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.

Coca Cola a pesticide?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they cover the Coca Cola Pesticide counter-myth? [impactlab.com]

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[marshallh]

"Discovery" in the Discovery Channel? Looks like it's just about gone..

Regarding MythBusters, while they can't possibly get all their facts straight, you have to reason they do do a reasonable job, considering the extremely wide breadth of subjects they cover.

This brings up a good point of the problem with shows that focus on such a wide range of topics that they aren't able to focus on one single topic with much amount of detail.

Are these shows educational? No. Can it be a feasible starting point for answers to nagging questions? Possibly.
I think you could compare this show to Wikipedia (various factual errors, inconsistent detail etc), but it is nevertheless a possible source of inspiration for a lot of us.

Lost Experiments?

[NoGuffCheck]

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

They WERE shown on TV

[BrentM77]

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.

Warning: Mythbusters fanboy here

[MindPrison]

I have to admit it - I absolutely love the mythbusters show. Its a show allright - but wouldnt you rather prefer as how like this (being the geek you are) rather than those endless idiot-shows like wheel-of-fortune, jeopardy, tv-poker etc.?

Sure, Jamie and Adam gets it wrong sometimes, but it inspires normal people to get an interest in science because theyre "naturally" funny and they like what they do, whats wrong with that?

You want to see bad stuff on Discovery? Watch Brainiac - probably the "WORST" science-wannabee show ever.

Being the "geek" I am, electronics all over my house theres nothing nicer than to come home from work to a little "tech" show about "normal people" dealing with things related to science they may or may not know about - and getting it out into the open. Its fun, makes tv background-noise worthy ;)

didn't prove power line myth

[tedpearson]

As for the power line myth - they didn't prove it by any means. Consider: 1) They didn't know the current on the wires above them, compared to the current of said myth, perhaps it wasn't very high voltage at the time? 2) They had a huge loopy coil of wire, something makes me think that there are more efficient ways of developing an inductive coil... The show is fun to watch, but it makes people who have sense ask a few more questions.

Re:An "Entertainment" disclaimer?

[DeathElk]

Indeed, watching even a single episode shows that they have very little scientific or engineering background

Who cares? It's a great show. I especially liked the episode where they challenged the American Grafitti movie's 'chain-cop-car-to-a-pole-and-rip-out-rear-axle' myth.

Man, a real size remote control police car. I suspect these guys don't really care whether their facts pan out or not, they're having TOO MUCH FUN!!

Re:Coca Cola a pesticide?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing the carbonic acid levels aren't enough to harm the insects, but the caffeine levels might be sufficient to poison the insects. After all, remember that caffeine is a natural pesticide made by some plants to paralyse and kill insects. In fact, science report [sciencenews.org] mentions:

Even concentrations of only 0.1 percent caffeine may prove useful. Sprayed onto such slug-prized cuisine as cabbage leaves, those concentrations deterred feeding by 62 percent, respectively, when compared to uncaffeinated salad greens. This suggests that a regular spray of leftover coffee, which tends to have a caffeine content of about 0.1 to 0.05 percent, might control nighttime crop losses in the garden.

I believe coca cola has a caffeine content of about 0.03% (w/v)? This is lower than the above, but repeated spraying might be enough to help deter insect feeding.

Still lost..

[MrLint]

I wonder if they are ever going to show the video of the the card throwing experiment using metal cards? With the tivo you can see that the numbers are recorded on the data sheet but the experiment isnt shown. However from the data the results looked rather lethal.

Re:What do these experiments entail?

[Derling Whirvish]

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:Cement Truck go BOOM!

[gstoddart]

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

For sheer magnitude, that's gotta be one of the coolest ever.

For sheer carnage, my vote still goes to the exploding whale [perp.com] video from the interweb. Nothing like seeing whale blubber rain down ... =)

Re:Mythbusters is Good

[Mateito]

They are professional special-effects guys with lots of experience. They are not engineers, they are not scientists, and they very rarely do anything that would be regarded as following the "Scientific Method".

However I'm a huge fan of the show because its bloody entertaining.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[Amazing Proton Boy]

All of the great programming is still on. It just moved to specialty channels. The folks at Discovery figured out that they could put all the shows together into themes and then dedicate entire channels to them. When Discovery first started they had one channel. Now they have eleven: Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, Discovery Health, Travel Channel, Discovery Kids, Discovery Times, The Science Channel, Discovery Home, Military Channel and the Crown jewel Discovery HD. I get them all for about $5 a month. You should check it out before posting second hand mis-information.

Re:What has happened to the shows like...

[pomo monster]

You know, I don't especially know why, but I feel compelled to chime in here. Look, I'm 23. I've got a BA from a liberal northeastern Ivy. I like Battlestar, even if it's a little cheesy sometimes. Jeopardy tickles me too. And I've been loving the History Channel lately. Catching the Lincoln biopic after coming home late this week was probably worth my cable bill in itself--and I pay Manhattan prices for my cable.

Yet I have a Myspace profile. I'm a pretty active user, in fact. And I was raised on shows like Friends and Seinfeld. Nowadays I love catching Project Runway on Bravo--shit, I'll even watch Blind Date if I'm bored. And while I don't watch American Chopper or Mythbusters, I do think it's cool that programs like these are getting people interested in engineering and science at all. Dismissing them because they're "pop" is like lambasting Christopher Pike for not having written Ulysses: surely the point is that kids are reading. The Shakespeare can come later.

I guess I just wanted to point out that this attitude of superiority comes off a little sour. Thumbing your nose at popular culture doesn't make you better than everyone else. Not to single you out--I see this all over Slashdot.

Re:What has happened to the Discovery Channel?

[LarsWestergren]

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.

Amen. The worst example to my mind is the Americanizing of Scrapheap Challenge. First, change it to Junkyard WARS, because WARS are MUCH COOLER. Less tinkering and technology (that is boring), more arguing and soap style "talking in private with the camera" where team members bitch about each other and the other team. Annoying Yee-haw style hosts, teams that take it WAY too seriously and even start crying and arguing when they lose (according to interviews with the hosts).

Oh well, hopefully the british seasons can get a good DVD realease. I bought an early Scrapheap DVD a couple of years ago, huge mistake. It was a transfer from VHS directly, a whole season on one hour. Each episode was cut to 5 minutes "here are our teams - here they are welding something - here they are arguing - and now they are going to race!". More like trailers than episodes, and again they removed the fun parts (the design decisions, the tinkering) and focused on the least relevant (who won the race).

Time Team in your garden is a good DVD though, it has whole episodes. The River Cottage series too. If you live in the US, did Discovery ever air those series there? Either way, you should pick them up on DVD from Amazon.uk.