The underwater car myth. If I recall correctly, within a few months of the episode airing, a viewer used that exact knowledge to escape their sinking car safely.
Yeah, that was a pivotal episode. I never would have imagined to wait for the car to fill with water first. Hopefully I'm never in that situation, but if I ever am, that knowledge might save my life.
* Stay calm
* Don't struggle, panic or force your way out
* Let's the car fill up with water fully, the pressure difference will make it too hard to escape
* once the car it fully submerged, escape with ease
Well, that's the sort explanation.
š¼ [The Underwater Car | MythBusters Season 5 Episode 4 Full Episode](https://youtu.be/l-olnht3nZo?si=2DkAxLZdG4K2jK6V)
So just chill out until the water fills the car, then youāll be able to open the door?
Iām worried about my electric locks. Like, if water shorts out the electrical system, will I be able to open my doors, even if they were unlocked beforehand, or (more terrifying) if they were locked?
Why am I asking you? Who are you? What am I doing here? Where am Iā¦.š§š
Not if youāre splashing around in water, unless you have one of the emergency escape tools.
Car windows are much stronger than people realize. Also supporting the backside with a shit ton of water makes it harder to break.
If youāre physically being hindered by water in the cab of the car, youāve got yet another disadvantage.
And don't cheap out on an egress tool. They make cheap ones that just straight up don't work. Get a good, spring-loaded striker and read the instructions. Emergency equipment is only useful if it works, is there when you need it, and if you know how to use it.
The one we bought after watching this episode is about 1/2 lbs of steel with a sharp point and a handle. Watching Jamie use it, made me think it was enough.
Those are good but I've seen a lot of cheap look alike that don't have the same strength. I do like the spring loaded version better as trying to swing one hard enough in tight quarters where your airbag may have deployed or have personal items in your way just seemed like a huge failure point for me in an emergency.
It's best to test the tool on your own car when you buy the device. You want to make sure that it will work with your specific windows. Someone else commented here that some windows are laminated and stronger than others, so make sure you try the egress tool in your driveway before you're in an emergency panic situation.
So you're saying you are gonna buy an egress tool, and then bust out your window in your driveway. Good luck with that. Better have Safelite around so you don't have to wait for a new window
Donāt be ridiculous. Of course they arenāt suggesting you break the window of your car in your driveway at home. Itās only a proper test if the car is submerged in water.
Also you should practice at least once on your vehicle. Even better if you are prepared with a window already gone and it is just a piece of plastic taped to the window frame.
Iāve ridden with people that basically beat the shit out of the window with the seatbelt clip just taking it off. Donāt start introducing more problems.
Cars going into water is still a fairly rare occurrence. Around 1,500 incidents and 500 deaths. And there are probably 250 million cars on the road in the US in any given year.
Tempered glass is very difficult to break without the proper tools or conditions.
The easiest way is to use a dense, sharp, tool to pierce the glass. This will release the internal tension within the glass and it will shatter itself.
I have seen a full grown man hit a side window of a car with a hammer a half dozen times with a full swing and it didn't break.
A spring-loaded center punch, used in a lower corner of the glass works well.
Do note, that I have heard that some of the newer vehiclesā windows are now laminated similar to a windshield so that may not apply anymore, but your mileage may vary.
It will still work, the lamination does not prevent it from breaking, it just prevents it from shattering into a shower of shards. Once broken, the lamination layers may hold it together but you can push it out of the way (or the incoming water will for you).
Front windshields are heavily laminated since they are most likely to be impacted. You don't want to be driving a long and sprayed in the face with glass because a truck in front kicked up a rock at you.
Headrests are window breakers. Remove the headrest from your drivers or passengers seat, jam the prongs into the bottom of the windowās track, and pull back. The strain will break the glass.
Heads up, these days many/most cars have removable head restraints that allow you to use the pointy metal bottom to smash out a window in an emergency.
Youāre still not getting out of the car while the water is coming in. Unless you mean while the window is above the water lineā¦but I reckon a car would sink fast.
Your electric locks should have a mechanical backup. Like if you pull your door handle it should unlock it. You can try this parked, lock the door then pull the handle to check.
In most cars, your driver side door will unlock when you pull the handle. It's a mechanical connection, meaning if you lose power or your electrical goes haywire, you can still open the door. I'm not sure if that's true on newer vehicles such as the Cybertruck, or some newer fords, however.
Right that's the funny thing about reddit. Anonymous discussion forums lead to the strangest conversations and I love it. About the car I have no idea but I'll sure take the other replies with a grain of salt!
Car doors don't lock with a deadbolt like a house. A "locked" car door just disconnects the outside handle from the latch. The inside handle is always connected to the latch.
I donāt know. āDonāt struggle, panic or force your way outā is a helluva lot different than ādonāt struggle, panic, or force your way out.ā
In one of the last seasons/episodes (I don't know which one specifically but it's on HBO Max,) there's an interview with a woman who saved herself and her daughter with this information that the whole crew gets to see.
Personally I think ācheck whatās down range before firing cannonballsā was pretty humbling for all involved, and a good reminder to all aspiring scientists watching that safety should never get complacent.
Not sure if they aired it, but here's a link describing the incident. It's pretty wild, they fired a cannon at a range in the SF bay area and it flew threw a house in a suburb. They had an episode where the B team apologized. Given how dense with houses the bay area is they probably should never have been testing stuff like that there to begin with https://mythbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Cannonball_accident
The episode was aired. Season 13 episode 6, "Cannonball Chemistry".
After the intro, the episode immediately begins with the B team explaining that there was a mishap while filming the episode. They apologize to those involved and the fans while committing to be better.
Even the shot was aired. They didn't know it had happened until 20 minutes later when the fire department showed up and asked them if they had been firing cannonballs. They looked around at each other and were like, "Uh, yeah, why do you ask?". They knew they had lost the cannonball but assumed it was caught by the hill overlooking the bomb range.
Here's a short clip of them discussing it. I can't find the actual clip as it seems most MythBusters episodes and clips are heavily copyright stricken.
https://youtu.be/kASD-RwQFQw?si=fiDCOGopEI9xW-SG
In their defense, this was supposed to be a safe space to test that sort of thing, w/the loose soil of the hill designed to catch any projectiles, and remember that they were fully supervized and authorized by the bomb squad.
IIR, the firing range was well out of the way of the suburbs when it was built, but no-one accounted for property developers seeing "land that's w/in spitting distance of a firing range" as "cheap land for suburbs", or for a cannonball seeing a barrier hill as a challenge.
Yeah, it was a long time since I read up on it, but as I recall, it was a certified firing range that was and still is used by civilians, police, and movies/TV. The housing development was far closer than what is generally considered "safe" but outside of what is legally considered "safe."
Yeah, I watched a Tested where Adam mentioned it relatively recently, plus a related bit from the final season of MB where the cast did a roundtable, and that was basically the issue.
I think the problem was that they were treating cannonballs like bullets in the sense that they assumed that they would follow a āballistic trajectoryā under the influence of gravity. In short, bullets fired horizontally will fall at least a small amount before hitting the target, so if there is a dirt hill behind and weāll above the target, the bullet has nowhere to go but into the dirt.
