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Anything protected to an altitude and dropping will reach terminal velocity.
Physics my friend, learn it.

I'll just leave this here.

I'm not saying firing a 7.62 round into the air is without risk. But the chances of serious injury are very low.

Based on anecdotal evidence from Mythbusters testing, the determining factor seemed to be if the bullet maintains a stable spin. Once the bullet starts tumbling, it loses speed quickly and it becomes less damaging. http://mythbustersresults.com/...

Even shotgun pellets used in duck and pheasant hunting (Size 6 shot or less than 3mm) don't hurt when falling back to earth. I've been on a few pheasant hunts where hunters accidentally shoot upward toward another group of hunters and the falling shot does nothing more than sting when coming back down.

That said, shooting quadcopters with a shotgun is a TERRIBLE idea.

As confirmed by: Mythbusters and Straight Dope

Tether between a tank and an armored personnel carrier... well, close enough!

Thank you for your response, I was not aware that Mythbusters had done this test.

You're right of course about ABS braking. I skimmed a whhitepaper on it and it made my eyes water, way too complicated a concept to implement mechanically. Except in a steampunk novel where it would be implemented as a room full of large brass wheels, cogs and ornately decorated steam valves.

In Charlotte Amalie US Virgiin Islands there is a long concrete apron next to the highway. Occasionally tragedies such as this or this happen, and it is a worst-case scenario. Choppy and murky 30-foot salt water and muddy bottom, and not much to climb on to even once you rise to the surface. The stuff of nightmares.

Only Mythbusters has actually performed a submerged escape scenario it seems, many citations on the web point back to their result. But several commenters on their website http://mythbustersresults.com/episode72 point out that their window crank test may have some flawed methodology. They did not test underwater -- just by simulating water pressure with weights. Once the weights touch the door frame it would have to appply force necessary to lift and shift the entire weight along the glass. In the program as the window crank fails and the power window operate, you can clearly see that the weights are in contact with the door frame.

But water molecules do not present such lateral friction, they are not tethered to one another. Try sliding a 350 pound stack of bricks along a concrete floor. Now try pushing them on a wheeled cart. That is the difference I'm talking about. Only the rubber strips along the sides and along the bottom are the points of contact presenting friction. I'm not saying for sure that cranks and power windows can do it... just that the Mythbusters crank-test was not definitive.

And why did the window crank fail anyway? When an automotive jack placed underneath the same car would lift 1,200 pounds with ease? Well in part because almost everything these days is made of almost-metal. Did the window crank fail because the worm gear bent the teeth of the window mechanism or the scissors lifter (almost-metal) or because the moulded plastic window crank stripped out on its metal center nut?

The decision to go with inferior metals and mechanisms is a sneaky one, I doubt you're talking about more than a 50 cent difference in materials. Clearly window escapes have not been a safety priority. Small airplanes are required to have a manual crank to lower and lock the landing gear, and it's made of real metal. I believe that just as for airplanes it should be unlawful to produce a car without window cranks in addition to power windows. Let them be removable but they should be there.

That the battery and power windows preformed after several minutes underwater was a revelation to me! I'd like to see the same test done with brackish salt water though.

No. They showed that provided the bullet maintained a ballistic trajectory and its spin (i.e., wasn't fired vertically into the air), it could be lethal on the way down.

Reference?

While being drawn, a cigarette has a temperature of around 400 - 500 degC, while the auto ignition temperature of gasoline is 280 degC.

You may be able to throw a lit cigarette in a pool of gasoline and extinguish the cigarette, but I woudn't want to bend down and tie my shoe with my mouth near the gas filler nozzle with gasoline vapor escaping from my gas tank (which admittedly with modern sealed tanks and vapor recovery nozzles is minimal, but I still wouldn't bet my life on it).

http://wandererh.hubpages.com/hub/Can-The-Tip-Of-A-Lit-Cigarette-Butt-Ignite-Gasoline

Even those bastions of science, the Mythbusters, say it's partially plausible: http://mythbustersresults.com/special7

Granted, there's a limited set of conditions where a cigarette could ignite gasoline vapors, but that was my point - a cigarette canignite gasoline, but other conditions have to be just right to make it happen.

