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Mythbusters Accidentally Bust Windows In Nearby Town
Thelasko writes "In an effort to knock Buster's socks off, the Mythbusters accidentally created an explosion so large it shattered windows in a small town over a mile from the blast site. The Mythbusters had the broken windows replaced the very same day.
The Esparto, California fire chief says that several firefighters were on hand for the blast, but he didn't notify residents because, 'Mythbusters is supposed to be a really popular show. Everybody would have been out there. We would have had to cancel it because it would have been too dangerous.'"
... Jamie got big boom.
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
The Myth Busters truly are gods among geeks.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
.... can't wait to see this one air. I wonder what odds Adam gave of shattering windows a mile away from the blast site?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
With the amount of experience these guys have causing explosions, I'm curious why they were unable to predict the size of this one in particular ...
but i guess they really blew their load
...could get the go-ahead on tripping 500 lbs of ammonium nitrate in order to "knock the socks off" of a mannequin.
"Chief Barry Burns, of Esparto Fire Department" :-)
--- Nick, hard at work
And their big 'bleep' was located 'bleep' but don't 'bleep' anywhere near 'bleep' CUE BIG FIREBALL BOOM!
Sorry about that, it is just a pet peeve of mine that Mythbusters is seemingly censoring mundane details about what they are doing. What is the point about censoring the location where you are firing off a minigun? It's obviously restricted, and it isn't as if people are going to wander onto some military base and pick up a minigun.
If the people who watch the show were so stupid as to try and use some of the chemicals that are used in the show (and harm themselves or someone else) I'd wager that they are probably too stupid to even know where to order them.
You never saw Mr. Wizard bleeping out the chemical names on his demonstrations.
I swear that if the lawyers had their way, they would bleep 'gasoline'.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Nothing new here, It happens all the time when filming shows and movies 'on location'. People get compensated for damages. Life goes on.
Tho i'm curious what they were setting off this time, considering the time they blew up that cement truck was huge and no reports of personal damage on that one. ( 1000 pounds of high explosive in that one )
Personal nuke? :)
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That blowed up real good!
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Ever since these other "lets blow stuff up on high speed film" shows came out, MythBusters has had to blow more and more stuff up, kind of getting anti-intellectual nowadays. Plus Kari needs a bigger rack.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
than they expected??
does anyone on the team have a degree in anything? heres a suggestion:
before you blow up 500 pounds of explosive chemical, do the god damned math. sure no one cares if your sorry ass is blown to shreds but im certain a whole town might get noticed.
Good people go to bed earlier.
...but am I the only one who thinks that they've been shifting the focus more to things that result in a good explosion, to the detriment of everything else?
I understand that the big boom Jamie wants makes for good TV, but the reason why I watch the show is because of their resourcefulness and inventiveness to try to prove/disprove any myth, regardless of whether it requires the assistance of Frank Doyle.
I just hope that it doesn't turn into the "All-Explosions!!!!!(tm) MythBusters" show.
So, let me get this straight, the county professional in charge of public safety chose NOT to inform anyone in the nearby area because of the shows popularity and they would have had to cancel said big boom because it would have been too dangerous?
Mental note: Do not place a Nuclear power plant anywhere near this "safety" crew.
There's a pattern...fail to bust a myth....BOOM!!
Back in 1978, one of the first digital sound recordings was Telarc's recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. It used real cannons in the recording and the rumble from the cannons go down to about 4Hz. The liner notes for the CD said that some windows were blown out 1 mile away while making the recording. I heard from a friend that a vinyl version of the 1812 would actually make the needle pop off of some phonographs (not sure if it was the same recording or not).
Oh, and am I the only one who thought this was about some software from Microsoft?
BUSTED!!
Also probably the only two on television who could have this happen and not be sued off the planet too :) I stand in awe.
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
"...They were trying to literally 'knock the socks off' a mannequin by igniting 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate."
Uh, I like the show and all, but it's rather ironic that a couple of "celebrities" can get their hands on 500 pounds of this stuff and use it, when Average Joe can't manage to buy 50 pounds of "enriched" manure from Home Depot without tripping the "terrorist" flag at Homeland Security...
AWESOME!!!!
Awww, the headline made me hope that they had accidentally busted the idea that Windows was a good OS.
