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best show EVER

I’ve gotten hooked on this awesome show called Mythbusters. Two former special effects guys blow up, electrocute, bury, sink, and generally maim everything in sight to test the myths we live by. For instance, I’ve learned the following things:

  • Jimmy Hoffa is not buried in Giants Stadium
  • Lightening is not especially attracted to people with facial jewelry unless you have a doorknob bolted to your cheek (tongue rings don’t cut it)
  • Lethal quicksand exists only in the movies
  • You can unsink a small boat with 27,000 ping-pong balls
  • You can float a 6-year old girl with 3,000 balloons
  • Most any small appliance will electrocute – and kill – a person in a bathtub, depending on the appliance.

    The best part is that each of these pieces of information has replaced some law school-related information.

    addendum: the newest episode tested the theory that if someone fires a gun in a plane, the plane will blow open and everyone will get sucked out. to test the theory, the two guys got ahold of an abandoned Hawaiin Airlines jet and pressurized the cabin so that the difference betweem the air pressure in the plane and outside the plane was 7 psi (pounds per square inch). the theory was busted. when they shot a hole through the window, nothing happened. there was a puff of air and the cabin repressurized, but the small bullet hole didn't get blown up in a big hole and nothing got sucked out onto the runway. but i see a flaw in this experiment. their setup proposes to mimic the environment of a plane at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet with a pressurized cabin. though they did match the cabin's internal pressure, they did not reproduce the wind that would accompany flying at several hundred miles per hour. though it only takes a split second for the cabin's internal pressure to equalize with the outside pressure, i think that the sustained winds produced by flight would change things. i think it would add to the vacuum effect.

    regardless, most movies don't involve a small bullet hole, they involve a gaping hole big enough for chairs and people to fly through. had the guys on the show taken a plane up in the atmosphere at several hundred miles per hour and blown a gaping hole in the side, i bet stuff would start flying out. and that, my friends, concludes my thorough scientific analysis of the myth.

  • Comments (5)

    sunny:

    URL:
    i started watching one last week that was going to talk about the two-second rule but had to leave. anyone catch that? i'm curious. and can the third subway rail electrocute you?

    URL: http://www.nerdygirl.com
    I love MythBusters. Oddly, I've found that it cures hangovers. Also, they recently had a show where they revisited a bunch of myths they had called busted because people wrote in about how there were flaws in their plans. They don't always use the scientific method when they call a myth busted, but it's extremely entertaining nonetheless. If it ever comes back on the air, Discovery also has a rad show called Top Gear. I highly recommend it.

    p-man:

    URL: http://
    that show is addictive. i watched it for three hours yesterday and didn't even notice the day go by. blog-addictions are also rather crippling...

    URL: http://www.whiterose.org/michael/blog
    It's a cool show. I've seen one episode where they test the myth that you can electrocute yourself by pissing on the third rail of the NYC subway...

    swandive00:

    URL: http://
    i've gotten hooked on just cruising blogs even though i just checked them like 3 seconds before to see if anyone's got anything to say that will prevent me from reading anything by hadley bull or kenneth waltz.

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