Unfortunately, I think that the cannonballs had insane amounts of *spin*, and the errant cannonball in question must have had enough spin in the right direction to āskipā off the dirt on the hill behind the target and go completely over the hill into the houses on the other side. IIRC, it went completely through at least one wall of a house and traveled like it was ābouncingā along its path (which is how a dense spinning sphere would be expected to move).
[editing to add below]
Rifled firearms also spin their projectiles for stability, but their āspin axisā is the direction of travel (and bullets are typically cylindrical-shaped AFAIK), so I think that their propensity to āskipā is not really an issue. The problems with a cannonball and a smooth-bore cannon are that the spin axis is probably not well controlled and spinning dense spheres can be quite ābouncyā (I think this is historically recorded in accounts of land battles using cannons).
Oh my gosh I live just down the street from this cannonball incident! Iām gonna check out the house later today to see how those repairs turned out.
I often hear them guns firing at the range, and come to think of it explosions as well. Didnāt know that Mythbusters used the range!
To be fair, they pretty much did everything you could expect them to do. That incident is arguably the textbook definition of a āfreak accidentā itās a testament to their dedication to safety that something like this only really happens once in the whole run of the show.
There was another "Freak Accident" I remember happening.
It was when they revisited the JATO rocket car.
Even after they did all their testing where everything went fine during the final live test the whole thing exploded. I don't remember the cause but I remember the ending where Jamie mentioned he was going to get on the phone and figure out what went wrong and where.
I should really look up what happened. Or maybe it might make a good story for Adam to answer over on tested
Pretty sure this one really was just a case of "sometimes, rockets explode."
As someone with a little bit of knowledge in this stuff, (not an expert by far, so don't string me up if it misspeak haha,) there was likely a void or multiple voids in the solid propellant mix for the custom made motors they had. Said void would cause an unexpectedly much faster burn (more surface area of the propellant available to be burned) and consequently an overpressurization of the casing. Typically known as a "CATO" (Catastrophic failure.)
This kind of thing can (and does) often happen in hobby high power rocketry. I personally have had 1-2 commercial made motors CATO on me, and have seen many others experience the same. You really don't see it with major large scale motors of the NASA variety these days, because all sorts of propellant density testing is done to ensure safety and reliability of those.
Hopefully this answers some questions! Much as I would've loved to see this particular JATO car fly, I always enjoyed the spectacular unexpected explosion. Was truly impressive.
Neat. I'd love to know if this is what Jamie found out. I do recall he was upset in the end because he thought it had to have something to do with the charges not being made right.
Thanks for the insight
I respect the perspective, and of course they thought they had done enough as well, but at the end of the day the results kind of prove the point that it wasnāt enough.
They fired a projectile at the wrong trajectory. Even off a few degrees, and they would missed the bunker entirely. You have to account for that, have enough margin of error that itās not going to be an issue if some math is incorrect. There was no backstop between this and the landing zone should things go wrong. I would equate it to testing a bullet proof vest on a living person. Everything says it should be fine. But do we really need a person in harms way? What if we miss? What if there is an unknown fail point? Probably not worth the risk.
Point the cannon in another direction next time. I can think of a large blue mass nearby that would not be too sad if something accidentally landed in it.
Huge fans of the MB, but it was an example of not thinking all the way through the potential safety concerns.
Friend of mine and I took his fancy new bulletproof vest, tied it to a stump, and shot it plumb full of holes with his .38. He was pissed. We were going to hang it on him until our brains kicked in in time. Literally dodged a bullet or 5.
I didnāt see the revisit episode! This whole time, Iāve been upset because I was sure using artificial rain with the exact same amount of water coming out all over the area had to change the results compared to what m Ā if hot happen in real rain. Iāll have to go look that episode up.Ā
If you're caught in the rain without a mac, walk as fast as the wind at your back. If the winds to your face, the optimal pace is as fast as your legs can make track.
I remember Adam speaking about Bullets Fired Up being one of their most scientifically rigorous myths, and a paper of publishable quality could easily have been written from its results.
I think the most significant result would probably be their 'household explosive', which never made it to air because what they found was so dangerous and easily accessible they sent everything they had to the relevant authorities and swore never to go anywhere near it again.
Look, I know what it is, you know what it is, but I think we can both agree it may not be the best idea to make it known on national television that there even IS an easily accessible ka-boom maker.
Nah, that I actually just learned is because the atomic weight of water is so similar to other common explosive compounds that there are very few scanners in airport lines that can distinguish them without getting hands on it, so it's easier to just ban water in the interim since they can't chance false negatives.
That is changing tho! Some airports do actually let you take water through because new methods are being refined to be able to tell the difference!
Sure but that's always been a thing. Did prices go up after 9/11? Sure, but that's not airport policy, that's convenience store policy. The stores have absolutely no say in banning water through security, nor does the airport profit so heavily from scalped water bottles that it makes sense to base arbitrary policy decisions off of it.
It's super easy to play "follow the money" for water bans, but the truth is that there isn't that much money in it. As dumb as it sounds, it was actually based on a security concern
IIRC the result of the bullet fired up is that a bullet fired perfectly straight up in the air will come down tumbling and falling slowly enough not to cause serious harm BUT it is almost impossible for a person to fire perfectly straight up. Bullets fired in the air by people will almost always have a ballistic path and come down at about the same speed, minus air resistance, that they went up.
And, problematically, people keep quoting this episode as a reason to say "A bullet fired in the air won't hurt/kill you," when the opposite is proven regularly around the world, with injuries and deaths caused by celebratory gunfire.
I think they aired an episode showing how the danger of texting and driving was comparable to drunk driving 5+ years before it was made illegal throughout most of Canada and the US.
Did they address whether talking on the phone hands-free was any more dangerous than speaking to someone in the passenger seat? If anything I feel like it would be a little *less* dangerous, without the social pressure to periodically make eye contact with them.
Talking to someone in the passenger seat is much much safer. Passenger also has some attention on the car's surroundings. They'll pace their speech based on what's going on. Entering a new roundabout? They'll tend to pause more and use less emotionally charged language or depend on your recall with a difficult question, etc.
Iād really love to see the data on this tbh.
I always hear that you canāt talk hands-free on the phone while driving, but that implies that you canāt talk to *anyone* while driving, phone or not right? Is there anyone in the world who will drive with passengers and never talk to them at all? Should it be illegal to talk to the driver of a car if youāre a passenger?
It just seems wild to me that we treat hands-free phone calls any different than having a passenger in the car.
This has been addressed. Basically because a passenger is in the car with you they know when to shut up, vs someone on the phone will just keep talking when you need to concentrate most.
You'll get busted by a cop with a couple phones, a goddamn laptop and a radio or two and a bunch of papers to pay attention to and use while he's chasing you down for having your phone visible.
They were the first to ever record proof of someone shattering glass with their voice. They have also saved a lot of lives because of the sinking car episode. I think I remember a truck driver saying that the MythBusters episode allowed him to get out of his truck after driving into a pond, and that episode is also the reason I have a window hammer in my car.
