MythBuster Developing Light-Weight Vehicle Armor

gearystwatcher writes "MythBusters' Jamie Hyneman has been developing blast-resistant, light-weight armor for use on US military vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan based on his work with show co-host Adam Savage. 'We had a lot of experience in the show dealing with explosives, obviously in ways and situations that are outside the norm. This is very revealing, because when you see something outside the norm you get to see what the boundaries of the phenomenon are,' Hyneman tells The Reg during an interview for the new MythBusters' season."

Comments

To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[elrous0]

These always seem to pop up on any Mythbusters thread. No, they're not scientists. They're not pretending to be scientists. And nope, they don't have time to spend years with a research team adjusting for every variable in every experiment in some carefully controlled lab somewhere.

What they *are* are very knowledgeable laymen, applying basic scientific methodology to fairly straight-foward questions in an entertaining fashion. They bring the basics of scientific testing to the masses. They teach concepts such as skepticism and empiricism to a population that too often relies on hearsay and superstition in their beliefs about the physical world.

No, they're not scientists. But that doesn't mean they have nothing to teach or that there is no value in their experiments. As the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison could probably attest, sometimes even a layman has insight to offer.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[RsG]

I'd be more inclined to call them engineers. Yes, they do experiments, as that's kinda the point of the show, but if you examine their skill sets and techniques, it's pretty obvious what we'd call them if they applied those skills to another field. They make blueprints, run computer simulations, build small scale prototypes, build large scale tests, etc. In particular the "keep at it til something breaks/blows up" approach is engineer thinking.

So, they're Hollywood SFX guys putting engineering skills to work testing popular science. The fact they're sneaking lessons about control groups and repeatable results into what is ostensibly an entertainment show is an added bonus. The purists who shout "it's not REAL science" are just setting up a "no true Scotsman" argument, since while "science" has a clear meaning "REAL science" does not.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[elrous0]

Yes, and they frequently do follow-up shows when people dispute their results (some of which have resulted in them reversing their initial conclusions). They're way more open to criticism than many of the "real" scientists I've known.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[corbettw]

They use the scientific method to prove or disprove hypotheses. So yeah, they're real scientists, they're just not academics.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[MonsterTrimble]

As an Mechanical Engineer I'd be proud to consider these two my peers.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[jandrese]

And certainly more open to criticism than most of their critics on the net.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[elrous0]

most of the time their results are wrong

That's a bold proclamation for someone who offers no countervailing experiments of his own. From what I've seen, *most* of the time the questions they answer are pretty straightforward. "Can you build a lead balloon?" Why yes, you can (which they demonstrated by actually doing it--pretty compelling evidence methinks). And, what's more, they have consistently shown themselves to be open to criticism (as I said in another post, way more open than many "real" scientists I've known). Some of their follow-up episodes are legendary (such was when they invited a group of critical MIT students out in an attempt to recreate Archimedes' legendary "death ray"), and many have resulted in reversals of their original conclusions.

So, why don't you enlighten us with some specifics to back up your blanket generalizations? Or were you just reflexively talking out of your ass?

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[mdielmann]

They use the scientific method to prove or disprove hypotheses. So yeah, they're real scientists, they're just not academics.

If they were 'real scientists', they'd do more research, and more rigorous testing. Sure, they use some science, but so did the first agriculturalists who determined that x days after the shortest day in the year, in their region, was a safe time to plant crops. A 'real scientist' would have figured out what the minimum soil temperature had to be before seeds could germinate, and how much sun per day was needed, and could use that to give you the optimum time this spring for when to plant a given seed.

I'll acknowledge that 'real science' takes too long to do in a weekly show, and that they often do interesting and relevant experiments. OTOH, often their research is far too light. One example is the whole Archimedes Death Ray (which has been beaten to death). In virtually every experiment I've seen, they're eyeballing where the light is being reflected. That's pretty hard when you have a hundred lights doing the same thing. This page gives a simple, basic method to determine where your light is going, and if it doubled their consistency with the mirrors, the results would have been different. I'm sure the boy scouts have a training manual, too, if you're looking for a more formal source. I'm not even saying that the death ray would have worked. I'm just saying that their experiments sucked. And bad experiments give bad results.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[Shadow Wrought]

Perhaps the most important thing they do is accept when their pre-conceived notions do not match the data. They talk about what they're expectations are, and how surprised or shocked they'd be if it was the opposite. Then, when it is the opposite, they delve into why, and how cool it is.

"Failure is always an option," and they learn fromt hem, too.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[asher09]

Adam and James may or may not be scientists, but I think there are "scientists" that are on the production team for the show. I'm a PhD chemist in the field of medicinal chemistry, and we've had TV documentary crews come in and film something about our work before. When they do the filming, they just merely ask us to pipet some random liquid into another container for no reason other than to provide some "science" looking video footage. So in effect, even though we are "real" scientists, when we're on TV, we're just actors, but there's science behind the info being disseminated. I tend to think of the mythbusters in a similar way.
I understand that even their methods are not up to the standards of science publication, but even we do try out things in the beginning in a way not too dissimilar to the Mythbuster way (ie not statistically significant, using some mock-up equipment, or whatever) before we fully commit to an experiment or before we purchase the proper equipment that would cost $50,000 or something. So yeah, the Mythbuster show is pretty scientific.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[Captain Spam]

Except most of the time their results are wrong.

Science is falsifiable. Science can get something wrong.

What happens when someone comes by later and proves it wrong? Get this: That's also science.

