| Bgcolour: |
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| Num Episodes: | 17 (includes 1 special) |
| Network: | Discovery Channel |
| Prev Season: | 2003 season |
| Next Season: | 2005 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).
| No. in series | No. in season | Title | Original air date | Overall episode No. |
|---|
Allegedly, British rail companies borrowed the titular gun from NASA for testing windshields for high-speed trains, but they were shocked and confused at the amount of carnage the gun did. When they asked NASA what they were doing wrong, they were told to thaw the chickens before firing.
This myth is so widely passed around that it even made it into Time magazine's "numbers" section at one point.
This myth was later tested on "Myths Redux".
It was noted during the episode that the story of Charles Joughin, the Titanics chief baker, contradicted the myth. He testified in a 1912 enquiry that he held on to the stern railing of the ship as it went down. As the ship went under, he stepped off; his hair did not get wet, much less himself get sucked under with the ship. However, the story does hold some credence, as many ships emit a large amount of air, as they sink. This massive amount of air, rising to the surface, creates a situation, whereby there is loss of buoyancy in the air bubbles, and anyone caught in this will sink, hence the belief that the ship is "pulling" a floating person down with it.
Later, while the MythBusters were preparing for the Ping Pong Salvage myth, the Sinking Titanic myth was re-tested and re-busted as Adam pointed out.
The myth revolved around Jimmy Hoffa, a union leader who unexpectedly disappeared, and the rumors that surrounded his disappearance. Among the myths was that he was buried under the infamous ten-yard bump in Giants Stadium, a rumor that persisted in various forms of media.
This was the first myth in which the MythBusters were neither able to confirm nor bust the results due to logistics reasons. According to the episode, upon arrival at Mojave Spaceport, the insurance company responsible for the aircraft backed out at the last minute, citing possible foreign object damage to the plane. However, BBC's Top Gear was able to independently test and verify this myth.[2]
This myth was retested and confirmed in the Supersized Special.
Additionally, during the Storm Chasing Myths special (2010 season, episode 13), jet engines were used to simulate high wind speeds. Cars were used to demonstrate the power of the winds that both storm chaser's vehicles would be up against. All of the vehicles were shown blowing a considerable distance from the jet engines with significant damage done to both just from the winds alone.
This was the first episode where the MythBusters retested earlier myths that had been commented or criticized by fans or had not performed as per their original expectations and test spinoff myths related to earlier myths. The episode also introduced Tory Belleci, Scottie Chapman, and Christine Chamberlain and became the first episode to extensively feature Build Team members or Mythterns. This is also the first episode to officially use the Busted/Plausible/Confirmed system; previous episodes were a bit looser and had only Busted as a consistent verdict.
This myth was retested for the episode but ultimately did not air in the US version—although the Robin Banks–narrated Discovery Europe version did include it. This myth is also included in the DVD version of "MythBusters Outtakes".
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| If a car's tailpipe is plugged with objects, the engine will be destroyed. | Busted | All of the objects used were shot out immediately after the engine started up. | |
| If a bullet is shot through the fuel tank, it will explode. | Busted | The gas tank did not explode. This was revisited in "MythBusters Revisited". | |
| A car door can protect a person from bullets in a shoot-out. | Busted | The car door did not stop the bullets shot at it. Large-caliber bullets were completely unaffected, and while small-caliber bullets were deflected somewhat, most of them would still hit the car's occupant(s). | |
| A car's engine will be destroyed when liquid drain clog remover is put into the tank. | Busted | The engine still ran. | |
| A car's engine will be destroyed when bleach is put into the tank. | Plausible | The engine soon died out but was not ruined from the experience. The following morning, the inside of the gas tank was covered in rust. | |
| A car's engine will be destroyed when sugar is put into the tank. | Busted | The engine still ran; in fact, it ran even better. | |
| Adding mothballs to the fuel tank increases the horsepower. | Plausible | The engine still started, but it soon started spluttering. When Adam pressed the accelerator, the engine sounded more powerful. | |
| Cola can be used as a substitute for radiator coolant. | Plausible | The engine ran with cola in the radiator, but it may cause damage. | |
| If a radiator is leaking, cracking an egg into the radiator will plug the holes. | Plausible | The engine was started after the contents of an egg were poured in, and the leak stopped. The MythBusters agreed that it would be an ideal short-term solution. | |
| A piece of metal can destroy an engine when it falls in the carburetor. | Busted | A penny dropped in could be heard rattling, but the engine still ran. | |
| Bleach in the oil can destroy the engine. | Confirmed | The engine started, but it soon started smoking and very quickly overheated. The engine was so hot, the undercarriage started burning and Adam fried an egg on the tailpipe. The engine was ultimately ruined. |
The MythBusters take on a myth from antiquity, where it is claimed that Archimedes constructed a solar-powered weapon by reflecting sunlight onto Roman ships. The result of the test sparked so much controversy, especially in engineering circles, that an entire episode ("Archimedes Death Ray") was dedicated to a 2006 retest. In 2010, the myth was visited a third time in the "President's Challenge" episode, in which United States President Barack Obama challenged Adam and Jamie to make a third attempt using more manpower. To date, this and JATO Rocket Car are the only myths to have been tested three times on the show.