They didn't inform people because if they knew, tons of people would've flocked to try to view it, and with that number of people trying to approach the area it would've had to be canceled.
Lots of normal people + big boom = bad idea.
small team of trained professionals + big boom = good.
You have the order wrong.
The shows popularity would have made people come too close so it wouldn't be possible to perform the explosion. They judged it safer for everyone if people didn't know about it.
Myth: Plausible
Windows: Busted
Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch?
The keyword in the summary was "accidentally". This was not an intended result and was not anticipated. Especially not a mile away.
They were igniting 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate. What, did EVERYONE (including Fire Marshall Bill) forget to bring their handy dandy bomb-squad approved $10 calculator with them that day?
He chose not to inform anyone in the nearby area because they would have flocked from an area that was *expected* to be safe to the site of the show's taping, which was definitely NOT safe. Sometimes things don't happen as predicted; you can't plan for every eventuality. And Mythbusters did at least take responsibility for the results and made restitution by replacing the windows the same day. And for it to have been that quickly, you KNOW there were no lawyers taking "not our responsibility" stands.
"Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us fall in love with the boootiful lady at the end of the bar."
Ah, the vicious, wonderful cycle. =D
The enemies of Democracy are
Safer still not to make things go boom-boom just to make money, surely?
rewriting history since 2109
So, let me get this straight, the county professional in charge of public safety chose NOT to inform anyone in the nearby area because of the shows popularity and they would have had to cancel said big boom because it would have been too dangerous?
Mental note: Do not place a Nuclear power plant anywhere near this "safety" crew.
You're right. It would have been a LOT better if all the curious people would have been right AT the blast sight instead of miles away in their homes. I'm sure the wooden barricades that they would have used would have protected the fans from any danger caused by the blast!
Mental note: I am not super intelligent, and I don't even understand half the crap that gets put up on slashdot, but even I can see the ignorance in your way of thinking.
I agree. The guy made the right decision. Mythbusters draws a huge crowd anytime they're doing anything. If people had found out they were doing something that involved an explosion those people would have definitely shown up... and then gotten blown up. Yes, it was startling for the towns people... but I think they'll survive.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Remember, they built the bulletproof shelter for explosions then in a much later episode discovered that the material wasn't bulletproof.
What's the verdict on the myth that the Mythbusters can continue to do huge explosions without any collateral damage?
Definitely busted.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
It was a NASA Mars Mission problem. The Mythbusters were loading 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate while the safety guys thought they meant 500 grams.
Jamie challenged the geeks to get rid of 'sockpuppet''s from slashdot using 'Buster', some aluminium nitrate, and some socks.
The boom was the sound of heads exploding trying to comprehend the concept of a 'sockpuppet' from the beauty challenge .
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A well known phoenomenon
It was an accident. Yea, sure.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
At this time, Buster is still unavailable for comments.
What, did EVERYONE (including Fire Marshall Bill) forget to bring their handy dandy bomb-squad approved $10 calculator with them that day?
I'm guessing they underestimated the burn rate of the explosives. This is probably due to the high variability in quality of ammonium nitrate. They may have done the calculations for agricultural grade ammonium nitrate, and used another.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
They didn't inform people because if they knew, tons of people would've flocked to try to view it, and with that number of people trying to approach the area it would've had to be canceled.
Lots of normal people + big boom = bad idea.
small team of trained professionals + big boom = good.
I'm aware of the reason behind why they didn't inform the public, that does make sense. Obviously the issue is the ability of Jamie and Co. to accurately calculate the possible blast impact of igniting 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate. Not exactly an amount even they deal with on a daily basis, and even more reason you probably should have gotten more than a fire marshal involved. No offense, but generally firefighters are not EOD experts.
That's one hell of a blow job
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flamebait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Well, [insert some joke about BSOD, why I use linux, etc]
They were igniting 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate
[humor]
I hereby declare this an act of domestic terrorism. The fact this wasn't in the middle of a public square just means they were bad at planning.
[/humor]
Ammonium nitrate is a cratering charge. It does not have the higher feet/sec characteristics like dynamite (which would be the attributes of a explosive to cut through structures). The explosion is going to move slow and steady. Blowing out windows would be a typical expectation. My father was a demo expert in the Army. I read his manuals and remembered all the formulas. I am not some fruitloop about to blow up anything.