I would estimate that your credit cards and flash drives (which are immune to magnets anyway....), considering some of the highest magnetic fields in nature still require that they be relatively close to wipe information from credit cards.

Not to mention Mythbusters tried wiping credit cards with super powerful magnets without success.

Ahh, Google. Where would we be without a cursory check with you before posting.

1. Ripping out a man's heart without killing him.
2. Jumping from a plane using an air raft.
3. Keeping an immortal knight in a subterranean cavern for thousands of years.

Or, how about just shut up and watch the movie.

Mythbusters already busted that middle one. I'd like to see them test the ripping out a man's heart one, though I'm not sure PETA will appreciate them testing on live animals.

PETA would, however, be totally fine with that experiment being performed on a human.

1. Ripping out a man's heart without killing him.
2. Jumping from a plane using an air raft.
3. Keeping an immortal knight in a subterranean cavern for thousands of years.

Or, how about just shut up and watch the movie.

Mythbusters already busted that middle one. I'd like to see them test the ripping out a man's heart one, though I'm not sure PETA will appreciate them testing on live animals.

MythBusters to the rescue!

The result was that it got better with each subsequent filtration, but the top shelf stuff stayed at the top of the list.

1. Your English needs work or you should at least read your post before hitting submit.
2. The science in Mythbusters is more sound than your unreferenced observations. The episode in question specifically dealt with a bullet piercing the hull of a plane, causing a larger hole to grow in the fuselage, and sucking someone out, not a gaping hole to begin with. (see http://mythbustersresults.com/episode10)
3. The vacuum caused by air rushing by at over 200 MPH caused the pilot of the BA BAC 1-11 to be partially sucked out an improperly installed cockpit window. Simple Bernoulli principle like the one that makes planes fly to begin with, duh. Dumbass should have been strapped in! Here's a view of the cockpit so you get an idea of how close he was to the window to start with. Not hard to see why he was lifted out the window. http://www.dmflightsim.co.uk/bac_1-11_vc.htm
4. Same thing for the Hawaii flight. The tear opened right above the flight attendant's head and sudden decompression along with the negative pressure caused by the air outside the aircraft traveling in excess of 200 MPH caused her to be sucked out. One-third of the roof of the cabin of the plane tore off! Anything not strapped in or being braced was going out the hole if the pilot hadn't descended and slowed down. Google Aloha 243 for more details. Too many articles to list here.
5. And finally, yes, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster investigation showed that people can survive catastrophic failure of an aircraft/spacecraft inside the atmosphere. Belief aside, the fact is if the decompression occurred above 16,000 feet they were most likely unconscious within seconds and the whole rest of the way down. Alive, most likely, but certainly not likely aware.

Nothing wrong with the science going on Mythbusters, but certainly selective memory distorts people's memories of what they actually tested.

So, what happens when you get sucked out a plane? Simple answer is you die. Complex answer is you die after being rendered unconscious by the lack of oxygen or trauma from hitting a part of the plane then hit the ground, OR you are conscious and screaming until you hit the ground. Bottom line, gravity wins!

True, but how many of the Mythbusters results are positive?

http://mythbustersresults.com/

I was sure that Mythbusters (yeah, reliable source of information - I know) in the episode where they were testing whether a civilian could be instructed on how to land a plane by somebody in traffic control made grand claims that a plane's autopilot was capable of landing a plane without human intervention (which in my books is a little niftier than 'cruise control'). http://mythbustersresults.com/episode94

Mythbusters successfully demonstrated that a SCUBA tank, which have pressures up to 30 MPa (4400 psi) and internal volumes up to 18 liters, will turn itself into a missile if its regulator catastrophically fails. The tank proposed in TFA would have a pressure of 34 MPa and a volume of 54 liters, meaning that it will store even more energy.