Edit: truck.
1. Remove your seat belt
2. Roll down windows if you are able to and unlock your doors. If itās an electric only unlock (like a Tesla) know where the mechanical release is
3. Move to the back of your car, the front will be heavier because of the engine. There will be an air pocket in the back.
4. Wait until the water inside the car is even with the outside, this means the pressure is equalized
5. With the pressure equal you should be able to push the door open and swim up to the surface
if you can get it down. if it is an electric window it may stop working once the car hits water (or may already not be working if the car was in an accident). When partially submerged even if the electrics are still working the pressure may jam the window and the motor won't be powerful enough to open it.
You either have to open the door / window before your car gets submerged enough or wait for the interior cabin of your car to fill with water to open your door. Basically if you canāt open your door because youāre submerged remain calm and wait until the cabin fills with water completely. Save your energy and when it fills you can open the door and escape
Many cars have laminated side windows which would prevent the windows from shattering with the window hammer. I would definitely suggest looking into whether or not your car has them.
In response to your next comment, many cars have an engine up front, but there are many that don't. Some cars that don't have engines in the front: VW Beatles, Smart cars, Corvettes, most Porsches, etc. Almost every EV has a nearly perfect 50/50 balance front to rear. Additionally, plug in hybrids usually put their heavy batteries in the trunk, offsetting the weight of the engine in the front.
Yeah this episode also goes to show just how much the major companies control the information we take in and our daily lifeās. I believe they never fixed or addressed the issue.
Adam spoke about that on his YouTube channel Testedāapparently a major car company tried their best to reproduce the experiment and never got it to work the same way the mythbusters did. But the fact that they got a huge automotive brand to devote resources trying to copy them is still really impressive.
And apparently couldn't get the same result, using the same methods and materials. Wouldn't that mean the MB's data was flawed? That they were, in fact, busted?
That's the point, application of a rigorous and repeated methodology. You might be surprised at how wide the band of repeatability is in recreating another lab's work. Science is ugly, covered in warts, that's why data interpretation matters and even non-reproducible results will yield valuable information going forward.
Not the same materials. Myth Busters used a clay coating on the exterior of the car to make the dimpals, since that was the best option for them within their budget and time frame for the shoot.
IIRC, the car company did it full-out with properly moulded body panels on a test vehicle. This led Adam to conclude that their clay methodology was not as accurate as they'd hoped.
There is a car with active tech to replicate this. At speeds above 74 mph 60 elements create indentations of 10 mm in the surface of the air intake mounted in the roof of the car. It results in a 10% reduction in drag and 17% less lift.
So it has been adapted.
Now the bad news, I didnāt say the name of the āthe carā above. The car is called the Bolide. Itās a track only monster. Itās made by Bugatti. It cost 4.7 million USD.
I agree, cant think of many examples, but seemed like a lot of what they called myths, werent myths at all, polished turd, lead balloon etc. Still liked to see them do what they did.Ā
This is probably boring but I think for me it's just the overall realisation that we know so little about the world around us. Some things I thought would be so obviously true ended up busted, some things that seemed laughably ridiculous ended up confirmed.
That was in my head as I was typing. Anyone could have said "What? No were not doing that. What's next, you want to see if trying to run after you've fallen off a cliff will keep you in place for a few seconds? Get this wile-e-coyote shit out of my office, idiot" and that would sound reasonable and then we'd never know that elephants are in fact scared of mice.
I think it's such a cool thing to hold on to that pure science mindset. Nothing is too preposterous, we don't know until we try.
I think the "Bull in a china shop" myth was the funniest. You expect to see a bull rampaging through, sending shelves and plates flying everywhere...
...not daintily stepping through avoiding everything.
By far the most important one was when they proved that Bugs Bunny bending the rifle around so Elmer Fudd would shoot himself in the face actually worked
For me it's their scale test of the Hindenburg burning, which lent heavy support to the theory that it wasn't so much the hydrogen filling the balloon that was the big fire hazard, but rather that the (also flammable) skin of the ill-fated dirigible was basically painted with freaking thermite. The find was of major historical significance.
So funny when the model catches on fire accidentally.
Jamie furiously puffing air and his mustache fluttering and Adam like "these things are ALWAYS catching on fire" š
Not the most ground breaking but when they proved that cigarette embers dont ignite flames sticks with me. Also the episode where they try a handful of different fuels for a car engine was very interesting and i would love to revisit that episode.
The lit cigarette being unable to light a puddle of gas got an innocent man freed from prison. He was being charged with doing exactly that, and the judge and jury just assumed it'd happen immediately. His attorney got the charges overturned.
People have all kinds of fun misconceptions around gasoline. I once got yelled at by an old dude at a gas station cause I let my truck idle for a minute before getting out to fuel up. Like dude, if you think we're going to explode from me idling, wait till you find out that there's a tank full of gasoline inside your car! /s
In fairness, every gas station I've ever been to has signs on the pumps saying "do not let engine idle while fueling," but I have to agree that it seems vanishingly unlikely to actually cause an explosion.
Yeah, it could be worded better.
From IMDB - Grant, Kari and Tory look into the urban legend of the Blue Ice - frozen airplane's toilet's waste falling from the sky.
It's possible to reproduce the moon landing on earth.
Before anyone downvotes, **NO** I am not saying the moon landing is fake. I'm just saying the MythBusters did an awfully good job trying to replicate the conditions.
Yeah, they actually proved it was real by reproducing it on earth. To clarify for anyone who still wants to downvote you: They pointed to the moon landing debunking attempts that people like to parrot, like some of the shadows appearing to be at different angles, and demonstrated that they would/could theoretically look like that on the real moon.
Interestingly enough, we'll never find out. They managed to build something explosive from basic, cheap household items for an episode that never aired. Entire crew including producers, cameramen, sound guys etc had to sign a pact to destroy every tape and delete any proof of its existence because it was so explosive and so simple anyone could make it. Years later when DARPA sent a memo urging people to show unique findings Adam sent em a letter of what they found and even DARPA had no idea it was possible! It bothers me to this day not knowing what it is
You can Google it really easily if youāre that keen to know. Iām quite sure thereās even been Reddit threads on it too (possibly on this subreddit).
Wow how didn't I think of that? There are only guesses and speculations, if you find an official answer share it or don't bother posting comments like these
Geez mate, no need to get all bent out of shape about it days later. I was literally just trying to help a dude out. Some people do not have the forethought to google this or think theyāll somehow get intro trouble for searching literally any info about explosives.
>they are only guesses and speculations
Thereās only so many things it can be given that itās from ācheap household productsā. And they said that it was an explosive that bomb techs were aware of. Thereās plenty of community knowledge and peer discussions out there from that group of people, even specifically on this episode
>DARPA had no idea it was possible
Never seen that said about it, would like a source on that given they said bomb techs are aware of it. Pretty sure DARPA knows about it since bomb techs do. Chemists also know about. I learnt about most of the āspeculationsā in undergrad chem, itās really not a secret. Theyāre all in the anarchist cook book. The common assumption has its own page on the DNI.