It sounds like an urband legend to me.
I hope they took the opportunity to replace them by Linux.
You mean real windows windows? oops sorry, what a waste of a good rant.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Adolescent and irresponsible. 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate. What were they thinking?
According to my BOFH calendar, the shattered windows were caused by cosmic rays.
including Fire Marshall Bill
considering the fact that F.M. Bill stepped into a tub of water and then touched two alligator-clips attached to a battery together, I would want him to be as FAR away as possible..... Also, he completely destroyed a school...... he would be the idiot to light the fuse and run....... ammonium nitrate is very, um, explosive and even transporting it is a small hazard. And if the blast could destroy a pane of glass at 1 mile, what would happen to the LCD screen (covered by glass) and the calculator?
They failed, because in 1921 it was already succussfully demonstrated how to destroy a city with ammonium nitrate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion
ammonium nitrate is very, um, explosive
Actually, ammonium nitrate is an oxidizer. It has to be combined with some type of fuel to explode. One could be reasonably safe by simply transporting the oxidizer and the fuel separately. This is probably why the Mythbusters chose to use it.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Yes Rico. Ka-BOOM!
I'm assuming this one is a myth confirmed..
My chem teacher
a: knew that potassium is *more* reactive than sodium, so used less of it
and
b: put the beaker full of water on the desk that the two cheerleaders in class sat at so when it went phooey they were the ones that ended up soaking wet.
He was a truly superior human being -- and he taught there his entire career, for 15 years after I graduated.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
"Chief Barry Burns, of Esparto Fire Department" :-)
This is SPARTO!!!
NO! Don't moderate "Flamebait" near a post discussing ammonium nitrate! It's like yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre (full of explosives with sound-sensitive detonators)!
Because they don't want a bunch of damn tourists driving by that location every day taking pictures on their i-Androids and "tweeting" all their idiot friends on Buttbook (Facebook 2.0). You could just see the insipid blog posts now:
Once you get the geek tourists, you get the geek signatures, you get geek idiots trying to help out, you get the pedantic geek idiots trying to outsmart them, and you get armchair geek idiots trying to act chummy with the hosts of the show.
Basically, if they gave the location of where they did this stuff, it would become too infested with geek idiots to ever use it again.
How exactly is this a story? Microsoft Windows is so fragile that it's very easy to break it. Oh wait, you mean they broke glass windows! With Slashdot being primarily a tech-related site I was thinking of that "windows". (Using voice of Emily Latella) "Never mind."
But anyway, an entertainment program was doing a segment involving explosives where, as a result of an accident or miscalculation, the explosive force was too much and it caused unintended damage to outlying structures. As is the standard legal requirement when an organization uses or transports explosives, the company using them is considered automatically liable, that is, they are liable for any damage caused by their actions without regard to fault, even if they were prudent and took every precaution. This is the same standard that an employer has with respect to on-the-job injuries to its employees; that's why companies have to carry Worker's Compensation insurance (or be self-insured).
In these sort of situations (employers with respect to their employees, users and transporters of explosives) we presume these are or can be dangerous operations and those doing these things are required to include the potential cost of injuries as part of their overhead.
There was a movie, Blown Away with Tommy Lee Jones and Jeff Bridges, where they blew up a ship in Boston Harbor as part of the ending. The company announced this and stated that if anyone had damage to their house or building as a result they would pay for it.
So a company required to protect third-parties against damage went out and fixed the damage which they caused immediately. This is not newsworthy. They immediately fixed the damage they caused and acted responsibly. For that, we can say thank you for doing the right thing. Oh, wait, I suppose the fact that they had a bigger than expected explosion is newsworthy because it doesn't happen all that often.
----
Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> — My Blog
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
hmmm, maybe im getting my chemicals mixed up... i remember in 11th grade my chem teacher was mixing chemicals and accidentally send something into a flaming bunson burner. He said it was amm. nitrate..... but you know how teachers are ;)
His new nick-name was "Baldie" for the rest of the year...
They need to revisit the verdict on the 'Brown Note' study. I'm guessing this made some folks crap themselves. Did they offer to replace any soiled underwear? The Brown Note - CONFIRMED
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
Could still be ammonium nitrate. Just think, what happens if you grab a bottle of medical-grade oxygen and put the open outlet near an open flame?