The smell of skunk musk can be removed with...
| Myth statement | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ...tomato juice. | Plausible | Adam and Jamie had significant problems attempting to get a skunk to spray them, so they took the skunk to the women's restroom and cornered it to try to get it to spray. Finally, after being sprayed, Adam and Jamie covered themselves in tomato puree. Neither the two MythBusters nor their builder Scottie could detect the odor of skunk after they had been covered with the tomato juice. |
| ...beer. | Busted | For the rest of the tests, Adam and Jamie tried to eliminate the skunk odors from the women's restroom. (The skunk they had brought in would not spray Adam and Jamie again.) After trying to use beer to clean up the mess, Scottie claimed that the beer covered up some of the smell, but the skunk odor was still there. |
| ...a douche. | Busted | Scottie was still able to detect the skunk odor as well as the beer. |
| ...a custom mixture. | Confirmed | A mixture of soap, hydrogen peroxide, and baking soda proved to work best for actually eliminating the aroma of skunk musk. The precise formula may be found in Wikibooks. |
| ...commercial cleaners. | Confirmed | For the final test, Adam had to use synthetic skunk odor because the custom mixture had completely eliminated the skunk odor. Scottie said that it worked, but he said that there was a hint of skunk in the air and that the custom mixture was more effective. |
Adam and Jamie test whether some things that are mythically held to be bulletproof are actually bulletproof—included among them was an assertion by Jamie in the first season on their Lexan barriers being bulletproof.
Bullets can be stopped by...
| Myth statement | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ...a book. | Busted | A hardcover book of at least 400 pages can potentially stop a .22 rifle shot, but anything stronger would shoot completely through. |
| ...a deck of playing cards. | Busted | The deck failed to stop any bullets. |
| ...a Zippo lighter. | Busted | The lighter failed to stop any bullets. |
| ...a quarter-inch polycarbonate shield like that used by MythBusters. | Busted | The shield failed to stop any bullets. |
| ...an inch-thick polycarbonate panel rated bullet-resistant. | Plausible | Adam and Jamie tested using a four-sided box made of bullet-resistant polycarbonate laminate. The panels stopped .22, .357, and .44 magnum bullets, but a .30-06 Springfield shot from an M1903 Springfield penetrated both front and rear portions of the box. |
This myth is fueled by the story of an elevator attendant found alive but badly injured in an elevator car that had fallen 75 stories down a shaft in the Empire State Building after a B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed into it in 1945.
After finding a bowling ball in the abandoned hotel in which they were testing the myth, Kari decided to test out a "mini-myth" of her own.
Adam and Jamie try to build a hovercraft from vacuum cleaner parts, and after finding it plausible, they decide to compete against each other in a homemade hovercraft racing contest. Adam, along with Tory and Christine (dubbed "Team Savage"), built the heavier Lillypad Flyer, while Jamie, Scottie, and Kari (dubbed "Hyneman's Heroes") worked together to make the Hyneman Hoverboard.
Adam and Jamie tested a construction-related myth, and they put several other objects said to be able to act as a parachute to the test.
