Slashdot Mirror
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.
They will explore whether or not a webserver can melt as a result of something called "The Slashdot effect".
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Maybe when they get done debunkning all of the ULs you can find on Snopes, they can turn their crosshairs on huckster quackery such as cell-phone radiation shield stickers, magnet therapy bracelets and all the other crap that shows up on late-night infomercials.
THAT'S what I'd do to improve humanity.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
They did do the Cola and bloodstains and rust... turns out it was marginally better than water at cleaning blood, but it cleaned the chrome on a car better than the chrome cleaner product that they had! Very cool show.
It's one of my favorite shows. Three thumbs up on the TiVo. For those interested here is a list of some of the topics they covered.
1. coke's ability to remove blood stains/rust/etc
2. do piercing's make you more susceptible to lightening
3. ice bullets (CIA myth)
4. the JADO rocket on the car in the desert
5. the weather balloon lawn chair story
6. running in the rain keeps you drier then walking
7. eel skin wallets erase credit cards
8. smoking on the toliet can kill ya
9. poppy seeds can make you test positive on a drug test
10. peeing on the third rail will kill ya
11. tree canon
12. ways to beat a breathalyzer
13. dropping a hammer in the water before you fall in will break your fall
14. penny off the empire state building
15. exploding cdrom drivers
16. breast implants explode in airplanes
anyway - good show... no answers listed - watch the show to find out.
Vint Cerf told me that Al Gore was in fact the strongest early supporter of making the old ArpaNet into the public utility we call the Internet. Without Gore's technical understanding and power in the U.S. Congress, it would have taken much longer.
For those who can remember back that far, there were many ArpaNet users who did now want the system open to the public. There was intense opposition to making the system open to commercial interests, too. Al Gore was a true visionary, in this case.
"15. exploding cdrom drivers"
That is why I use a special version of WinZip that includes a reinformed titanium shell for my file downloads. You never known when one of these might detonate inside the modem or at the wall phone-plug outlet.
I'm sure glad the RIAA has not discovered exploding files. It could escalate their war against p2p to a new level.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I had a CD explode in the drive before. It apparently had a miniscule crack (in the CD), and I guess when it was spinning in the drive at full speed, the centrifugal force just made it blow apart. Sounded like a gunshot. Scared the crap out of me. I'll never use those crappy generic CD-Rs again.
When I called up Dell support the guy scratched his head at first but then when he talked to other ppl he said a few others had gotten similar calls. His support advice:
Here is the official site for the show. There are a few fan sites that are navigable off of the main site too.
It's quite and entertaining and informative show, and should definately be Tivo'd (since, you know, we're all out on Friday nights).
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
When they checked out the "Buried Alive!" urban legends by burying one in a metal coffin to see how long the air lasted, they didn't have all the information they needed.
The funeral home was happy to sell them a metal coffin but didn't tell them they bury coffins inside a concrete burial vault.
When the Mythbusters dumped several tons of dirt on the coffin with the tester inside the coffin began to collapse from the load.
They never did explain why they had that problem - A modern coffin can't be - and isn't buried by itself.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Cecil at Straight Dope (http://www.straightdope.com) has answered these and many other thousands of questions over the past 20-30 years. There is an archive with several hundred questions including the three in the parent.
you do not get any wetter running in the rain rather than walking. They proved this on a British TV science show a few years back by making a group of (volunteer) kids either walk across the school yard or run whilst wearing cotton t-shirts. As it was in England it was of course raining.
At the end of the trip they weighed all of the shirts and there was no difference.
As for urinating on the third rail, at your own risk !! I would not like to try as the third rail here in Budapest is at 6,000 volts.
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
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.