> ...considering the fact that F.M. Bill stepped into a tub of water
> and then touched two alligator-clips attached to a battery together...
So? Perfectly safe.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Little anecdote for you pyromaniacs:
I live a few miles from one of the Humber Oil Refineries (east coast UK). A few years back, it blew up.
Windows & doors got blown through in Immingham, a couple of miles from the site. I was maybe 5 miles away and heard the blast.
Because this is /. I'll tell you what happened - I had a friend working there at the time, so they all got the report. Turns out there was a large high-temp gas pipe that had a little inlet, used to release a slow, steady drip of water into the flow and cool the gas. For one reason or another (principally because nobody could be bothered to flag it up for replacement), the valve got a bit temperamental over time, and so people going around doing the checks would occasionally open the valve a little because they thought it had stopped.
A drip became a thin stream, which hit a bend in the pipe and eroded the wall. Eventually the wall got so thin that the gas leaked out, and, well, boom.
Off topic? Go ahead, I have Karma to burn.
Meta will eat itself
I read this three days ago on Fark. We can do better than this, can't we /. ?
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4283269
That was the parent poster's point. The teacher f**ked up.
Couldn't agree more. Kari is overrated and panders to geek boys. Scottie was actually edgy, beautiful, sweet and talented. Her leaving probably had a lot to do with refactoring the show to make the Tori-Grant-Kari second team.
Damn you, I wanted to be the first to post that.
The perfect comment, and it is only +2 Funny, right now.
By coinicidence I was watching 22,000 Foot Fall again last night, which of course also has a massive explosion. At one point the FBI guy Frank expresses concern because the weather was turning cloudy and that was potentially going to rebound the shockwave back to the ground and "shatter a bunch of windows". However, other delays resulted in the weather clearing up for that big boom.
Maybe they weren't paying as much attention this time? (Of course it's also possible they knew it'd happen but might have had so much invested in the shot that they figured it'd be cheaper to replace the windows than reset.) Good on them for fixing it quickly at least.
... this would be about a Windows security issue based on the headline.
All these broken windows will fix the economy in a jiffy!
Hilarious idea - get 500 /.er's entering an amateur competition to prove of disprove myths for a reality show.
I want to work for Mythbuster's, wake every morning, have a coffee, grab some dynamite and blow shit up!!
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
And here's the oblig XKCD showing you why.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
huh? i for one wouldn't want the average Joe to manage 500 pounds of this stuff!
The "celebrities" OTOH manage the stuff under a controlled environment..you know they have the fire department ready etc. So what is wrong with this?
Ah, I think the fact that someone obviously mistook a handful of firefighters and a former FBI agent for EOD experts is what's wrong with this.
No offense to the professionals on site, but honestly, when trying to calculate the blast radius with questionable-grade ingredients (especially 500 pounds worth), it doesn't take a genius to realize the window of opportunity for Mr. Murphy to make a guest appearance. Put the egos aside for a moment and call in the right people.
> The shows popularity would have made people come too close so it
> wouldn't be possible to perform the explosion.
So? It's up to the show organizers to choose a range such that they can exclude the public to a safe distance. Setting off the bomb in secret in the hope that no one will be close enough to be injured is not a reasonable alternative.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Our chemistry teacher would have everyone as quietly as possible leave the room. Then he'd move the clock to 5pm. Then he'd leave and on the way out into the hall bang the door as loud as possible, waking the student up.
Good times. =)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Right, just like what they used on 9/11 to take down the twin towers and WTC7.
A new science teacher came to my high school during the 1980s. During the first week of his job, he decided to help clean out the chemical closet. As he was going through things, he came across a large jar of picric acid, which is an ingredient to some explosives. As he took a more detailed look, he noticed that the acid had crystallized.
He called up the local police department to talk to someone who does hazmat / dangerous chemicals work. The moment he said, "crystallized picric acid," the man on the other end of the phone shouted, "Evacuate the building now!"
The full bomb squad arrived and took the beaker carefully up the hill to the 50-yard line of the football stadium and detonated the beaker. The shockwave went clear across the town.
--Chag
This all probably all started with a cherry pop-tart and a toaster.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Where's the Ka-boom? There's supposed to be a windows shattering Ka-boom ... oh wait.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Now they can do a mythbusters show on the broken window fallacy!