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holding a large sheet of plywood will slow a fall from a building enough to make it survivable. | Busted | The fall was almost completely uncontrollable, and the impact was still deadly. Even under the best possible conditions, the fall was not survivable. In fact, the plywood actually made the fall less survivable, as not only did Buster hit the ground at a slightly higher speed than when he fell without holding anything, but the plywood also broke in two over Buster's body when he hit the ground, which would undoubtedly have inflicted additional injuries. Even when the myth was stretched to custom-built constructions of the five individual plies of the plywood, neither Adam's nor Jamie's designs were any improvement. | |
| Opening an umbrella will slow a fall from a building enough to make it survivable. | Busted | Though different umbrellas did slow a fall, the impact was still deadly. A real parachute was also tested, but it was found to be unable to properly arrest a fall from only 60feet. The best an umbrella can do is hold the person somewhat upright, causing less damage to the head. |
This is the first myth entirely tested by the Build Team.
It is possible to legally beat the police speed radar and/or lidar by...
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ...jingling a set of keys. | Busted | The keys had no effect at all. | |
| ...dangling a disco ball from the rear-view mirror. | Busted | The disco ball had no effect at all. It is also illegal (in California, where the show is filmed) to have anything large and obstructive hanging off the rear-view mirror. | |
| ...dangling CDs from the rear-view mirror. | Busted | The CDs had no effect at all, and they are also illegal in California. | |
| ...covering the hubcaps in tin foil. | Busted | The tin foil did not have any noticeable effect. | |
| ...covering the entire car in tin foil. | Busted | The tin foil acted as a large reflector and actually enhanced the detection ability of the radar. | |
| ...jamming the lidar by lining the front license plate with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) | Busted | The LEDs were not strong enough to interfere with the lidar. | |
| ...jamming the lidar by covering the entire car with LEDs. | Not tested | While the idea did come up in the brainstorming phase, it was too impractical to test on the full-scale car. | |
| ...jamming the radar by bouncing microwaves at it. | Busted | Kari's magnetron failed to jam the police radar. | |
| ...shooting scraps of tin foil behind the car as chaff. | Busted | There were too many rogue variables to get the system to work properly, particularly wind. The car was still detectable, and the chaff did nothing to disrupt the radar. This solution would also likely result in a much stiffer penalty for littering. | |
| ...spinning a wheel of mirrors on top of the car slower than the actual speed of the car. | Partly busted | Tory's device actually tricked the radar into displaying the car as going one or two miles per hour slower but not enough to help. The device itself was highly impractical. Unlike the rear-view mirror attachments, the roof mounted device was actually not illegal in California. | |
| ...painting the car matte-black to absorb the radar and light beams. | Busted | The matte-black paint did nothing to reduce the detectability of the car. | |
| ...painting the car with special radar absorbing paint, like a stealth aircraft. | Not tested/not practical | The special paint is loaded with iron and goes on like frosting. It was so heavy that the toy car used in the preliminary tests could barely move. It was never properly tested on the full-scale car, because it would be more expensive than just paying off any speeding tickets. |
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tattoos can explode when exposed to an MRI. | Busted | The compounds in the pigments of most tattoos simply do not react to magnetic fields. Old pigments of the color black, which had iron in the composition, could cause some discomfort at most. | |
| Tattoos can explode when exposed to a transmitter. | Not in this episode | This chapter of the myth was not shown in this episode. See "MythBusters Outtakes". |
This myth was inspired by incidents that left two children—Cameron DeHall and Taquandra Diggs—with what were later diagnosed as chemical burns after Jawbreakers blew up in their faces. It had also been reported that DeHall had heated his Jawbreaker in the microwave. The Diggs family and several other victims' families had already sued Nestlé for medical bills resulting from plastic surgery as well as pain and suffering. The lawsuits were later settled outside of court for an undisclosed amount.[3] [4]
Adam and Jamie, with help from Tory and Christine, tested the myth in a number of ways. When Jamie cut a Jawbreaker open using a band saw, he found that the way the candy is built (various layers of sugar around a solid candy center) creates the potential for a temperature differential. Specifically, the various layers can heat at different rates, creating a scenario where a layer can expand, cause pressure on the outer shell, and make the candy unstable. (Christine found, by using an infrared thermometer, that one layer got up to after microwave heating.) If the candy was compressed—including in someone's jaws—the candy could explosively burst and its almost molten centers could cause painful burns.
