Spy Car Escape (Original Airdate: April 7, 2010)

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In this episode, which is personally among my favorites, Adam and Jamie test out the age-old movie myth: Can a pursuing car be stopped by road spikes, a smokescreen, or an oil slick?

Road Spikes: Not really. Although the tires were often punctured by the road spikes, the tires didn't deflate because the spikes were stuck in the holes they had made, which allowed the car to keep driving.

Smokescreen: It's iffy. Although the test eventually worked out, it was proven that the person using the smokescreen would have had to be pretty well prepared first, because you'd need an airtight car and/or a gas mask so as not to have the smoke sucked into your own vehicle.

Oil Slick: Maybe. The pursuit car lost control when it hit the oil slick, and was forced to slow down, but it didn't spin out spectacularly like you see in the movies. Sadly.

In addition, Adam and Jamie each devised a mechanism to try to divert the car. Adam developed a rig that deployed and dropped a parachute onto the pursuit car, to try to blind them. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way, the car simply drove around the parachute. Jamie, however developed a set of spikes. See the video above.

Cup vs. Car: Original Airdate 3/24/2010

In this episode, Adam and Jamie tested whether or not a cup of soda or other drink thrown out the window can penetrate a windshield and kill the driver inside. Before the myth itself could be tested, Adam and Jamie did preliminary tests to find which material would deliver the most force on impact. They then moved on to full-scale tests with a cup full of a slush drink. During the testing, Adam and Jamie estimated that the average speed at which two cars would approach each other on a highway is about 130 mph. The results of the testing left the myth "partly busted", since the cup broke through the windsheild, but it would not have killed anyone inside.

Viral Hour (Original Airdate: Sep. 3, 2008)

In this episode of Mythbusters, four myths are explored. However, due to a lack of time, space, and the general attention span of the audience, I will be discussing just one myth today.

Over the course of the episode, four myths inspired by viral videos from the Internet were tested. The myths were, in order of appearance:
1. Can you lift a car using the pressure from fire hoses?
2. Do fainting goats actually faint?
3. Can you float a tinfoil boat without water?
4. Does an air-compressor fed sawdust cannon actually work? (see image above)

I will be discussing myth 3. As it turns out, you can quite easily float a boat with no water. During the experiment, Adam filled a fish tank with sulfur hexafluoride, a gas which is six times denser than air. Due to the increased density of the gas, the tinfoil boat could float quite easily on it. Adam also did a demonstration showing the difference between helium and sulfur hexafluoride. Check out the video.

Welcome to The Science Behind the Myths

Welcome to The Science Behind the Myths.

Throughout this blog, I will be watching and reviewing a Mythbusters episode per post, and giving a small commentary on the science behind the myths. Every once in a while, there may be clips from the show, and, if possible, a video of the original myth as well.