An over-pressurized liquid nitrogen tank caused major damage to a Texas A&M building when it failed (read: exploded). According to the engineer's report (pdf):

The blast cracked the floor but due to the presence of the supporting beam, which shattered, the floor held. Since the floor held the force of the explosion was directed upward and propelled the cylinder, sans bottom, through the concrete ceiling of the lab into the mechanical room above. It struck two 3 inch water mains and drove them and the electrical wiring above them into the concrete roof of the building, cracking it. The cylinder came to rest on the third floor leaving a neat 20" diameter hole in its wake. The entrance door and wall of the lab were blown out into the hallway, all of the remaining walls of the lab were blown 4–8" off of their foundations.

Pictures of the devastation are included in the report. This tank, like all compressed gas cylinders, had both a safety relief valve and an emergency blowout disc. The explosion only occurred when both of these safety features were compromised due to improper maintenance.

While the hybrid's gaseous nitrogen tank is substantially different than the liquid nitrogen tank described above, it is safe to say that compressed gas cylinders are dangerous beasts. Unless you're planning on participating in the Hybrid Space Program, I would suggest steering away from vehicles like this.

If anything, my reaction is akin to that of the "Bull in a China Shop" experiment on MythBusters. You hear that Wikileaks announces a big leak, they hype it up, you get all this anticipation, and when the actual results come out, they're... amusing, fascinating, but not "OMG national security crisis!!1!" (the smashing ceramics) material. The worst we've seen in the cables is that the US spies on the UN and other countries via diplomats, but that's hardly surprising given that they had no compunction against spying against its own citizens for about a decade now-- heck, I'm sure the CIA spied on everyone ever since they were created.

If the intended aim of the leak was to shame governments into greater transparency and openness, I have to say that this leak is doomed to failure. Nearly all diplomats are part negotiator, part politician-- and all politicians never liked to be embarrassed in public. What it will very likely do instead is really mess with relations that have been slowly rebuilt in recent years-- China and Russia come to mind, and don't get me started on how much this sets back the 6-party talks now that the DPRK is warming up their artillery. Now that the Arabs' desire to end Iran's nuclear ambitions is out in the open, I doubt they'll be as forthcoming as they were when the toner cartridge bomb plot was brought to our attention. The great irony of these is that it is not that the content of the leaks themselves were a national security risk if kept secret, but that in leaking the material and messing up trust relationships with countries we'd rather not turn into radioactive glass (MAD), the leaking can easily make endeavors toward peace an order of magnitude more difficult. Now North Korea and Iran can say, "How can we trust you, when you're going to let confidential deals out into the open?"

What's more, this leak tells governments not that they should open up and avoid criticism and ridicule, but that they should keep even more from the public in order to avoid pissing off allies and potential allies.

Assange should never have targeted the State Department-- if he wanted real dirt, he should have kept the focus on the CIA, and Justice and Defense Departments.

Windows Mobile 7, in development for several years, strips the mobile telephone down to its fundamental essence: futility, annoyance, malfunction, inconvenience and a socially unacceptable odour. Confounding analyst expectations, the turd is in fact shined.

Well, yeah... the statement that "you can't polish a turd" was busted a few years ago. Evidently Microsoft decided that the dorodango method would apply to mobile devices as well.

if you live near high voltage cables run cables beneath to tap of electricity by induction

BUSTED: Mythbusters did it.
You don't get nearly enough power.
video here

and top the achievement of mythbusters

Doh. The link should be this: http://mythbustersresults.com/episode93

That's what I get for copying my post.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode54

A suction cup system can be used to scale a (23-story) skyscraper.

plausible

The concept worked but Adam did not have the stamina to scale the entire building. Making the climb would require significant physical training.

