engineering background, and I think they do a terrific job. Do they get everything right? No. Who cares?

Cement Truck go BOOM!

God I just love watching that cement truck explode!

If you've never seen it - dont miss it! - It's at the very end of the video

They WERE shown on TV

Most of these were shown on TV in an outtakes show they did. I love the show, but don't understand why they are saying these weren't shown before.

Otter Ping-Pong?

Forget Otter Ping-Ping - I want to know if Thai beaver really can shoot ping-pong balls! I knew a girl with a half-thai beaver, but I could never convince her to give it a shot, so clearly this is a job for mythbusters!

Re:What do these experiments entail?

I'm not sure, but I think the water torture myth has something to do with watching a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot and not getting to touch...

Re:What do these experiments entail?

I've seen 3 of the 5 episodes that you've described, I'll describe what I can remember from them.

Water Torture - Chineese water torture myth. Basically the idea that if you restrain someone to a chair and constantly drip water at a slow rate (1-2 drops per second or so) it'll cause them to crack. It's an elegant torture in that all it requires is time, it's easy to set up, and you don't need an interrogator to administer it, and it's insidious in that nobody would expect that a little harmless dripping would cause to to break. They did show that the torture was effective against the myth crew in about an hour or 2, though you have to wonder how a hardened navy seal might react differently.

Otter Ping Pong - They were testing the myth that you could raise a sunken ship by pumping thousands of ping pong balls into the hull. During the myth, an otter swam down to the hull and stole a ping pong ball and started playing with it, which caused everyone to worry that it might choke on it if it tried to swallow it. The myth was eventually proved successful.

Cement Build Up - They tested the myth that the inside of a cement mixer could be cleaned of all the dried cement build up that accumulates on the inside of the drum during normal use by exploding a stick of dynamite in the drum, a much more efficient method than the usual method of having to chissel the surface by hand. The clip in the video showed a snafu that occured with the first truck when they accidentally filled it up with cement rather than just having enough for a thin coat. It lead up to a spectacular event where they blew up the enture truck with 850 pounds of TNT.

Re:What do these experiments entail?

The clip in the video showed a snafu that occured with the first truck when they accidentally filled it up with cement rather than just having enough for a thin coat. It lead up to a spectacular event where they blew up the enture truck with 850 pounds of TNT.

The cement truck was the most disappointing one in a long time. Everyone who has ever even seen explosives in action knows that you drill a hole in the material (the cemet block in this case) and drop the TNT down the hole before detonating it. They just hung a stick of dynamite above the cemet, and gave up when it didn't do anything.

Before Mythbusters, I've never wanted to reach through my TV and smack people for being so stupid. With Mythbusters, it's a regular occurance. It almost seems like they go out of their way to make their tests complete nonsense.

Re:What do these experiments entail?

Congratulations on not understanding the myth. The myth is you can split an arrow from end to end on command like Robin Hood did in the myth. They proved that it is effectively impossible. No matter how good you are, you're at the mercy of the grain of the wood of the arrow. So it is impossible to split an arrow from end to end on command.

They used turned dry wood for the arrow shafts which has grain that is never perfectly parallel to the shaft. Back in the day of Robin Hood they would split straight green wood along the grain to produce the rough shafts and dress them afterwards, resulting in shafts with perfectly parallel wood grain. It can be done (and has been done -- ask at any archery club), just not with the items they used.

Look at the "make fire without matches" episode. Had they not known that millions of Boy Scouts had achieved it already, they would have concluded that making fire by rubbing sticks together is "busted" because they failed at every attempt even when using a power drill to drive the active stick!

Re:What do these experiments entail?

With ping pong balls, you don't have to worry about the thousands of microcracks in the hull which would allow regular air to seep through. You only have to secure the hull so that there aren't any cracks bigger than 10 or 15 millimeters, since the pingpong balls make it so that you basically have air "molecules" that are ping pong ball sized and won't escape at any tiny hole.

Re:Video summaries.

I actually watched the water torture one, by chance. It refers to the so-called chinese water drop - a person is immobilized, and drops of water drop on the same spot on their forehead, at a rate of one drop every 2 seconds or so.

They tested it on Kari... since there's no physical torture (other than being restrained), and they were obviously going to let her go when she had enough, it's not much of an issue showing it on TV.

Re:Video summaries.

As it happens, she was pretty freaked out by it, which neither she nor anyone else was really expecting. It was very unpleasant to watch, I found. :(

Re:Lost Experiments?

If these episodes are so lost how come I have seen them all on TV?

Shit, son. This sounds like a job for the MythBusters! They could test the validity of the myth that these videos have been seen on TV before.

Science

Science in its most basic form is a system of acquiring knowledge, based on experimentation to find truth.

The mythbusters discuss the theory of the myth & then generate a hypothesis weather it is plausible or not, then conduct an experiment to find out weather their hypothesis is correct.

What is not science about that???

It may be basic science, but its still science.

From what I have seen it is getting a lot of people interested in science so that has to be good doesn't it.

Re:An "Entertainment" disclaimer?

It's not great science, but a lot of it isn't half bad. Besides which, they're usually testing fairly simple myths to see if they're plausible or not. Some stuff, like "could you raise a boat with ping-pong balls" they do. Scientific or not, that's a good, solid result. It's possible. It's really the busted myths that may or may not be accurate. To give them credit, I usually hear them say things like "for this to work you'd need this, this, this, and this to happen, and that's incredibly unlikely" or "we couldn't build a jetpack, so an average joe probably couldn't either." As for scientific or engineering background, they may not be certified or educated, but they certainly do alright. Their solutions are usually simple, and they typically work. Look at the rig they used to get those ping-pong balls down to the boat. Design me something cheaper, faster, and easier, if you can.

Also, a lot of the time they call in experts. I think that's a pretty good lesson to be teaching people, about both science and life.