The Myth Busters truly are gods among geeks.
Adolescent and irresponsible
What attributes would you expect a Geek God to have? We're a bunch of 40 year olds with WoW accounts, Mame cabinets, and manga who ditch work to be the first in line to see The Watchmen. Of course our Deity is going to be adolescent and irresponsible.
BTW, if you want to know how truly great of a Geek God Adam Savage is, watch this. I always liked him, but after I saw this I am simply awestruck by the man. Geek God indeed.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
When I was a security policeman in the Air Force back in the 80's, I was stationed at Clark Air Base, Philippines. The base came under attack during WWII so there were a lot of unexploded bombs that would come up once in awhile. One day we were notified, along with EOD, of a bomb found in the backyard of military housing. Turns out some kid was digging in his back yard and hit the fins of one! EOD carefully removed it, then took it about 2 miles away to detonate the munition. You could feel the pressure from the explosion that far away!
It's order of magnitudes easier to make sure noone is within a mile of a location for an undisclosed reason then it is to make sure noone is within a mile of where they're filming the new Mythbusters episode.
No matter what location they chose, if they tell people in advance that they'll be there then it'll be impossible to secure.
Maybe they can get proper windows that don't break willy nilly. They could probably save quite a bit of energy with proper glass as well.
It's a nitrate. It'll FIND a fuel.
Somewhat strongly in fact. I think experiment is the very essence of science. What you're chasing there is something different:
Misconceived ideas can be turned into accepted fact by flawed, or worse, deliberately contrived experimentation methodologies.
Well, of course.
But let's say some charlatan makes a bogus experiment and foists it on the scientific community. How do you refute their claim?
You got it - experimentally.
Remember a good experiment has a reproducible result. See cold fusion for examples in that arena. Cold fusion might be possible. But until you can reproduce it - by independent groups performing your experiment - it won't ever be science. Nature may have permitted it all along, but until you can experimentally verify it, it can never be science.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'll tune in when they start messing around with 500 pounds of Nitrogen Tri-Iodide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_tri-iodide
Could enough of this placed on a toilet seat at a local university really blow a student right off the seat?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Tesla effect. Hooray for science!
Nobody needs to say it's due to a crew filming a TV show, just inform the town
Uhmm... No, dammit, the MythBusters can do no wrong!
blow the bloody socks off!
I had the same thought; their options were "a. tell nobody and do it", "b. tell everyone and do it", "c. tell nobody and not do it", and "d. tell everyone, and when they show up, not do it".
B is the most dangerous option; phew, they didn't do that. C and D are the least dangerous. Out of the four, they went with the second-most-dangerous option, and put people in danger.
I love the show, but the risk analysis is flawed here.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
...without the coke I just spit all over it. Well played sir, well played...
Yes.
It has to be combined with some type of fuel to explode.
Surprisingly, no. It will detonate all by itself with a big enough shock. This was discovered when a large amount (about a ton) got wet, and recrystalized into a large mass, and someone got the "safe" idea of just blasting it apart with dynamite. It was always "safe" before. There have been a number of ammonium nitrate disasters.
One could be reasonably safe by simply transporting the oxidizer and the fuel separately.
True. Or even mixed, though this is obviously less safe. Ammonium nitrate is such a useful explosive precisely because it is so hard to set it off. But, with an appropriate blasting cap, and sensitizing with fuel (6% fuel oil by mass will do it, IIRC), it can be done. It will also undergo a DDT (deflagration to detonation transition) in a fire in an enclosed space.
Actually, the biggest risk is generally ensuring that one does set the charge off, and not merely disperse it over a large area.
In Liberty, Rene
Please ignore the above poster. There was no joke, only a chemistry lesson. Move along. I want want tygerstripes is having.
Proof? It already happened. Man detonates 100lbs of Tannerite, nuclear power plant on alert after blast. Man faces charges for detonating a legal device.
Tannerite is a shooting target. Search youtube for videos of people detonating large amounts of it.
Show's again there's two standards. One for the "In" crowd like mythbusters, then one for the rest of us.
Could still be ammonium nitrate. Just think, what happens if you grab a bottle of medical-grade oxygen and put the open outlet near an open flame?