Mythbusters already did this ;) (Episode 88: http://mythbustersresults.com/episode88) Even with a propane torch they couldn't keep it lit. Makes excellent lamp oil though.

Grant beat it by doing complex math in his head while they asked him questions. Couldn't find a video, but found summary.

"You have heard of decompression, right?"

This question presumes facts not in evidence, namely that a bullet hole (the supposedly inevitable result of "untrained armed citizens" defending themselves aboard an aircraft) will cause the aircraft to lose pressurization. In reality, there have been pop-sci "studies" (Mythbusters is not exactly rigorous academic science, but it'll do for our purposes here: http://mythbustersresults.com/episode10 ) that show an aircraft has no difficulty at all maintaining adequate pressurization with bullet holes -- yes, holes, plural -- penetrating the pressure vessel.

I'm not advocating that we should let *anyone* on an airplane with a weapon who hasn't been adequately trained in its use, but to hide behind "we'd all pop like frogs in a vacuum bell!" is just silly. I'd be a lot more worried about what would happen in the inevitable case of an armed civilian who has had one drink too many and experiences a bit of "air rage" at the kid kicking his seat, the stinky passenger next to him, the (perceived) rude flight attendant, etc. That *will* happen, and sooner rather than later. The risk to the airplane is minor compared to the risk that some wackjob, who is not in any way a terrorist, will snap and seriously hurt or kill someone. It's very nearly happened on several occasions *without* loaded firearms being involved.

p

Mystbusters already proved that milk cures the burn. They didn't say why, I believe, but they still did it. http://mythbustersresults.com/episode91

They've already done it:

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode50

Sharpness is a matter of area, applied forces and proportions.

A sheet of window-grade glass can be incredibly sharp, but you can't hold a piece larger than a few square feet by a single corner. It breaks under its own weight.

Similarly, take the glass slides that you would use under a microscope; just a few mm thick. If a piece was made the size of a 4" x 6" picture frame, it would suffer the same, fragile fate as the window.

So, thinking along those lines, how big of a shard of 30-atom-thick glass would it take to puncture/cut skin? Unless the forces involved were precisely applied (or you have incredibly bad luck) I'm thinking it would utterly shatter to dust.

I'm more fearful of the Siliconosis, personally... or a skin-suffocation scenario a'la Goldfinger. (The gold paint may not kill you, but who says a .001 micron-thick layer of glass wouldn't?)

Yikes, money in space is dangerous... especially coins.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode4
Come on guys. Episode FOUR.

BEFORE:
The shitty, forced "acting"
The annoying junior crew took up 60% of the show
The "hurr, durr, hurr durr, derp derp derp let's blow something up" mentality
Adam's non-stop "look at me, I'm gaaaaaaay with this walrus!" antics
The "we saw this on youtube so we're gonna do it too" "myths"
The "Hey, if you like our show and want more, go watch this 20 second clip on the site! Yes, this little segment telling you to go to the site is in fact 30 seconds long!" shit

We don't even need to get into the whole "wouldn't fall to the Earth anyway, would burn in atmosphere if it did, would likely hit water, etc." stuff.

Oh that's perfect. Sprinters will finally be able to get a workout on a 10+ m/s treadmill. :-) Sign me up!

And it'll also give MythBusters an excuse to revisit the Airplane on a Conveyor Belt myth that they totally screwed up by not having an infinitely powerful variable speed treadmill that always keeps the airplane stationary relative to the ground.

[Scene: Some airport]
A model airplane starts moving forward the wrong way on a treadmill. A klaxon alarm sounds and the treadmill speeds up. Suddenly a security guard awakens from hibernation and arrests Adam while Jamie does his best impression of a walrus to evade capture. The little airplane tries its hardest to take flight, but the treadmill keeps negating any gains. Some idiot tries to run out and grab the plane but gets thrown backwards. Finally the rubber wheels melt and stick to the treadmill or the plane runs out of batteries.