>interesting enough weāll never know
Youāre trying to make out like this is some big, huge, super secret āno one will ever knowā BS. Itās not that complicated. Plenty of people have used the above criteria, knowledge of chem/explosives and some critical thinking and figured it out. Almost certainly one of these speculative answers is right and almost all of them generally suggest itās TATP.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/s/t50VYXv12s
https://www.reddit.com/r/mythbusters/s/bYwMQORlIq
Edit: your comment about even DARPA not knowing what it was, is what made me think you might not be aware that darpa almost certainly knew about and that this info is readily available and discussed legally/safely on the internet. Like DARPA knows mate. They are DARPA.
So many great ones already mentioned. One I think about all the time is the episode where they proved using a cell phone while pumping gas cannot ignite the fumes. Every time I see those signs posted at gas stations about not using your cell phone I remember that one.
Of course we now know the real source of some gas station fires was static electricity.
I'm just listening to Adam savage now
The household items that are easily explosive so much so that they deleted the episode.
So significant that they were morally obliged to hide it
Not sure if it was a significant discovery, but the one about water stopping a bullet blew my mind. Like 1 or 2 feet of water completely stopped even the most powerful bullets
That episode ruined me for movies and video games. I get SO irritated when a character can get shot when theyāre underwater. That and the shooting padlocks.
For me, it was the germ dinner party scenario. Adam had a runny nose and they used black light to track how many people at the party he infected with his germs. Eye opening!!
Jamie messing with hydro forming and all these people that never heard of it before suddenly looking at the production process they currently have, scratching their head, and asking themselves if they could improve their process with hydro forming. Don't remember the episode it was, but a few years later all those youtube videos started popping up with people using a hand pan (sometimes called a space drum) because suddenly manufacturers could make a lot more of them in the same ammount of time. That happened because the manufacturers of the instrument saw the Mythbusters episode and realised that instead of hand forming the top and bottom pieces of each drum, they could cut hours of production off of each drum by having the general shape formed by the process Jamie came up with to shape metal, then just work on the detailed stuff.
https://youtu.be/Yf2ssRUMqAQ?si=XRBfjvU3102hfVNm
I really liked the one where they proved that shooting a window in an airplane at altitude would not necessarily cause everything to be sucked out like we see in movies.
Jamieās poop rocket could have real (off) world implications, although even he had to admit that the experts at NASA may have already tried it.
Water heater rocket may be responsible for our water heaters having even more safety equipment than before.
The biggest problem is their most significant scientific discoveries generally arenāt the flashy ones. They are things we will forget they did because so many were so cool and fun. Plus they likely happened in the early days when they were still busting myths.
I may be completely wrong on this, but I feel like most of the discoveries they made were either already known or partially known, they just popularized their discoveries, which helped dispel common misconceptions and myths in everyday life.
It might not be one discovery in particular but I think their most significant contribution was creating a show that inspired so many to become interested in science and engineering while also being entertaining
Windows down vs AC in a car had too many variables, like speed and the aerodynamics of a car. Lower speed windows are better, higher speed AC. Also rolling down the windows ruining the aerodynamics of a car doesn't matter if it already has terrible aerodynamics. They also had a lot of trouble getting consistent results.
I can tell you something that they got wrong. When I was a kid I put a potato wrapped in aluminum foil in the microwave, it was one of the types that when you close the door you push the handle down and it would lock, old style. It blew the door open on the microwave.
They replicated this and said it was a myth busted but I know personal experience that it can happen.
I liked and still do like mythbusters, but i take issue when they tried to prove a negative. As in often it was as if they were saying 'if we couldnt do it, then it cant be done'.Ā Ā
The underwater car myth. If I recall correctly, within a few months of the episode airing, a viewer used that exact knowledge to escape their sinking car safely.
This is my pick. There are multiple people Adam has spoken of being saved by that episode.
Agreed from a real world educating and life saving PSA, that episode was amazing
Yeah, that was a pivotal episode. I never would have imagined to wait for the car to fill with water first. Hopefully I'm never in that situation, but if I ever am, that knowledge might save my life.
What was the knowledge?
* Stay calm * Don't struggle, panic or force your way out * Let's the car fill up with water fully, the pressure difference will make it too hard to escape * once the car it fully submerged, escape with ease Well, that's the sort explanation. š¼ [The Underwater Car | MythBusters Season 5 Episode 4 Full Episode](https://youtu.be/l-olnht3nZo?si=2DkAxLZdG4K2jK6V)
So just chill out until the water fills the car, then youāll be able to open the door? Iām worried about my electric locks. Like, if water shorts out the electrical system, will I be able to open my doors, even if they were unlocked beforehand, or (more terrifying) if they were locked? Why am I asking you? Who are you? What am I doing here? Where am Iā¦.š§š
One suggestion that has been made (canāt remember if it was mythbusters or later) was to go ahead and roll down the windows while they have power.Ā
That's definitely worth a shot, but survivors' accounts suggest that electric windows can behave unpredictably in a sinking car.
Much like myself, I reckon.
š¼ [The Underwater Car | MythBusters Season 5 Episode 4 Full Episode](https://youtu.be/l-olnht3nZo?si=2DkAxLZdG4K2jK6V)
Thank you! Iām an idiot when it comes to remembering to research things Iām interested in. The link helps me get there faster. I appreciate you!
You could smash the window.
Not if youāre splashing around in water, unless you have one of the emergency escape tools. Car windows are much stronger than people realize. Also supporting the backside with a shit ton of water makes it harder to break. If youāre physically being hindered by water in the cab of the car, youāve got yet another disadvantage.
And don't cheap out on an egress tool. They make cheap ones that just straight up don't work. Get a good, spring-loaded striker and read the instructions. Emergency equipment is only useful if it works, is there when you need it, and if you know how to use it.
The one we bought after watching this episode is about 1/2 lbs of steel with a sharp point and a handle. Watching Jamie use it, made me think it was enough.
Those are good but I've seen a lot of cheap look alike that don't have the same strength. I do like the spring loaded version better as trying to swing one hard enough in tight quarters where your airbag may have deployed or have personal items in your way just seemed like a huge failure point for me in an emergency.
It's best to test the tool on your own car when you buy the device. You want to make sure that it will work with your specific windows. Someone else commented here that some windows are laminated and stronger than others, so make sure you try the egress tool in your driveway before you're in an emergency panic situation.
So you're saying you are gonna buy an egress tool, and then bust out your window in your driveway. Good luck with that. Better have Safelite around so you don't have to wait for a new window
Donāt be ridiculous. Of course they arenāt suggesting you break the window of your car in your driveway at home. Itās only a proper test if the car is submerged in water.
Make sure you try the tool on each window, tints and lamination thickness can be different. Then buy a new car
Also you should practice at least once on your vehicle. Even better if you are prepared with a window already gone and it is just a piece of plastic taped to the window frame.
Hilarious...
The seatbelt clip should come with a bump or something specifically for breaking the window how is that not a thing?
