And by a lot of water you mean 6000 gallons of water, a helicopter and your house has no roof.
Re: The grease fire one. They did it outside with a noticable wind which really tore up the fireball and kept it from rising as much as it could. Something they should have at least noted. OTOH, how many people have 30ft high kitchens?
I wish that someone had the foresight to suggest “walk past the detector nude” as a silly idea they have to confirm.
Was that the same episode where they also figured out how to get past a fingerprint detector with nothing more than a photocopied thumbprint which they licked?
I think that episode probably ticked off a lot of alarm companies, and made a lot of people who relied on those systems very nervous. Thank God the heating ducts are safe!
Yeah, but you know they would have made Grant do it–though they’d build up to it making you think Kari would be doing it.
The Alcatraz one was also my favorite.
One I liked because of the setup, execution and surprising results was the refrigerator Biscuit Dough exploding in the hot car. (I think that gets the “Plausible” more than a “Confirmed” stamp though. I forget if they actually had a news story to back it up, like the guy who jumped through the “unbreakable” glass skyscraper window.)
That would be just fine by me, thanks. Grant is a hottie.
One of my early favorites was the exploding heated jawbreaker episode. Sure enough, hot jawbreakers are dangerous, and two cast members got burned after taking inadequate precautions. They’ve become a lot more careful since then.
The grease fire experiments were great. I paused the second test, the one with peanut oil, to show my wife: “This is why you don’t throw water on a grease fire. That’s just one small glass of water.” FWHOOOOM “Oh my GOD!” I don’t think she’s ever seen how horrifying it can be. Made quite an impression.
That was done as a stunt on Top Gear. They had a Citroen 2CV and a Ford Mondeo drive behind a parked 747 and had an engine blast them both away.
Video here; http://video.filestube.com/video,65a05622663832c203e9 dot html (breaking that link because there are pop ups, naughty ads etc).
Our local fire station has an open house twice a year, and this demonstration comes up quite often. People who haven’t seen it before chuckle at the large safety radius around the pot of oil and at the long pole the firefighter uses to dump the water on the fire - until the water actually hits the grease. :eek: Then, they grok.
My favorite confirmed ones were the episode on dogs (a raw steak could distract a guard dog), the Chinese underground warning system and the Korean gunpowder powered mini arrow launchers.
I liked the elephants-afraid-of-mice! (confirmed) The hangover experiment was hilarious! (straight beer gave a worse hangover than mixing beer and hard liquor) and I wish they would re-do the one where they tried to determine if plants grew better when talked to/yelled at, or what kind of music they liked. There was a problem with the watering system. (rock on, bean plants!) But, I think it would be a big step back for them. I think they’ve gone as far as they can in exploring myths and just want to blow stuff up from now on.
Yeah, sadly I have to second you on that. That point was proven the other night during the liquid nitrogen episode, where they tried seeing if a pine tree would shatter if you poured enough liquid nitrogen on it.
What did they do before commencing with the experiment?
Try blowing the thing up with conventional explosives.
My favorite recent one was the one about a dirty car getting better gas mileage than a clean car. That was busted, but then they took it further and covered the car with a golfball-like dimpled surface. To their surprise, the gas mileage improved by about 10 percent.
Elephants’ fear of mice was deemed PLAUSIBLE, not confirmed.
On the other hand, those same companies now know what weaknesses to eliminate in their systems so they can sell the upgraded versions to their nervous customers.
In case anyone’s interested, they’re showing the grease fire episode right now.
Seconded. Yes, even down the crooked teeth.
As for confirmed myths, the most memorable one to me was the episode where they tried to test whether or not Chinese water torture was actually a form of torture, which had Kari genuinely freaked out. I seem to remember an expert scolding them for not doing enough research before going ahead with the experiment.
The problem with the Hwa’cha (Korean gunpowder rocket-launcher) “myth” was that the device was known to have existed and functioned as described. They were basically saying “Hey, let’s make a Medieval Rocket Launcher because we can!”
And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s a bit misleading to try and pretend they’re testing a “myth” when really they’re just making reproduction siege weapons because it’ll look cool on TV.
Only because the elephant didn’t scream and stampede away like they do in the cartoons. But nothing behaves like they do in cartoons, so I say “Plausible” is an unfair ruling.