Result: Myth confirmed. Adam is later released from Gitmo in time for the Christmas special.

Well it's no wonder it couldn't fly. You'd be better off with a lead balloon given the density and weight of gold!

That one was tested by Mythbusters. IIRC, they concluded that it was almost impossible to launch the bumper accidentally.

And here's a link to mythbustersresults.com so you can check it yourself. Assuming they don't just make up the results on that site, of course.

They have an episode about firing "alternative" ammo from a cannon.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode92

If someone modded the air cannon to fire heavy chains at a high enough pressure, it can be very lethal.

I also once met a chap that used many rolls of copper house wiring, all spliced together into a coil, all laid out under the soil just below high-tension powerlines. Inductive leeching provided his entire grow operation with power--almost completely untraceable as well. At least that is what he claimed..

Reminds me of a Mythbusters, oh wait: coil of baling wire positioned under a power line
To summarize: They got a few mV.

A thought I have on that as well, most high voltage lines are going to be 3-phase. If you are just pulling on one phase, you are going to screw with their balance (detectable!). (Same thing with 2 phases). To be undetectable (I'm just thinking here) you would need to pull from all 3 phases equally so that Power Out = Power In - Losses, and try to hide your stuff in what they think are losses. (Of course, if they have high losses, they might inspect the lines to see what is causing the losses because they are going to be thinking that something is failing, or something broke).

But, if you pull ideally from all 3 phases on a single coil (so one pair of wires out) the math says you get nothing out. (Wanna See: Have an 'A' phase, 'B' phase (A+120 degrees), and a 'C' phase (A-120 degrees). Calculate the sine of all 3 as A goes from 0 degrees-360 degrees. Then sum up each line at each of the degrees (A(0)+B(120)+C(-120), A(1)+B(121)+C(119), etc). Each A+B+C will be 0. ).
Inductively coupling 3 phases, with several (lots) feet of air separating, I somehow doubt it.

Stage 0. Successfully recreate the Ming Dynasty Astronaut myth.

It's not a large-scale study or anything, but it's still worth considering: Mythbusters did a test on this once. They had two people take a driving test (a) while intoxicated (b) while having a discussion on the phone, using a hands-free set, which is perfectly legal.

Both of them failed both tests, although they did a lot better drunk than they did talking on the phone.

Okay, I'll bite. Because you're too cheap. Seriously, biometrics that actually work (are hard to fool) are going to make your keyboard several hundred to several thousand dollars more expensive.

Those fingerprint readers that come for "free" build into laptops are snake oil.
Some educational reading:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/16/gummi_bears_defeat_fingerprint_sensors/
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode59

If you look up "hybrid rocket" what you'll see is a lot of similar systems. Traditionally, rockets were either liquid fuel, where you mixed two liquids (oxygen and kerosine, oxygen and hydrogen, for example) or one block of solid fuel like the Thiokol system on the Space Shuttle boosters -- which is, itself, commonly referred to as rubber. A hybrid system uses a solid fuel and a liquid or gaseous oxidizer. Nitrous oxide works well. One interesting thing about it is that you can use just about anything that contains carbon as the solid fuel: rubber, a big stack of paper soaked in wax, or even the infamous Salami Rocket. ("That's what SHE said.") People who build big model rockets often use stacked wax paper discs because they hold up better than salami, and are easier to make than thiokol-type stuff (and they seem to burn more cleanly as well, compared to home-made polymer-type fuels.)