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Jawbreaker can explode when bitten after being heated. | Confirmed | For the first test, Tory constructed a pair of jaws with steel teeth that could bite with the average human's bite force (about 170 pounds). After trying various combinations of heating, cooling, and pressure, a Jawbreaker did indeed explode when bitten, catching Christine on her temple and neck and Adam on the arm with burning candy as the "jaw rig" they had set up was not enclosed by safety screens. Adam seconded Jamie's opinion that the candy retains heat well on impact and likened it to napalm. | |
| A Jawbreaker can explode when caustic soda is added and the mixture is heated. | Confirmed | This second test came from an idea that Adam touched on that caustic soda (lye), which is often used in the cleaning of food-processing equipment (including candy-making equipment), could have made Jawbreakers more likely to explode. To test it, Jamie, Adam, and Christine prepared four samples of caustic soda and added ground-up Jawbreaker to two and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C, which is another common food additive) to the other two, then added water and heat to different halves of the matched pairs. The heat treatment consisted of microwaving them for five minutes—until the caustic soda and crushed Jawbreaker mix combusted into what Adam described as a "burning cupcake" that left a batch of hot ash. The caustic soda, ascorbic acid, and water mix also turned very hot. Adam then suggested taking their remaining crushed Jawbreaker/caustic soda mix in the toaster oven to simulate radiant heat (being left out in the sun)—and it resulted in the mixture smoking and then bursting into flames, leaving rock-hard residue. | |
| The plastic packaging of a Jawbreaker can make it more likely to explode if it is heated and then bitten. | Confirmed | Adam also suggested finding out if the plastic packaging of a Jawbreaker can make it more likely to blow up, and to test it, they ran a test similar to the first one, first heating a Jawbreaker while still in its bag to simulate radiant heat and then putting it in the jaws. While it did not explode, they examined it and found that it was still weakened enough to potentially explode, which led them to confirm this aspect of the myth as well. |
Adam and Jamie explore the possibility of raising a ship with ping-pong balls, originally conceived in the 1949 Donald Duck story The Sunken Yacht by Carl Barks.
The Build Team takes on a gag used in many comedic works, where a baby or small child is lifted into the air and flies away unintentionally when given helium balloons.
See also Larry's Lawn Chair Balloon from Pilot 3.
Adam and Jamie tackle not so much a myth as what they call an "urban puzzle". The debate arises because both methods of cooling influence a car's fuel efficiency—air conditioning requires a lot of power to run, but at the same time, open windows create drag. This myth was revisited in "MythBusters Revisited".
Adam and Jamie competed against each other in a contest to bust an old adage. While Jamie teamed up with Christine and Scottie in a machine known as Earth, Wind & Fire, which burned the hay to leave the needles behind, Adam, Kari, and Tory used the Needlefinder 2000, a machine that relied on water to separate needles from the hay (in the theory that needles would sink in water while hay floated). Each team had to locate four needles among ten bales of hay—three of steel of varying sizes and one of bone. Adam's team won the contest, in great part because his team's machine "processed" their haystack more quickly.
The MythBusters take on a story, taken from the 1945 book Rockets and Jets by Herbert Zim, which describes a Ming dynasty astrologer named Wan Hu, and determine whether he really was the first astronaut in space as a result.