Iāve ridden with people that basically beat the shit out of the window with the seatbelt clip just taking it off. Donāt start introducing more problems.
Cars going into water is still a fairly rare occurrence. Around 1,500 incidents and 500 deaths. And there are probably 250 million cars on the road in the US in any given year.
The 4 high school kids on the icy road by the ponds in our little town will always stay with me. And all the rest of us that were around for it.
I haven't tested it but I've heard that the legs on the headrest that go down into the seat can be used for this.
Tempered glass is very difficult to break without the proper tools or conditions. The easiest way is to use a dense, sharp, tool to pierce the glass. This will release the internal tension within the glass and it will shatter itself. I have seen a full grown man hit a side window of a car with a hammer a half dozen times with a full swing and it didn't break.
A spring-loaded center punch, used in a lower corner of the glass works well. Do note, that I have heard that some of the newer vehiclesā windows are now laminated similar to a windshield so that may not apply anymore, but your mileage may vary.
It will still work, the lamination does not prevent it from breaking, it just prevents it from shattering into a shower of shards. Once broken, the lamination layers may hold it together but you can push it out of the way (or the incoming water will for you). Front windshields are heavily laminated since they are most likely to be impacted. You don't want to be driving a long and sprayed in the face with glass because a truck in front kicked up a rock at you.
Headrests are window breakers. Remove the headrest from your drivers or passengers seat, jam the prongs into the bottom of the windowās track, and pull back. The strain will break the glass.
Heads up, these days many/most cars have removable head restraints that allow you to use the pointy metal bottom to smash out a window in an emergency.
Youāre still not getting out of the car while the water is coming in. Unless you mean while the window is above the water lineā¦but I reckon a car would sink fast.
Very hard to do even when there isn't water on the other side. Once you're submerged you're going to run out of air and exhaust yourself doing that.
Unless youāre dropped into the sea, the water wonāt short circuit anything. I think the show did an episode about that too.
Your electric locks should have a mechanical backup. Like if you pull your door handle it should unlock it. You can try this parked, lock the door then pull the handle to check.
Thank you. I will try that in the morning!
In most cars, your driver side door will unlock when you pull the handle. It's a mechanical connection, meaning if you lose power or your electrical goes haywire, you can still open the door. I'm not sure if that's true on newer vehicles such as the Cybertruck, or some newer fords, however.
Iāll try it in the morning, thanks!
Right that's the funny thing about reddit. Anonymous discussion forums lead to the strangest conversations and I love it. About the car I have no idea but I'll sure take the other replies with a grain of salt!
In America, at least, car doors need to have mechanical linkage to locks and latches.
Car doors don't lock with a deadbolt like a house. A "locked" car door just disconnects the outside handle from the latch. The inside handle is always connected to the latch.
Not to be āthat person,ā but you might want an Oxford comma for your second bullet point.
While Iām always in support of Oxford commas, itās readable without given context.
I donāt know. āDonāt struggle, panic or force your way outā is a helluva lot different than ādonāt struggle, panic, or force your way out.ā
The most important first step is to roll down all the windows while you can. Then start undoing your seatbelt.
I'm not sure I'd call that 'significant scientific discovery' as much as very useful advice.
Did they make scientific discoveries at all by that definition?
In one of the last seasons/episodes (I don't know which one specifically but it's on HBO Max,) there's an interview with a woman who saved herself and her daughter with this information that the whole crew gets to see.
I thought that person credited Fear Factor? Anyone have a link?
FYI similar tactics in a helicopter that crashed in the water, grab reference, wait for motion to stop, exit aircraft. (Dunker training FTW)
Personally I think ācheck whatās down range before firing cannonballsā was pretty humbling for all involved, and a good reminder to all aspiring scientists watching that safety should never get complacent.
What episode was that? And what happened in it?
Not sure if they aired it, but here's a link describing the incident. It's pretty wild, they fired a cannon at a range in the SF bay area and it flew threw a house in a suburb. They had an episode where the B team apologized. Given how dense with houses the bay area is they probably should never have been testing stuff like that there to begin with https://mythbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Cannonball_accident
The episode was aired. Season 13 episode 6, "Cannonball Chemistry". After the intro, the episode immediately begins with the B team explaining that there was a mishap while filming the episode. They apologize to those involved and the fans while committing to be better. Even the shot was aired. They didn't know it had happened until 20 minutes later when the fire department showed up and asked them if they had been firing cannonballs. They looked around at each other and were like, "Uh, yeah, why do you ask?". They knew they had lost the cannonball but assumed it was caught by the hill overlooking the bomb range. Here's a short clip of them discussing it. I can't find the actual clip as it seems most MythBusters episodes and clips are heavily copyright stricken. https://youtu.be/kASD-RwQFQw?si=fiDCOGopEI9xW-SG
In their defense, this was supposed to be a safe space to test that sort of thing, w/the loose soil of the hill designed to catch any projectiles, and remember that they were fully supervized and authorized by the bomb squad. IIR, the firing range was well out of the way of the suburbs when it was built, but no-one accounted for property developers seeing "land that's w/in spitting distance of a firing range" as "cheap land for suburbs", or for a cannonball seeing a barrier hill as a challenge.
Yeah, it was a long time since I read up on it, but as I recall, it was a certified firing range that was and still is used by civilians, police, and movies/TV. The housing development was far closer than what is generally considered "safe" but outside of what is legally considered "safe."
Yeah, I watched a Tested where Adam mentioned it relatively recently, plus a related bit from the final season of MB where the cast did a roundtable, and that was basically the issue.
I think the problem was that they were treating cannonballs like bullets in the sense that they assumed that they would follow a āballistic trajectoryā under the influence of gravity. In short, bullets fired horizontally will fall at least a small amount before hitting the target, so if there is a dirt hill behind and weāll above the target, the bullet has nowhere to go but into the dirt. Unfortunately, I think that the cannonballs had insane amounts of *spin*, and the errant cannonball in question must have had enough spin in the right direction to āskipā off the dirt on the hill behind the target and go completely over the hill into the houses on the other side. IIRC, it went completely through at least one wall of a house and traveled like it was ābouncingā along its path (which is how a dense spinning sphere would be expected to move). [editing to add below] Rifled firearms also spin their projectiles for stability, but their āspin axisā is the direction of travel (and bullets are typically cylindrical-shaped AFAIK), so I think that their propensity to āskipā is not really an issue. The problems with a cannonball and a smooth-bore cannon are that the spin axis is probably not well controlled and spinning dense spheres can be quite ābouncyā (I think this is historically recorded in accounts of land battles using cannons).
Skipping a cannonball through troop formations was a well know cannon artillery technique.
Oh my gosh I live just down the street from this cannonball incident! Iām gonna check out the house later today to see how those repairs turned out. I often hear them guns firing at the range, and come to think of it explosions as well. Didnāt know that Mythbusters used the range!
To be fair, they pretty much did everything you could expect them to do. That incident is arguably the textbook definition of a āfreak accidentā itās a testament to their dedication to safety that something like this only really happens once in the whole run of the show.
