We keep telling you guys - that no cell phones thing is an FCC rule, not an FAA rule. Please, let’s be accurate which Federal agency is freaking out over a particular episode.
That’s probably why they used a manned, full scale ultralight for the final test.
And, to remind everyone, they myth does NOT specify a jet. Every version I’ve heard said “airplane” without reference to scale until several thousand words into the subsequent discussion/debate/flamefest.
Why? Why did you go there? Don’t you love America?
I’ll never do it again. I swear to Sweet Bleeding Jesus.
I came to the conclusion the plane would take off by a different route. The plane flies because the propellers are shoving air over the wings, causing lift. Once a sufficient quantity of air is being shoved over the wings, the plane is going to rise, no matter what the plane’s speed relative to the ground.
My thoughts exactly. They promise to “replicate the circumstances, then duplicate the results,” but didn’t even try to follow through on this. (They should also put those half black, half white circles on the plane’s wheels for visualization of free-spinning wheels.) Considering the level of vitriol and confusion about this problem, though, I expect them to revisit it in some way.
That’s not how propellers work. A prop is a giant screw, pulling the airplane through the air. The air being shoved back over the wings is relatively insignificant and alone does not provide enough airflow to generate lift.
Jamie said once he saw the plane starting to move that he gunned it as hard as he could. It didn’t make any difference. That plane is going to take off, no matter what. The treadmill is totally irrelevant.
Mythbusters missed one of the most crucial aspects of the entire myth. The treadmill is supposed to be able to accelerate at an infinite rate so that, no matter how much forward force the propeller generates, the rearward force on the airplane’s axles cancels it.
Some of those jumbo jets are kinda fat.
Are you talking about the treadmill or Kari’s clothes?
When you make up impossible devices, scenarios, and materials in order to make a problem more complicated, you have strayed from the path of Reason. In penance, speak Newton’s Laws ten times. Go, and sin no more.
Quick, somebody alert the FBI!
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060203.html
Unca Cece predicted it.
Jamie and Adam proved it.
That settles it.
Indeed, I am sure this will be debated no longer.
I think it is time for the people of the world to move on to more pressing issues…like a helicopter on a turntable.
I think if you put a helicopter on a turntable it would immediately burrow to the center of the earth, ending life as we know it. Thus, we can never test it. There are some things man was not meant to know.
Do helicopter blades rotate the same way in the Northern and Southern hemispheres?
So, no comments on the cruel humor of an episode that combines a must-watch segment with one featuring lots of closeups of cockroaches?
OK, on the topic of the cockroaches, I have a nitpick. Sure they’ll survive, but Grant, Kari, and Tori didn’t check to see if they’ll reproduce. What if they survive, but are rendered sterile? Survival without reproduction is pointless.
Depends upon how much beer is available.
I was thinking the same thing. Ideally, they should have attempted to see whether the surviving insects would have reproduced, especially since each of the species they selected can procreate abundantly in captivity.
Having said that, I think they did show that the statement “Only cockroaches would survive a nuclear blast” is at best, inaccurate. At the highest radation dose tested, it was the flour beetles that survived. At the lower doses, the German roaches and the fruit flies also survived, though their fecundity remained untested.
Dare I hope that they decided to keep these colonies alive, thereby determining if the survivors remained fertile? Perhaps they’re saving that for an upcoming show, though I seriously doubt it.