| Bgcolour: |
|
| Num Episodes: | 8 |
| Network: | Discovery Channel |
| Prev Season: | Pilot episodes |
| Next Season: | 2004 season |
| Episode List: | List of MythBusters episodes |
The cast of the television series MythBusters perform experiments to verify or debunk urban legends, old wives' tales, and the like. This is a list of the various myths tested on the show as well as the results of the experiments (the myth is busted, plausible, or confirmed).
The show's first season used "True" instead of "Confirmed"; for the sake of consistency, "Confirmed" will be used on this page.
| No. in series | No. in season | Title | Original air date | Overall episode No. |
|---|
This experiment formally introduced Buster the crash test dummy.
This myth tested the feasibility of magic bullets that can be used to assassinate without leaving evidence, used as a plot device or otherwise mentioned in many movies, such as Most Wanted and Three Days of the Condor. A request for information to the Central Intelligence Agency was declined. Due to the myth's inclusion in many Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, Adam and Jamie chose to use a Carcano rifle similar to the assassination weapon for testing.
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| An ice bullet can kill someone without leaving a trace. | Busted | The ice bullet evaporated before it could leave the barrel. This myth was retested in "Myths Revisited", and it remained busted with slow-frozen ice. | |
| A meat bullet can kill someone without leaving a trace. | Busted | The hamburger bullet fragmented on contact with the skin, causing only superficial damage. | |
| A gelatin bullet can kill someone without leaving a trace. | Busted | The bullet did not cause fatal injury from the 6.5×52mm Carcano round, but it had a better result from a revolver at point-blank range. Desiring a more subtle assassination tool, Adam and Jamie examined the Bulgarian umbrella. | |
| An assassin can use a poison capsule fired from an umbrella to kill someone without leaving a trace. | Confirmed | This was found to have been the cause of death of a notable Bulgarian journalist in exile, Georgi Markov. The MythBusters built a pair of replicas with a gas cylinder and an air gun, and fired both to lethal effect without leaving gunpowder burns. |
This myth was inspired by e-mails leading to some gas stations discouraging cell phone use during refueling, and also because at the time of the episode, there were 150 gas station fires annually in America.
This is also known as the myth that birthed two memorable MythBusters one-liners—Jamie's "Jamie wants big boom" and Adam's "Am I missing an eyebrow?"
While the MythBusters were testing the myth at a train yard, the yard's operators gave Adam permission to test a "mini-myth" with one of their engines:
Despite mid-episode teasers, the MythBusters refused to microwave a live poodle, and they were thus unable to test the myth that a microwave can dry a wet dog.
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| It is possible to cook one's insides by using a tanning bed too often, in a manner similar to how a microwave works. | Busted | Tanning booths work on ultraviolet radiation, which penetrates the body from the outside in, meaning that all one would get is a sunburn. The MythBusters also demonstrated that microwave ovens do not cook food from the inside out. | |
| It is possible to blow up a microwave oven by microwaving metal. | Busted (with caveats) | Neither a spoon nor a fork had any effect. Tinfoil scrunched into balls caused a light show with electric charges, but the microwave did not explode. Microwaving metal can possibly ruin a microwave by arcing against the inner wall, sending electricity back to the magnetron, and either destroying it or shortening its lifespan. | |
| If a microwaved glass of water has an additive placed in it, it can explode due to superheating. | Confirmed (with limit) | If the water had no impurities in it at the time of superheating (like distilled water), then any sort of additive placed within will make the water flash to steam and violently spray. However, this will not happen with water from common sources (like tap water). | |
| It is possible to build a super-microwave by aligning four magnetrons around a metal box. | Busted (unofficially) | If there is a proper method to build one, the method used in the show is not it. After a glass of water was exposed to the "super microwave"'s magnetrons for thirty seconds, a thermometer found that the temperature of the water had actually dropped by two degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 °C). |
Cola is able to...
| Myth statement | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ...clean up blood. | Confirmed | Adam and Jamie designed a fake car collision scene and used animal blood. After two hours, Adam used soap and water in one area, while Jamie used cola in another. After rinsing both areas off, they noted while the cola was not really as effective, Jamie's area was cleaner than Adam's, leaving the myth confirmed. |
| ...polish chrome. | Confirmed | Adam and Jamie proceeded to clean a dirty chrome car bumper. Adam used a leading commercial chrome polisher on one side, while Jamie used cola and aluminum foil on the other. In comparison, the cola side was surprisingly much cleaner than the chrome polisher side. |
| ...loosen rusty bolts. | Busted | Adam soaked a rag in cola and then left it on the rusty bolt for 5 minutes. Adam tried to unscrew the bolt but to no avail. Jamie managed to free it, but he said that it was very difficult and that the cola did not really help. |
| ...shine a penny. | Confirmed | Adam and Jamie placed a penny in cola and another in pure phosphoric acid, an ingredient used in cola but in low amounts. After 24 hours, the pennies were removed. The penny that was in the cola was considerably shinier, except for a spot where an air bubble had formed. Surprisingly, the penny that was in the phosphoric acid was not as shiny. |
| ...erode a tooth. | Busted | Adam and Jamie placed a tooth in cola and another in pure phosphoric acid. After 24 hours, the teeth were removed. The tooth that was in the cola was merely stained brown, while the tooth that was in the phosphoric acid had been dissolved to half its original size. |
| ...dissolve a steak. | Busted | Adam and Jamie placed a steak in cola and another in pure phosphoric acid. After 48 hours, the steaks were removed. The steak that was in the phosphoric acid had been reduced to little chunks, whereas the steak that was in the cola had been tenderized but not dissolved. |
| ...clean battery terminals. | Confirmed | Adam cleaned one car battery with baking soda, while Jamie cleaned another with cola. Both were effective in removing the debris and rust, but Adam then cleaned a terminal with plain water. He pointed out that the only reason the cola may have worked was that it was a liquid, not because of its properties. |