Myth busters did bust this myth twice as well
The difference in 2 feet vs 3in would be 12 milliseconds instead of 1.5 ms. Since it is still the same amount of energy hitting both the gun holder, and the thief. So barring a outside force they would each reach the same speed, the only difference is the shooter would have 1/8th of the acceleration rate, but for 8 times as long of period of time, with both eventually reaching the same final velocity change.
So the shooter has a extra 11 milliseconds to counteract the force than the target would have. With the average reaction of a human being @ ~215 ms, their is no way that you have had any muscle reactions to make any counter force during that extra 11ms.
>A shotgun can easily put an unwary shooter off-balance, so it would do worse to the target.
only if the target was either hit at a higher location in the body than the shooter, or if the target had less momentum (IE running away, not towards the shooter. kinda defeats the purpose of knocking them down if they are running away already.)
>they'll be severely hurting and knocked around.
The question was more about hitting a bullet proof vest that stops the bullet, compared to say a 22-250 rifle that has more kick than a shotgun slug, and a much smaller projectile, it will lose less energy getting to the target, thus have more knockdown momentum, and more penetration power if a vest is in the way (but a hollow point expands similarly, after impact). Therefore a all around better solution IMHO. Only advantage to the shotgun I can think of is it has more flexibility in ammunition (alternate slugs, and shot for example), and a pump action has a very distinctive sound, that is more intimidating than just silence before the shot (if you want to "give notice".)

Unverifiable links by anonymous authors citing anonymous sources are no better than science fiction. At least Isaac Asimov signed his work.

There is jack and shit for evidence of intelligent alien life as of today. I'm sure the Russian hacker THOUGHT he could find images... where is the proof he did? Did he disseminate any of them? Any that cannot be easily dismissed as various atmospheric and interference phenomena? I mean, there are people who still think the moon images were faked, even though there have been extensive experiments and study done on them to verify them.

Oh, and about the astronauts acknowledging (way to use spell-check there, sparky) alien contact? Bullshit. With a capital fucking B. Lying does NOT help your credibility.

Face it. There is no alien life near us, we really did land on the moon, and the government is NOT all powerful and able to keep a secret of that magnitude. Suggesting anything else is pure lunacy.

Myth Busters did a special on the moon conspiracy. They busted all the conspiracy nut's "evidence". I never doubted it, but the episode was well done

REVISITED: Running a car with air conditioning on is more fuel efficient than running with the windows down. (From Episode 22)
partly confirmed
The fundamental flaw in the MythBustersâ(TM) test was that the point where the drag becomes powerful enough to inhibit a carâ(TM)s performance with windows down was inside their 45 - 55mph margin at 50mph. Going less than 50mph it is more efficient to leave your windows down, but going greater than 50mph it is more efficient to use your A/C.

They did.

The ultra paranoids should watch the mythbusters episode where the water pressure prevented the manual windows from rolling down.

Curiously enough, they submerged a battery and a door and the power windows still worked underwater.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode72

I too call BS on the thermal wetsuit trick.
Mythbusters had a 2006 episode in which they tested tricks done in movies to defeat security measures. In particular, they tested trying to defeat thermal sensors, including the method of wearing a wetsuit. They even tried spraying down the suited person with a fire extinguisher to cool them.
The result? The person regained heat fairly quickly, and showed up easily on the thermal sensors.

send this to Mythbusters, i'll like to see that company tying to sue them.

They did.
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode93

Mythbusters already did a lie detector segment.
They marked as "plausible" the proposition that one could beat the detector.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode93

Some FUD from both sides about the reliability or lack thereof of Mythbusters' test.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mythbusters+lie+detector&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Someone doesn't watch mythbusters >>

Mythbusters to the rescue! haha, I knew I remembered them doing an episode on this. Basically, no matter where you put your toothbrush, it's going to get the same bacteria on it.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode12

Fecal coliforms bacteria can grow in toothbrush bristles.
confirmed
Fecal coliforms were indeed found on all the test brushes, including the control ones. However, none were of a level high enough to be dangerous, and experts confirm that such coliforms were impossible to completely avoid.

You actually can polish a turd. Two Mythbusters managed this feat.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode-113-end-with-a-bang

Mythbusters addressed this a while ago: http://mythbustersresults.com/episode10 Although, I wonder if the results would be different if the plane was in flight at 600 MPH -- somehow, I think that would make a difference, no?