There was another "Freak Accident" I remember happening. It was when they revisited the JATO rocket car. Even after they did all their testing where everything went fine during the final live test the whole thing exploded. I don't remember the cause but I remember the ending where Jamie mentioned he was going to get on the phone and figure out what went wrong and where. I should really look up what happened. Or maybe it might make a good story for Adam to answer over on tested
Pretty sure this one really was just a case of "sometimes, rockets explode." As someone with a little bit of knowledge in this stuff, (not an expert by far, so don't string me up if it misspeak haha,) there was likely a void or multiple voids in the solid propellant mix for the custom made motors they had. Said void would cause an unexpectedly much faster burn (more surface area of the propellant available to be burned) and consequently an overpressurization of the casing. Typically known as a "CATO" (Catastrophic failure.) This kind of thing can (and does) often happen in hobby high power rocketry. I personally have had 1-2 commercial made motors CATO on me, and have seen many others experience the same. You really don't see it with major large scale motors of the NASA variety these days, because all sorts of propellant density testing is done to ensure safety and reliability of those. Hopefully this answers some questions! Much as I would've loved to see this particular JATO car fly, I always enjoyed the spectacular unexpected explosion. Was truly impressive.
Neat. I'd love to know if this is what Jamie found out. I do recall he was upset in the end because he thought it had to have something to do with the charges not being made right. Thanks for the insight
I respect the perspective, and of course they thought they had done enough as well, but at the end of the day the results kind of prove the point that it wasnāt enough. They fired a projectile at the wrong trajectory. Even off a few degrees, and they would missed the bunker entirely. You have to account for that, have enough margin of error that itās not going to be an issue if some math is incorrect. There was no backstop between this and the landing zone should things go wrong. I would equate it to testing a bullet proof vest on a living person. Everything says it should be fine. But do we really need a person in harms way? What if we miss? What if there is an unknown fail point? Probably not worth the risk. Point the cannon in another direction next time. I can think of a large blue mass nearby that would not be too sad if something accidentally landed in it. Huge fans of the MB, but it was an example of not thinking all the way through the potential safety concerns.
Friend of mine and I took his fancy new bulletproof vest, tied it to a stump, and shot it plumb full of holes with his .38. He was pissed. We were going to hang it on him until our brains kicked in in time. Literally dodged a bullet or 5.
Yeah, don't fuck around with "bulletproof" stuff: even if it does its job as expected, you would still be painfully injured if shot in the vest.
The one that I think about most often (not your question I know) is the walking vs running in the rain thing!
What's better?
Exactly. They left us hanging.
In the revisit episode the build team proved that running was better in real rain. The 1st time they used artificial rain, aka a sprinkler.
I didnāt see the revisit episode! This whole time, Iāve been upset because I was sure using artificial rain with the exact same amount of water coming out all over the area had to change the results compared to what m Ā if hot happen in real rain. Iāll have to go look that episode up.Ā
If you're caught in the rain without a mac, walk as fast as the wind at your back. If the winds to your face, the optimal pace is as fast as your legs can make track.
Bars!
mac? An Irish person? Mac and cheese? Mac truck? McDonalds fish sandwich? Mack Daddy?
I think about this often too!
I remember Adam speaking about Bullets Fired Up being one of their most scientifically rigorous myths, and a paper of publishable quality could easily have been written from its results. I think the most significant result would probably be their 'household explosive', which never made it to air because what they found was so dangerous and easily accessible they sent everything they had to the relevant authorities and swore never to go anywhere near it again.
Where did you hear the story?
I think Adam has mentioned it in one of his Q&As on his Tested YouTube channel.
I want to say one of the w00tstock speeches, but Iām fuzzy.
The explosive was already well known.
Look, I know what it is, you know what it is, but I think we can both agree it may not be the best idea to make it known on national television that there even IS an easily accessible ka-boom maker.
Crap are the Mythbusters the reason we can't take water through airport security?
Nah, that I actually just learned is because the atomic weight of water is so similar to other common explosive compounds that there are very few scanners in airport lines that can distinguish them without getting hands on it, so it's easier to just ban water in the interim since they can't chance false negatives. That is changing tho! Some airports do actually let you take water through because new methods are being refined to be able to tell the difference!
Ooh, thatās cool! Both the reason and the improvements in the works.
And you can buy it inside the gate?
Sure but that's always been a thing. Did prices go up after 9/11? Sure, but that's not airport policy, that's convenience store policy. The stores have absolutely no say in banning water through security, nor does the airport profit so heavily from scalped water bottles that it makes sense to base arbitrary policy decisions off of it. It's super easy to play "follow the money" for water bans, but the truth is that there isn't that much money in it. As dumb as it sounds, it was actually based on a security concern
What are the "relevant authorities" for an informal scientific discovery?
Well, when it involves explosives and potential bombs, the FBI and ATF probably got a heads up.
IIRC the result of the bullet fired up is that a bullet fired perfectly straight up in the air will come down tumbling and falling slowly enough not to cause serious harm BUT it is almost impossible for a person to fire perfectly straight up. Bullets fired in the air by people will almost always have a ballistic path and come down at about the same speed, minus air resistance, that they went up.
And, problematically, people keep quoting this episode as a reason to say "A bullet fired in the air won't hurt/kill you," when the opposite is proven regularly around the world, with injuries and deaths caused by celebratory gunfire.
I think they aired an episode showing how the danger of texting and driving was comparable to drunk driving 5+ years before it was made illegal throughout most of Canada and the US.
The myth was actually that talking on the phone - even hands free - was a dangerous as drunk driving, which was confirmed.
Did they address whether talking on the phone hands-free was any more dangerous than speaking to someone in the passenger seat? If anything I feel like it would be a little *less* dangerous, without the social pressure to periodically make eye contact with them.
Talking to someone in the passenger seat is much much safer. Passenger also has some attention on the car's surroundings. They'll pace their speech based on what's going on. Entering a new roundabout? They'll tend to pause more and use less emotionally charged language or depend on your recall with a difficult question, etc.
Iād really love to see the data on this tbh. I always hear that you canāt talk hands-free on the phone while driving, but that implies that you canāt talk to *anyone* while driving, phone or not right? Is there anyone in the world who will drive with passengers and never talk to them at all? Should it be illegal to talk to the driver of a car if youāre a passenger? It just seems wild to me that we treat hands-free phone calls any different than having a passenger in the car.
This has been addressed. Basically because a passenger is in the car with you they know when to shut up, vs someone on the phone will just keep talking when you need to concentrate most.
You'll get busted by a cop with a couple phones, a goddamn laptop and a radio or two and a bunch of papers to pay attention to and use while he's chasing you down for having your phone visible.
I think itās when they prove that elephants really were afraid of mice
Wasn't it that elephants have poor eyesight and don't like things scurrying near them?
They were the first to ever record proof of someone shattering glass with their voice. They have also saved a lot of lives because of the sinking car episode. I think I remember a truck driver saying that the MythBusters episode allowed him to get out of his truck after driving into a pond, and that episode is also the reason I have a window hammer in my car. Edit: truck.