Science is not about getting everything right the first time. Methods can be improved later with more knowledge or experience. Heck, there was a time way back when when "science" understood there were exactly four elements (earth, water, fire, air)*. That was wrong. Then knowledge improved. Some of the most brilliant minds in scientific history have come up with theories and models that were accepted as fact back in the day. There was a time the "plum pudding" model of an atom stood up as THE model of an atom. That was wrong. Then knowledge improved. There was a time the Bohr model of an atom stood up as THE model of an atom. That was wrong. Then knowledge improved.

Science is knowledge. Science is testable knowledge. The Mythbusters run their tests to the best of their abilities, resources, and experience. Sometimes they get things wrong. Science is falsifiable, testable knowledge. The Mythbusters are open to criticism and challenges to their results and testing methods. Challenge them sometime.

The only thing they don't have are science doctorates and journal-published papers. And that's not a part of science.

*: Yes, smart guy, I just mean western science.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[johanatan]

There have been numerous episodes where they attempt feat X in a very particular way, fail, and then say X cannot possibly ever be done under any other particulars. How anybody *could* think that is science is beyond me.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[guruevi]

Some of those things you will never be able to prove or disprove. The stewardess in the back of the airplane one is one of those things where if you crash a 1000 planes in those situations maybe 1 stewardess will actually survive. In academics, people don't have that type of grant money to actually crash planes. They'll crash 3 planes on a pilot grant, publish it, put in a grant request and get more grant money to crash 20 maybe 50 planes and interpolate a result out of that. Statistically it's improbable with a 99.9% chance of dying, anecdotally it has happened before but you can't really put real people through these experiments, you have to have crash dummies and shock recorders that have much lower limits on what it means to die than an exceptional human body.

What MythBusters does to me (I do actually work in the scientific field and I am involved in the process of grant writing) is pilot studies based on anecdotal evidence. If you want to do real studies you should get your PhD, apply for a grant and work in academics but I warn you: it's boring, nobody will ever read your findings, studies, papers or ideas except maybe for the editor of a scientific paper (and even then, many don't read past the first page) unless it's earth shattering and you will definitely NEVER appear on TV doing your experiments, at most you'll give a soundbite to journalists who will misinterpret it anyway in their news report.

Re:To all "They're not REAL scientists!" posters

[yabos]

One that comes to mind was can you take off in an airplane if the plane is on a treadmill and the plane is going the same speed as the treadmill. i.e. the plane isn't moving at all through the air, has zero velocity relative to the ground and the wheels are moving at the exact rate as the treadmill. They didn't seem to understand the concept of relative movement. Of course the plane's engine can overcome the backwards movement of the treadmill and get enough airspeed to still achieve lift. The same thing happens if you try and take off in a tail wind. If you have a 10kt tail wind, the plane has to be going 10kt forward relative to the ground in order have zero airspeed. The plane engine can of course propel/pull the plane more than 10kts so it can overcome this tailwind or treadmill.

"Bulletproof glass" mistake?

[Puzzleer]

Aren't these the same guys who for several years were shielding themselves from explosions with what they thought was bulletproof plexiglass, until they finally tried shooting it with a gun in an episode on bulletproof glass and only then realized that it wasn't bulletproof at all?

As usual

[Sycraft-fu]

XKCD does a good job summing it up: http://xkcd.com/397/.

While careful controlled tests are important to science and critical to many discoveries, that is not the core of what science is. The core is that ideas are tested by experiment. It is the process of saying "Hmmm, maybe X causes Y, let's try it and find out!"

That's the basis of what they do, and the basis of science. The higher level of rigor are important as well, but they aren't the main thing. Scientific thinking and action in every day life does not mean doing a laboratory based double blind study of every little thing. You'd never make it to work if you did that for everything. It does mean holding your idea up to scrutiny and testing them out. Mythbusters helps promote that.

Also as a side note they are often more rigorous than it appears. If you've watched some outtakes/behind the scenes stuff it turns out that they often do more testing than you see on screen. Again that's not to say they do everything grade-A lab proper, but it can be more than it appears.

Re:As usual

[Guspaz]

The rigor also is only useful for negative results. For positive results, rigor is unnecessary; if you aim to prove that something is possible, and you can make it happen, then it's possible.

The lead balloon is a good example. The myth was that a lead balloon is an impossibility. They built a working lead balloon. Therefore, lead balloons are possible.

Now, if they had set out to prove that something is possible, and failed to do so, that does not necessarily mean that it's impossible.

Re:Obviously an expert

[djdanlib]

Well, you never know, they might actually stumble upon something valid. In fact, they might have already discovered something, and the press release could be lagging significantly behind the development like it does so often with military developments.

They have practical experience:
* blowing stuff up in creative but specific ways using improvised explosive devices, of qualities equal to or exceeding what you'd see in the field
* instrumenting the entire scenario for data analysis later in such a way that the instrumentation is not destroyed
* preventing other stuff from getting destroyed by said explosion

You can spend all day failing to come up with a material with the right properties no matter which angle you attack the problem from. Sure, you could model the physics until your brain leaks out of your ears, and you can also waste inordinate time and materials testing via a "Okay, how about now? Now? Now?" methodology. In the end, you can get similar results by calculation or experiment. Check out Damascus steel, for example - we haven't completely figured that out yet, and we certainly can't reproduce it, but people were making it and you can believe they weren't using modern science to design it. I do believe in the value of science, but it doesn't always need to trump experience.

The guys who experience the effective improvised explosives in the field don't make it back to tell you how it was built, ya know? :(