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.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[JonN]

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 do these experiments entail?

[MagicDude]

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 has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. A long time ago I used to watch Discovery all the time and I kept my cable just for that channel and a few others like Speedvision. Now Discovery rarely shows anything worthwhile and Speedvision is now SPEED (read: NASCAR garbage).

Now I only keep my cable for the new Battlestar Galactica but it hardly seems worth $40/mo for one show once a week (I would just download the episodes if I could find someone that posts high quality captures instead of the 200MB/hr crap that always gets posted).

Re:Video summaries.

[JymmyZ]

I thought the Plywood flight myth was concerning a man who claimed to have been blown off the roof of a building under construction (several stories high) while holding onto a sheet of plywood. As the myth goes he managed to use the plywood as a sort of parachute and floated down to the ground unharmed. The Mythbusters apprentices did the actual leg-work in breaking the myth and found that the force against the wood was too much to handle and the board continually fell out of their hands. (they set-up some rig where one of the guys held onto the board, with an anemometer and such to test various forces) They failed to take into account the sheer determination a man falling to his potential death would have in holding onto his life-saving device.

Re:Video summaries.

[raoul666]

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. :(

Yes.

[lorcha]

Yes, Thai bar girls really can shoot ping-pong balls from their pussies. They can also smoke a cigarette, suck in a bottle of Coke, and operate chopsticks, among other stupid pussy tricks.

And before you ask, yes, I have seen it done.

Re:What do these experiments entail?

[MagicDude]

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.

Next myth to bust

[Anonymous Coward]

Are Slashdot comments moderated to +5 informative, really informative?

Re:What do these experiments entail?

[rhavyn]

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.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[Will2k_is_here]

I sincerely hope they do not fall into this direction. We had TLC (The Learning Channel) and they did exactly that. Used to be documentaries (and I actually learned something) and now it's all reality shows doing home decorating, or following an engaged couple through their wedding plans. I don't think I've stayed on the channel for more than 5 seconds any time in the last 5 years! If the discovery channel goes the same way, I'll be left with the History Channel. If they follow suit, I will abandon my T.V. forever.

Re:What do these experiments entail?

[prockcore]

Interestingly enough, both myths you talked about were tested by the B team (Kari, Grant, et al). The B team sucks. They don't seem to have much critical thinking power.

For example, they talk about lighting a fire with a gun. It would've been much easier if they used a shotgun without any buckshot in the cartridge. You are guarranteed to get not only a very large flame out the barrel, but a good chunk of burning wad as well.

The B team also spends about 5 minutes on each myth.

Re:a step removed

[LarsWestergren]

Question.
Is Java an okay choice for a desktop application?

It is ok, but not great. Azureus is written in Java, as are numerous IDEs like Eclipse, Netbeans, IDEA so it is clearly doable to do good looking, complex, fast applications in Java no matter what toolkit you use. Still, I have seen many small, ugly, yet crappy performing apps in Java too, so it is not as trivial as some people would like you to believe. (I think ALL GUI programming is a lot harder than the average Slashdot reader believes though, regardless of language.)

If so, what's the quickest, snappiest GUI toolkit to use?

Quickest to learn - Swing. Lots of good books and tutorials, and performance is getting pretty good these days (from 1.5 and up). Layout managers are a bit annoying, but there are some better ones coming.

Best performing - SWT probably, but it is less portable.

Both still have the problem of JVM startup time though (another problem Sun is looking at, they are currently testing a new faster classloader that uses less memory for instance). Some people accept the startup time, others find it too annoying to use Java on the desktop. YMMV.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[LWATCDR]

"haven't experienced it personally "
enough said. Even Experts pass along myths. Show me an IEEE paper on the subject then you may have proof. But my "uncle/brother/mother/father/friend" had a "uncle/mother/father/brother/sister/dog" that... is not proof.
I have seen a microphone wire going into a notebook computer pick up an AM signal which is totally logical but the fillings is still unproven.

Plywood correction

[Merlyn_3k]

They actually tried a number of different plywood rigs, they took sheets of single ply (1/8" thick) and glued them together in various arrangements to construct a rough parachute (maximum surface area to weight) And still couldn't get it to keep buster from crashing.