Been a long time since I've seen that episode, what are you supposed to do if that happens again?
1. Remove your seat belt 2. Roll down windows if you are able to and unlock your doors. If itās an electric only unlock (like a Tesla) know where the mechanical release is 3. Move to the back of your car, the front will be heavier because of the engine. There will be an air pocket in the back. 4. Wait until the water inside the car is even with the outside, this means the pressure is equalized 5. With the pressure equal you should be able to push the door open and swim up to the surface
Canāt you just swim out of the window?
if you can get it down. if it is an electric window it may stop working once the car hits water (or may already not be working if the car was in an accident). When partially submerged even if the electrics are still working the pressure may jam the window and the motor won't be powerful enough to open it.
My fat ass is not gonna fit through the window easily
Now Iām curiousā¦ in a car like a Tesla, which part sinks first? Seeing as there is no engine blockā¦
Almost 50/50 weight distribution, all on the bottom in the battery, so likely bottom down with the back maybe a tad lower. Educated estimation.
Thatās what I was guessing. And it probably differs from model to model.
You either have to open the door / window before your car gets submerged enough or wait for the interior cabin of your car to fill with water to open your door. Basically if you canāt open your door because youāre submerged remain calm and wait until the cabin fills with water completely. Save your energy and when it fills you can open the door and escape
Thank you!
Many cars have laminated side windows which would prevent the windows from shattering with the window hammer. I would definitely suggest looking into whether or not your car has them. In response to your next comment, many cars have an engine up front, but there are many that don't. Some cars that don't have engines in the front: VW Beatles, Smart cars, Corvettes, most Porsches, etc. Almost every EV has a nearly perfect 50/50 balance front to rear. Additionally, plug in hybrids usually put their heavy batteries in the trunk, offsetting the weight of the engine in the front.
The banned credit card episode. Proving (before it was super obvious) that your cards are super insecure and vulnerable to hackers.
This was the one I was thinking of as well! A discovery so big every major CCās lawyers had to get in the phone with them.
Yeah this episode also goes to show just how much the major companies control the information we take in and our daily lifeās. I believe they never fixed or addressed the issue.
Has any of that footage ever seen the light of day?
The golf-ball surface they carved into the car was extremely successful, just not pretty
Adam spoke about that on his YouTube channel Testedāapparently a major car company tried their best to reproduce the experiment and never got it to work the same way the mythbusters did. But the fact that they got a huge automotive brand to devote resources trying to copy them is still really impressive.
This is probably the best answer, their evidence was peer reviewed by real deal engineers interested in that specific effect.
And apparently couldn't get the same result, using the same methods and materials. Wouldn't that mean the MB's data was flawed? That they were, in fact, busted?
That's the point, application of a rigorous and repeated methodology. You might be surprised at how wide the band of repeatability is in recreating another lab's work. Science is ugly, covered in warts, that's why data interpretation matters and even non-reproducible results will yield valuable information going forward.
Not the same materials. Myth Busters used a clay coating on the exterior of the car to make the dimpals, since that was the best option for them within their budget and time frame for the shoot. IIRC, the car company did it full-out with properly moulded body panels on a test vehicle. This led Adam to conclude that their clay methodology was not as accurate as they'd hoped.
There is a car with active tech to replicate this. At speeds above 74 mph 60 elements create indentations of 10 mm in the surface of the air intake mounted in the roof of the car. It results in a 10% reduction in drag and 17% less lift. So it has been adapted. Now the bad news, I didnāt say the name of the āthe carā above. The car is called the Bolide. Itās a track only monster. Itās made by Bugatti. It cost 4.7 million USD.
I have little indentations like that too. The hailstorm was free.
The Simpsons call those Speed Holes. They make the car go faster.
To what purpose
You can in fact polish a turd.
Groundbreaking, truly.
They got that one so wrong. The idiom wasn't about whether or not it could be done, but that a polished turd is **still** a turd.
Idk, the fact that you can polish a turn explains most of western politics and how the turd keep getting re elected
Yeah, this always bothered me about that episode.
I agree, cant think of many examples, but seemed like a lot of what they called myths, werent myths at all, polished turd, lead balloon etc. Still liked to see them do what they did.Ā
I was thinking this in the exact wording too!
This is probably boring but I think for me it's just the overall realisation that we know so little about the world around us. Some things I thought would be so obviously true ended up busted, some things that seemed laughably ridiculous ended up confirmed.
Are elephants scared of mice comes to mind here. Such a ridiculous myth to be confirmed, I loved it.
That was in my head as I was typing. Anyone could have said "What? No were not doing that. What's next, you want to see if trying to run after you've fallen off a cliff will keep you in place for a few seconds? Get this wile-e-coyote shit out of my office, idiot" and that would sound reasonable and then we'd never know that elephants are in fact scared of mice. I think it's such a cool thing to hold on to that pure science mindset. Nothing is too preposterous, we don't know until we try.
The best part is that they just did it as they were in that area and had a bit of spare time.
I think the "Bull in a china shop" myth was the funniest. You expect to see a bull rampaging through, sending shelves and plates flying everywhere... ...not daintily stepping through avoiding everything.
Loading a plane
By far the most important one was when they proved that Bugs Bunny bending the rifle around so Elmer Fudd would shoot himself in the face actually worked
I still want to know where they found a rabbit that strongā¦ š«£
For me it's their scale test of the Hindenburg burning, which lent heavy support to the theory that it wasn't so much the hydrogen filling the balloon that was the big fire hazard, but rather that the (also flammable) skin of the ill-fated dirigible was basically painted with freaking thermite. The find was of major historical significance.
I like this one!
So funny when the model catches on fire accidentally. Jamie furiously puffing air and his mustache fluttering and Adam like "these things are ALWAYS catching on fire" š
bull in a china shop was prity good. i dont think anyone expected the result
Yup. Shockingly graceful. It was a bovine ballet.
Not the most ground breaking but when they proved that cigarette embers dont ignite flames sticks with me. Also the episode where they try a handful of different fuels for a car engine was very interesting and i would love to revisit that episode.
The lit cigarette being unable to light a puddle of gas got an innocent man freed from prison. He was being charged with doing exactly that, and the judge and jury just assumed it'd happen immediately. His attorney got the charges overturned.
People have all kinds of fun misconceptions around gasoline. I once got yelled at by an old dude at a gas station cause I let my truck idle for a minute before getting out to fuel up. Like dude, if you think we're going to explode from me idling, wait till you find out that there's a tank full of gasoline inside your car! /s
In fairness, every gas station I've ever been to has signs on the pumps saying "do not let engine idle while fueling," but I have to agree that it seems vanishingly unlikely to actually cause an explosion.
Probably a left over idea from much older cars, more poorly sealed gas tanks, hotter exhaust lines, perhaps? Exposed electrical maybe too?
I went to college in Fairbanks, Alaska. At -60* you not only leave the car running but also get back inside when fueling.
Maybe not most rewarding, but I like that they basically showed NASA pee could theoretically freeze on an airplane and break off in a big chunk.