| ...remove greasy stains in laundry. | Busted | Adam and Jamie dirtied their jumpsuits in car grease. After cutting a piece of fabric from each jumpsuit, Adam soaked his in a commercial detergent, and Jamie soaked his in cola. After four days of soaking, they rinsed the pieces and noticed that neither did a good job at removing the stains and that the cola turned the material brown. |
| ...degrease engines. | Busted | Adam and Jamie poured cola onto a dirty engine and let it sit for 10 minutes before rinsing it. While they noted that most of the dirt and rust had been successfully removed, most of the grease remained on the engine. |
| ...ruin car paint. | Busted | Adam and Jamie applied cola to one section of a car and phosphoric acid to another. After letting it sit for 24 hours, they rinsed the areas. The area with the cola had not been affected, but the area with the phosphoric acid was considerably whiter and thinner. |
| ...kill sperm. | Busted | The MythBusters added cola to some slides and saline solution to others, then counted the number of live sperm they could see through a microscope camera in one minute. The number of live sperm in both saline and cola was relatively the same; with the help of Dr. Turek, they determined that cola does not do much more than dilute the sperm. |
| ...clean a bathroom. | Busted | This myth is shown only in "MythBusters Outtakes". Adam rubbed engine grease over surfaces in the M5 bathroom (much to Jamie's disgust). After successfully cleaning it with a commercial bathroom cleaner, he greased the bathroom again and had Jamie try to clean it with cola. The cola did not work at all, and Jamie forced Adam to clean the bathroom with the bathroom cleaner. |
This myth was inspired by 17-year-old Matthew Thomsen being hit by lightning near Denver in August 2003, which knocked his tongue piercing out of his mouth.[1]
A BACtrack B70 breathalyzer owned and operated by the San Francisco Police Department Crime Lab was used to test Adam's and Jamie's blood alcohol levels to ensure they were intoxicated. They then experimented to see if it is possible to pass a field sobriety test despite being over the limit, by...
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ...eating breath mints. | Busted | Adam's blood alcohol content simply dropped slightly by an amount that was in the testing machine's margin of error. The only way this is likely to help is by masking the scent of the alcohol in the hope that an officer will not carry out the sobriety test to begin with, and even then, it was pointed out that most tests are done either in response to erratic driving or at sobriety checkpoints, meaning that this would do nothing to prevent the test being performed. | |
| ...eating an onion. | Busted | Like Adam, Jamie experienced a blood alcohol content drop that was within the margin of error, and not enough to make it appear that he was under the limit. The scent of the onion was also so overwhelming that anyone using this tactic would likely get caught immediately. | |
| ...holding a battery in one's mouth during the test. | Busted | The battery had no effect whatsoever on the testing machine. The attending officer also noted that even if such a tactic worked, it would be extremely obvious and not be likely to fool whoever was conducting the test. | |
| ...holding copper coins in one's mouth during the test. | Busted | Though less obvious than the battery, the coins also had no appreciable effect on the result. | |
| ...applying denture cream before the test. | Busted | Adam's test actually indicated a higher blood alcohol level than his original test; while the increase was in the machine's margin of error, the method was a clear failure. | |
| ...hyperventilating before and during the test. | Busted | This method caused Jamie to appear to have about 20% more alcohol in his system than he actually did have. | |
| ...using mouthwash before the test. | Busted | On his initial test, Adam's blood alcohol level was indicated to be at near-lethal levels. When he tried again, however, the reading came back only slightly elevated over his initial result. Even if a driver were able to use this method to generate a pair of clearly impossible results, which could throw doubt on the testing machine's accuracy, that driver would then be required to immediately submit to a blood test, which cannot be fooled in any way and would definitively prove the driver's true blood alcohol level. |
This myth was inspired by a story of an attractive sports car being available at a very low price but with a catch: Someone had died in the car, and even despite cleaning attempts, the smell had persisted, meaning that the owner was finding it very tough to sell the car. To test this, Jamie and Adam procured a 1987 Chevrolet Corvette and placed two fresh pig corpses in it, which was sealed with tape and placed in a shipping container for two months.
If a decomposing body is left in a car long enough...
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ...the car's interior will be destroyed. | Confirmed | When unsealed, the car was full of condensation and maggots, and the upholstery was dirty and disintegrating. On further inspection, it also turned out that the car's electrics (particularly the fusebox) had become severely corroded, rendering it unable to start. Furthermore, the decaying pigs gave off ammonia, which almost overcame Jamie when he sat in the front to steer the car out of the container. | |
| ...the car cannot be cleaned up enough to remove the smell completely. | Confirmed | For this segment, Jamie and Adam called in Neal Smither and the Crime Scene Cleaners, who regularly handle extreme cleanups, including the scenes of homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths. He gave them tips on the process, including using a special bio-enzyme fluid to cut through the gunk, and allowed them to practice on a coroner's van. However, though Neal believed that the myth was busted, he realized when he saw the car that it was indeed an extreme cleanup. The car was cleaned, but some parts (such as the seats) proved to be beyond the cleaners' abilities, as well as the impracticality of disassembling every part, and even Neal said it would take him and the Crime Scene Cleaners several days to get rid of all the smelly bits and reassemble the car as best as possible. Adam also reasoned that traces of material in the air conditioning system would cause the smell to linger. | |
| ...the car cannot be cleaned up enough to be sold. | Busted | After the smell and failure to start turned away several potential buyers, the MythBusters did find a buyer who was willing to purchase the car for and use it for spare parts (a scrapyard owner also offered $500, though the MythBusters rebuffed this offer as being too low). |
This myth originated in lists of "Random Facts" distributed over the Internet.