I don't follow you. I suppose that if you hose something that is already burning with oxygen, the burn rate will increase. It certainly won't explode...just flare. And when the fuel is consumed, the fire will go out, no matter how hard you blow oxygen onto the ashes. To make ammonium nitrate into an explosive, you have to add something else...usually fuel oil. That's why the explosive is called "ANFO". And it can't just be "ignited", or it will burn, but not explode. An initiator (primary explosive) is required to trigger an actual explosion.
There, now you know things that will get your brain impounded by the Department of Homeland Security.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I remember a similar thing happening at Drexel around the 1993-95 timeframe. The coolest thing (I thought) was that the hazmat team had a converted lunch truck that was a library on wheels. All kinds of 3-ring binders, I assume mostly MSDS sheets. Now they're prolly all on Toughbooks. At least I would hope...
I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
Actually try Wikipedia's Ammonium Nitrate Disasters Page
Here, if i accidentally blow out three windows with 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate i would be labeled and handled as a terrorist.
Even if i volunteer to repair all damage.
Come think of it, i would be handled as a terrorist there too...
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Yes, that is a better cite. Thanks.
In Liberty, Rene
Everyone seems to state that they didn't know how big this explosion was going to be. I strongly doubt that. Ammonium Nitrate is a commonly used explosive so the size of boom is well known.
I had the good fortune of witnessing the disposal of a 39,000 lb solid rocket engine last summer (a considerably larger boom than 500 lbs of ammonium nitrate) and the entire morning the demolition crew was monitoring the atmospheric conditions to guarantee that the shock wave wouldn't be reflected into Salt Lake City. It seems that in a previous disposal the atmospheric conditions were such that the shock wave from the explosion was reflected over 20 miles into the city where it too broke some windows.
This would seem to be a similar case. The size of the explosion would have been well known, however the technicians setting up the explosion may not have been aware of how the atmosphere could propagate the shock wave of a detonation of this scale.
Different air temperatures, or wind directions at the time of the detonation could easily have made this a non-issue.
Uh, there are only four reasons to make things go boom, to kill someone, for research, to make money, or for entertainment. This was a bit of the latter two. You seriously have to be juvenile to have the attitude "making money is bad!"
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
And finally ... Jamie got big boom.
No kidding.
A quarter ton of Ammonium Nitrate made into slightly more than that of ANFO. If they mixed it ideally it's 1.6 times the power of an equivalent weight of TNT. (Even if they used fertilizer grade stuff and only got 0.4x TNT that's a darned big bang.)
Not in the kiloton range yet. But give 'em time and budget...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
> The windows didn't "explode", they "shattered".
How many windows have you seen break? I work for a glass factory. I've seen thousands and thousands of lites of glass, both tempered and "raw" broken into pieces. We've probably processed over a million square feet of orders since I've been there.
While it's true that an untempered ("raw", in industry parlance) window will just crack into long, sharp and dangerous shards, properly tempered glass will break into tiny pieces. If you've seen that happen, you can rightfully call it "exploding" because that's exactly what it looks like.
Tempered glass is stressed, so it's sort of like popping a balloon. Even if the glass is lying flat on a table, when it pops (usually from something hitting an edge or corner), tiny pieces of glass leap into the air when it breaks. Pieces of glass will land several feet away from where the window broke.
To give you an idea of how much broken glass we deal with, I'll have you know that we usually clean it up with a shovel and ship tons of broken and scrap glass off to a recycler every few weeks.
So please don't complain about the word "exploded" unless you've seen what happens when two tempered lites bump into each other on a conveyor line. They honestly do explode.
i accidently the whole town
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Perhaps we could get Adam and Jamie to test cold fusion? I'd like advanced warning so I can leave the state, however.
Or we could get them on an other "useful" items - perpetual motion machines, 200 hour laptop batteries, etc.
Her name was Scotty (or possibly Scottie) and I agree. Blond welder chick ftw!
Safer to just stay inside a bomb shelter with the doors locked. That way nobody can get in to hurt you!
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
The obligatory XKCD link...
http://xkcd.com/397/
"By teaching people to hold their beliefs up to experiment, 'Mythbusters' is doing more to drag humanity out of the unscientific darkness than a thousand lessons in rigor. Show them some love."
That and string theorists taste empty...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
How is linux holding up?
>>Wouldn't have been francium - that stuff's got such a short half life
>Because it surrenders to the germanium?