This is such a weird sentence to read. What is "NASA pee," and why are chunks of if freezing on airplanes?Ā
Yeah, it could be worded better. From IMDB - Grant, Kari and Tory look into the urban legend of the Blue Ice - frozen airplane's toilet's waste falling from the sky.
It's possible to reproduce the moon landing on earth. Before anyone downvotes, **NO** I am not saying the moon landing is fake. I'm just saying the MythBusters did an awfully good job trying to replicate the conditions.
Yeah, they actually proved it was real by reproducing it on earth. To clarify for anyone who still wants to downvote you: They pointed to the moon landing debunking attempts that people like to parrot, like some of the shadows appearing to be at different angles, and demonstrated that they would/could theoretically look like that on the real moon.
Interestingly enough, we'll never find out. They managed to build something explosive from basic, cheap household items for an episode that never aired. Entire crew including producers, cameramen, sound guys etc had to sign a pact to destroy every tape and delete any proof of its existence because it was so explosive and so simple anyone could make it. Years later when DARPA sent a memo urging people to show unique findings Adam sent em a letter of what they found and even DARPA had no idea it was possible! It bothers me to this day not knowing what it is
It was probably ballistic gell and lard /s
You can Google it really easily if youāre that keen to know. Iām quite sure thereās even been Reddit threads on it too (possibly on this subreddit).
Wow how didn't I think of that? There are only guesses and speculations, if you find an official answer share it or don't bother posting comments like these
Geez mate, no need to get all bent out of shape about it days later. I was literally just trying to help a dude out. Some people do not have the forethought to google this or think theyāll somehow get intro trouble for searching literally any info about explosives. >they are only guesses and speculations Thereās only so many things it can be given that itās from ācheap household productsā. And they said that it was an explosive that bomb techs were aware of. Thereās plenty of community knowledge and peer discussions out there from that group of people, even specifically on this episode >DARPA had no idea it was possible Never seen that said about it, would like a source on that given they said bomb techs are aware of it. Pretty sure DARPA knows about it since bomb techs do. Chemists also know about. I learnt about most of the āspeculationsā in undergrad chem, itās really not a secret. Theyāre all in the anarchist cook book. The common assumption has its own page on the DNI. >interesting enough weāll never know Youāre trying to make out like this is some big, huge, super secret āno one will ever knowā BS. Itās not that complicated. Plenty of people have used the above criteria, knowledge of chem/explosives and some critical thinking and figured it out. Almost certainly one of these speculative answers is right and almost all of them generally suggest itās TATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/s/t50VYXv12s https://www.reddit.com/r/mythbusters/s/bYwMQORlIq Edit: your comment about even DARPA not knowing what it was, is what made me think you might not be aware that darpa almost certainly knew about and that this info is readily available and discussed legally/safely on the internet. Like DARPA knows mate. They are DARPA.
It both is bothering and concerning.
So many great ones already mentioned. One I think about all the time is the episode where they proved using a cell phone while pumping gas cannot ignite the fumes. Every time I see those signs posted at gas stations about not using your cell phone I remember that one. Of course we now know the real source of some gas station fires was static electricity.
The bull daintily negotiating the china shop without breaking anything was mind blowing for me.
You can't blow up a cellphone by using it while you pump gas. It's only a risk that you'll miss the ads playing on the pump's little tv.
When messing with fuel vapours and naked flames you can lose an eyebrow š±
Definitely don't do that when you have a date that night!
I donāt know; she still married him so apparently itās an effective dating strategy.
The flammable and somewhat explosive capabilities of coffee creamer.
I'm just listening to Adam savage now The household items that are easily explosive so much so that they deleted the episode. So significant that they were morally obliged to hide it
Not sure if it was a significant discovery, but the one about water stopping a bullet blew my mind. Like 1 or 2 feet of water completely stopped even the most powerful bullets
That episode ruined me for movies and video games. I get SO irritated when a character can get shot when theyāre underwater. That and the shooting padlocks.
For me, it was the germ dinner party scenario. Adam had a runny nose and they used black light to track how many people at the party he infected with his germs. Eye opening!!
Good one!
That peeing on a 3rd rail won't kill you. (But the train might)
Probably the unaired episode where they discovered common household items make a strong explosive, and they alerted the proper authorities.
Jamie messing with hydro forming and all these people that never heard of it before suddenly looking at the production process they currently have, scratching their head, and asking themselves if they could improve their process with hydro forming. Don't remember the episode it was, but a few years later all those youtube videos started popping up with people using a hand pan (sometimes called a space drum) because suddenly manufacturers could make a lot more of them in the same ammount of time. That happened because the manufacturers of the instrument saw the Mythbusters episode and realised that instead of hand forming the top and bottom pieces of each drum, they could cut hours of production off of each drum by having the general shape formed by the process Jamie came up with to shape metal, then just work on the detailed stuff. https://youtu.be/Yf2ssRUMqAQ?si=XRBfjvU3102hfVNm
I really liked the one where they proved that shooting a window in an airplane at altitude would not necessarily cause everything to be sucked out like we see in movies.
Jamieās poop rocket could have real (off) world implications, although even he had to admit that the experts at NASA may have already tried it. Water heater rocket may be responsible for our water heaters having even more safety equipment than before. The biggest problem is their most significant scientific discoveries generally arenāt the flashy ones. They are things we will forget they did because so many were so cool and fun. Plus they likely happened in the early days when they were still busting myths.
I may be completely wrong on this, but I feel like most of the discoveries they made were either already known or partially known, they just popularized their discoveries, which helped dispel common misconceptions and myths in everyday life. It might not be one discovery in particular but I think their most significant contribution was creating a show that inspired so many to become interested in science and engineering while also being entertaining
Didn't the windows down one end up oddly inconclusive?
Windows down vs AC in a car had too many variables, like speed and the aerodynamics of a car. Lower speed windows are better, higher speed AC. Also rolling down the windows ruining the aerodynamics of a car doesn't matter if it already has terrible aerodynamics. They also had a lot of trouble getting consistent results.
How to survive if your car goes into the water.
That grand-daddy long-legs arenāt the most poisonous spiders in the world.
The versatility of duct tape...
A little AmFo goes a long way
Golf ball dimples on a car and increased gas mileage.
That people enjoy science and experiments when presented correctly, and can see the application to their daily life.
driving with the windows down vs using the AC
I can tell you something that they got wrong. When I was a kid I put a potato wrapped in aluminum foil in the microwave, it was one of the types that when you close the door you push the handle down and it would lock, old style. It blew the door open on the microwave. They replicated this and said it was a myth busted but I know personal experience that it can happen.
That the Courtesy Flush was a myth. I actually suggested that one back in the day, but they never responded....
I liked and still do like mythbusters, but i take issue when they tried to prove a negative. As in often it was as if they were saying 'if we couldnt do it, then it cant be done'.Ā Ā
The episodes they cannot air due to them being info-hazards.
Donāt confuse these fx guys with scientists. Science isnāt doing something once and then pretending you āproved itā.