By far the most popular of the submitted myths are those regarding perpetual motion—it was claimed in an interview by Adam that there was enough material to create three seasons of busting potential-free energy machines. One test (different from the included radio device), cut for time and shown on "MythBusters Outtakes", involves coils of baling wire being used to siphon off electricity from nearby PG&E power lines in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Adam, Jamie, and MIT electrical engineer Dr. Geo Homsy tested whether real free energy can be obtained using the following, which tended to involve more well-known ideas:
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A "G-strain amplifier" by sucking power from the curvature of space | Busted | In a day-long comparative experiment, the G-strain amplifier was hooked up to a battery and motor and pitted against a control—simply a battery connected to a motor—and the amplifier petered out first. Adam declared that the amplifier ought to be referred to in perpetuity as a ring oscillator and that they ought to sue the people who charged for the plans. | |
| A Minto wheel or temperature wheel | Busted | Adam and Scottie successfully constructed a Minto wheel and got it to turn, but it was extremely slow—and the fastest machine that Adam was able to research as powered by a Minto wheel was only 1 RPM—enough to fan sheep, as Adam said. | |
| A radio wave energy extractor | Busted | This was a rare design in that it included parts as well as designs. It was claimed that if the box was assembled and connected to a 100feet antenna, it could power a clock radio. However, while radio waves can be converted to electricity, the assembly produced only half a Volt, meaning three would be needed to power the display of a digital watch and thus making it impractical. | |
| The Bedini Motor or Energizer | Busted | The motor did not achieve its theoretical overunity, because the motor drained more power from the battery than it recharged and returned. |
The myth of decapitation by jumping into a ceiling fan has two versions, both of which were tested: jumping up into the blades from below (via a kid jumping up and down on a bed), and jumping forward so as to carry the neck into the blades from the side (the so-called "lover's leap".) To test this, Kari and Scottie bought a regular house fan and an industrial fan (with a higher top speed and metal blades as opposed to wood), and then they and Tori encased pig spines and latex arteries filled with fake blood inside busts of Adam and added human craniums. They then added rigs for both scenarios.
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A regular house fan can cause decapitation. | Busted | House fans do not have the power even to inflict serious injury while spinning at top speed—they are more likely to break first. During their tests, the "jumping kid" scenario produced hardly any injury, while the "lover's leap" scenario resulted in the wooden fan blades breaking against the neck. | |
| An industrial fan can cause decapitation. | Busted | Industrial fans are capable of inflicting severe lacerations when jumped into from below and caused a potentially lethal arterial severing when jumped into head on, but it is still not powerful enough to take a head off. For a finale, in an attempt to replicate the result, the Build Team created a razor-sharp, stainless steel fan powered by a lawn mower engine for the "lover's leap" scenario. Even that did not achieve decapitation, but it did cause lethal and horrifying injuries—deep cuts, sliced arteries, and cracked vertebrae—that compelled Adam to put it in the "MythBusters Hall of Fame." |
In this episode, Adam and Jamie test holiday-related myths while revealing the top-10 myths as voted upon by fans of the series. Clips were shown from each of these segments, in reverse order from #10 to #1.
Holiday Myths:
| Myth statement | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A frozen turkey can explode if it is dropped into a deep fryer pot too fast. | Busted | While it will not explode, the turkey can cause the boiling oil to splash all over the place (which can be extremely dangerous) if it is dropped into the deep fryer improperly. | |
| Placing a silver spoon in a bottle of champagne will make the bubbles last longer. | Busted | The spoon actually reduces the fizziness of champagne. In a blind taste test when compared to several controls (opened champagne, re-corked champagne, and unopened champagne), both Adam and Jamie ranked the spooned champagne the lowest in terms of fizziness. | |
| A falling icicle can kill a person. | Confirmed | An icicle over 1.5feet in length falling from about 15feet completely penetrated a steak, showing it is possible for an icicle to kill a person. | |
| A clothed snowman melts slower than a naked one. | Confirmed | In the 80 °F San Francisco summer heat, the naked snowman (representing Jamie) melted considerably faster than the clothed snowman (representing Adam). The clothes on the Adam snowman protected it from the heat and acted as insulation to help keep the temperature of the snow from rising. | |
| A urine stream can freeze in the cold of winter. | Busted | When tested in a freezer at, the fake urine stream the MythBusters used did not freeze in midair. | |
| Lighting a fire in a fireplace with a chimney can make a house colder. | Confirmed | The living room was heated and the nearby kitchen remained unchanged, but other, more distant rooms got almost 3 °F (2 °C) colder. |
The Egg-uinox myth was perhaps too short to air in any episode, as it was easily and conclusively busted.[5]