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Ask The Mythbusters
Who are the Mythbusters? Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are the hosts of a unique and popular television show on the Discovery cable channel. Working from a background in the special effects industry and shooting on location at effects warehouse M5 Industries, Jamie and Adam attempt to shed light on hearsay, rumour, and myth. Along the way they usually run across a little bit of science, too. Today, you have a chance to put questions to them. We'll take the 15 best questions and pass them on to the gentlemen to be answered sometime soon after the Thanksgiving holiday. One question per comment, please, and keep things topical. We'll post their responses as soon as we get them back, so ask away.
Dear Mythbusters-
It seems like it must be tempting to definitively call a myth "busted", even though the reality is that you just couldn't duplicate the results. Whether something is fact or fiction, scientifically a myth probably shouldn't be considered "busted" unless you have empirically show it to be implausable.
You guys generally do a good job of this, though on occasion I've seen an episode where you seemed a little premature. What can you say about where you draw the line, and do you feel like you generally do a good job of following the scientific method to get your results?
Also, can you get me that redhead's phone number?
Yep, here's the website of the guy that can break a crystal glass with his voice (without an amp). http://www.thevoiceconnection.com/ There's lessons and stuff there in case you're interested in singing.
Actually, when the Mythbursters invited the MIT guys to San Francisco, MIT's death ray apparatus didn't successfully set a ship on fire.
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http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-10-22-d
In the test MythBusters did, they created a machine to fire the arrows following the human archer test, so that adjustments could be made to velocity, trajectory, etc. This was the device they used to put the tip of the broadhead against the nock of the arrow already in the target. As stated in my parent, all attempts at "splitting" arrow failed.
The one arrow they were able to somewhat damage, the problem was the arrow split following the wood grain of the shaft. Since all wood arrows have wood grain, they conclude that even if there was a direct tip to nock impact, there wouldn't be a "perfect" split.
Please watch Mythbusters Episode 36 "Killer Tissue Box", which will be re-broadcast Nov. 25, 2005 on the Discovery Channel @ 10am(EST). This is the episode that they "bust" this myth.
It's too bad this chat transcript was not linked in the story, because it covers a lot of the more common questions.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
What your forgetting is the format of the show. First they take a myth and test it as closely as possible to the excat theme of the myth.
In this case the myth was that Arcamedies had an army of soliders with highly polished shields. On command the soliders directed the sunlight at the advancing ships. And burned to dust an entire fleet. No not one boat, but an entire advancing fleet.
This myth was quickly busted from the inital tests showing the diffcutly of having multiple people align thier mirrors in one spot.
Next they tested the 2nd myth which was similar claiming that arcamedies had a device with mirrors mounted to it which he used to direct the sunlight. As both mythbusters and MIT discovered, while possible to ignite or create smoke on an ship you have serious issues with mirror alignment and the movement of the sun. While it may be probale that a device like this was in fact constructed and even probable that it was used and may have even torched or at least set to flame one ship (ignoring factors like wet hulls, and having ideal conditions). The chances of someone even today taking out an entire fleet of advancing ships which would likely be spread across miles of shore line is so unlikely that it borders on completly impossible if not impossible.
Thus the myth was busted.
Often times people tend to forget what the myth actually was by the time they are at the end of the show. This was a problem with the eariler shows and if you notice in later shows the format is changed up a bit where they re-hash and re-explain the myth as well as why it was busted. To prevent this very problem.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."