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=5182
http://www.scottsdalegunclub.com/mga/index.php
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Isn't picric acid made safe by simply adding water? (opening in an anoxic atmosphere if necessary)
At the "Mythbusters Live" event, one or the other of the guys claimed that Scottie left the show because while she liked the myth busting, she didn't like being on camera. The producers of the show really, wanted her to get more air-time (they know their audience, after all). She didn't like being pressured into being on-camera more, so she left.
The secret wasn't that they were testing nuclear weapons, that was well-known. What they were hoping to keep secret was that they had successfully transitioned from the practically unworkable cryogenic liquid-deuterium H-bomb, to a simple, reliable, solid-state weapon.
ANFO is a high explosive. It detonates (ie, faster than sound expansion) when used with some other primary charge. "Explosion" can also mean a comparatively fast deflagration. Plus, the OP mentioned tossing the ammonium nitrate on a bunsen burner, which means there was a fuel source -- and a reasonably hot one at that. Finally, don't forget that we're talking about a lab environment. Even a comparatively small "flare" in the grand scheme of things is a pretty nasty explosion.
In the April 8 two-hour Demolition Derby Special episode, MYTHBUSTERS tackle four fables of automotive mayhem. Adam and Jamie test whether a key scene from an iconic motoring movie is fact or fake film physics could moving the passengers to one side of a bus stop it from rolling in a sharp, fast right hand turn? Then, they revisit an early MYTHBUSTERS fan favorite involving two trucks and a compact car and of course, rockets and high explosives. Meanwhile, Kari, Tory and Grant take on Hollywood as they look at four familiar chase scene clichs to find out if they match up to reality, and then test a gravity race seen in a popular car commercial. via http://futoncritic.com/news.aspx?date=03/16/09&id=20090316discovery01
For the bored, picric acid is in the same class of chemicals as TNT, and its Wikipedia page describes in a way reminiscent of Nitroglycerin.
$ make available
to jump start local economy with a bang
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Yeah seriously--they already bleeped out half of the greatest science TV show of all time.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I wonder what Microsoft had to say about this?
"You're only supposed to blow the bloody socks off!"
Ah, nitpicking are we? It was the comment on oxygen that set me off...so to speak. You're right though, "explosion" is a pretty loose word. So much so that a certain textbook defines an "explosive" as a material...which is capable of producing an explosion by its own energy. It seems unnecessary to define an explosion, for everyone knows what it is...
Mind you, the book goes on to describe the various characteristics of many, many explosives in satisfying detail.
Throwing ammonium nitrate into a Bunsen burner? That's something I actually never did. If you have the vents all the way open, the flame probably doesn't need more oxidizer, though.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I'd say let's meet up and try it, but we're probably in different continents, and the very point of the discussion is that I'm not sure we'd survive the experiment :)
safe???????????? did I miss something in Bad Things 101? if you complete a circuit while standing in water, you are now a part of that circuit... o forgot to mention that the cli[p heads werent covered with rubber,,,,
What were they thinking? McVeigh and Nichols used 5400 pounds of ammonium nitrate. Th Mythbusters used almost 10 percent of that.... to knock the socks off a dummy? When McVeigh and Nichols mixed all of their chemicals together, in thirteen or so barrels, each weighed nearly 500 pounds. Thats a lot of flammables, accelerants, and oxidizers. Quite funny, though, on the part of the MythBusters.
I used to be a teacher, and it bothered me when students fell asleep in class. Sometimes I would get right in their face and wake them up, so the first thing they see is my angry face and scary big eyes. They'd jump and the rest of the class would laugh.
And then I realized: I could only think of two reasons why they would fall asleep in class.
1) They were tired.
2) My lesson was boring.
If they were tired, who was I to wake them up? Maybe they had a part time job, or maybe they had trouble at home. Whatever. I don't know what's going on in their lives.
If my lesson was boring, was that their fault? No, it was mine. EVEN if they were tired, if my lesson were interesting enough they would stay awake for it.
I stopped waking up sleeping students, and instead worked on improving my lesson plans. The fewer snoozers, the better the lesson. (I also got a lot louder and more energetic, which also helped keep them awake/attentive)
By my third year as a teacher, I never had a student fall asleep in class again.
Don't put advice in your sig.
you call this humor?