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MythBusters - Who Ya Gonna Call?
An anonymous reader writes "The currently-airing Discovery Channel show MythBusters has been profiled in a Newsweek article. Basically, the show takes two former Hollywood effects designers as they set out to prove or disprove various folklore myths that have come about over the years, such as the actual effect of a poppy-seed bagel on a drug test, or what effect a penny dropped from the Empire State Building observation deck will have on a human at ground level."
I wonder if there is any way of "busting" urban myths. Even after I send people to various urban legend sites to combat the more annoying email variety, it seems some people are just credulous or just want a good story to tell. I suspect that the reality of it is irrelevant, and busted or not, the same stories with be with us for a very long time.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Do you get wetter walking or running from point A to B in the rain? OK, let's make some key assumptions:
The amount of rain falling is constant and is equal between point A and B. Wind is not a factor. Assume that the rain drops are at critical velocity. You move through the path at a constant velocity.
Now, imagine freezing time - with all of the raindrops fixed in place. The rain that would hit you in 3s is maybe 100 feet up, while the the rain that hits you in 6 sec is 200 feet up. So, you simply convert the amount of time it takes to traverse A to B, and convert that to the vertical distance of the rain drops that would hit you when you get to point B. Then, you can simply use C^2 = A^2 + B^2, where A is the path length and B corresponds to the amount of time (rain height). So minimizing the C, total path length in the rain reduces how wet you get. Even if you moved at near-infinite speed, you would still get wet in the rain, but not as wet as someone who never moved.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Not to defend that sort of behavior, but he's gotten enough of that sort of stuff hurled at him from con artists that over the decades he probably sees it as "sauce for the goose".
I suppose. It doesn't seem to me that one does much good for a reputation as a skeptic by being dogmatic though. The point of skepticism is "prove it" not "that's impossible".
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001