I miss Mythbusters so much.
The Elephant and Mice episode was so wild, because if I remember correctly, the elephant didn’t act afraid of the mouse, it acted afraid it would step on and harm the mouse; as if the elephant had a basic understanding and concern for the wellbeing of another creature conspicuously lacking in many human beasts
Yep. Elephants are wonderfully kind creatures. With my very limited understanding of elephant body language, it didn’t look like an ‘oh no, im scared’ it was more ‘oh hey little guy, didn’t see ya there. ill get outta your way.’
Just smart as hell. This video makes me wonder if elephants legit have a sense of humor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VOvEFHDOaU
Animal behavior can be difficult to interpret (and even when descriptions come from experts, I often find myself asking “yeah, but how do we really know that?”), but this looks very close to being like someone who’s known for lighthearted pranks.
Oh my goooooood. This is so delightful, you can almost see the smirk. Thank you for sharing. <3
New core memory unlocked, thanks!
If we would, we would be all vegan.
Being able to separate your ego and desire to be right from the learning process is such an important skill.
Sometimes they called stuff busted because they couldn’t personally do it though, even though the myth involved elite athletics. I was pretty stoked when they brought in an actual ninja to test if ninjas can grab arrows out of the air. The guy actually did catch some arrows, which was quite amazing.
I liked the one where they tested it you could stop a sword by slapping your palms together to stop the swing like in ninja movies They actually built a machine with rubber hands to simulate it. Long and short of it … No you can’t
But maybe… JK. The strength required to do that would be inhuman.
Yeah, one that I always think of is the see-saw one where a sky diver’s parachute failed so he aimed for a see-saw with a girl sitting on one end which resulted in the girl launched shot upwards and then landing safely on top of a building.
Their first test used basically a metal plank on a fulcrum and the forces did more to bend the plank than they did to launch the girl and she didn’t get high enough.
Their second attempt used a see-saw that was built using suspension bridge tech to essentially make it instructable, resulting in fatal forces from the launch. At this point, they called it busted.
But I see two unrealistic extremes where reality would exist somewhere in the middle where see-saws are designed to not break easily but not to the point of being indestructible and there might be a sweet spot where the forces are high enough to launch girl several stories up but not high enough that she dies from the forces.
Also, for the bull in a china shop one, I’m guessing that saying resulted from a bull ending up inside a china shop during a running of the bulls event, where stress would be high and there wouldn’t be an easy and obvious path out on the other side, plus maybe a shopkeeper suddenly trying to get it out in a panic. I think that would get the expected result, especially after a few shelves have broken and each step makes more broken sounds.
It doesn’t matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON’T CHASE YOU.
I used to live in Florida on the edge of a big lake where my landlord had carved out a lagoon that mama gators used to hatch their broods, so there would often be between 50 and 100 little alligators chilling out in my backyard sunning themselves. For fun I would try to sneak up on one of them and poke it on the head just to watch it and all the others scatter into the lagoon. Everybody I told about this thought I was absolutely batshit crazy, but I knew that at the time there had been something like 5 alligator attacks on humans in Florida since the 1940s, always on little children playing in water (I was obviously a little child mentally but physically I was a 200-pound adult man). So I knew I wasn’t risking life or limb doing this. For the record, my sneaking up technique was to stand stock still and only move a step or two towards the gator whenever the wind blew; it seems that the gators just took me for a swaying branch and ignored me.
What made me stop doing this was one day I happened to look down at what I thought was a big log and realized that it was actually the mama gator, about 12’ long from tip to tail and probably 2’ in diameter at her midsection. I was fairly confident that she wouldn’t attack me on land either - but not that confident.
Ive told people this many times, we need to create more room for failure. From school, to jobs, to building businesses, to loans, to health.
If we can try something because if we fail we can try something else, we would find a hell of a lot more to care about in this world.
And the most important thing we would care more about is ourselves
I loved their episode where they made a led balloon.
I would say escaping from quick sand and escaping from an alligator chasing me were two major concerns in my childhood. LoL, global climate change was maybe not even on the list, for which I will curse the petroleum industry.
My favorite is planes on a treadmill.
Mostly because fans still argue about it and it’s hit the point they had to ban PoaT comments.
Which is insane as it’s not that difficult to understand. When a plane is on the ground, its gear/wheels will roll at ground speed, but the wings provide lift at airspeed.
If the ground is being moved under the plane (as on a treadmill,) the wheels will just roll faster.
Sure they’re not zero friction and some of that needs to be overcome; but this is something encountered on a daily basis all across the world- or rather, the opposite.
If the wind is coming from ahead, its airspeed is increased and the plane needs a lower ground speed to get into the air where if the wind is coming from behind, then they need more.
(This is why carriers set course into the wind when launching jets,)
At no point is ground speed and airspeed necessarily the same (i suppose you could have a calm day, but most days, the wind is blowing at least some.)
Plane on a treadmill is really interesting because if you understand how planes work its so obvious what will happen you don’t need to test it. Planes move on the ground by running their engines, which push against the air, the wheels provide zero motive force. It’s also why planes need tugs to move away from the gate, you can’t run the engines in reverse. Planes are not cars, but people tend to assume the thing they don’t understand works like the thing they do understand, and refuse to believe their hasty assumption is wrong even when told directly their hasty assumption is wrong.
You actually can run the engines in reverse. They have thrust reversers. There’s very good reasons that they do not reverse the plane from the stand using the engines, but it is possible.
my criticism of PoaT actually has to do with the scale model they used to prove it.
scale aircraft have ridiculous power-to-weight ratios
but that’s just me being a stickler.
Plane on a treadmill always seems so obvious to me. Planes don’t have power connected to their wheels. Put a plane on a dynamometer and crank the engine up as fast as it will go, and the wheels will still not spin. At the same time, water planes use pontoons and are still able to take off just fine.
The question I have is, can a plane take off with a tailwind that matches the speed that the propeller is pushing out.
My favorite is the fan mounted to the boat blowing the sail causing the boat to move. I mean there are a shitload more experiments in fun episodes that are far better and more entertaining, but this one is my favorite because it flies in the face of logic. It shouldn’t work. My brain rejects the possibility. But physics and fluid flow work otherwise and I found it pointlessly infuriating only because I’d been unassailable in my confidence that it couldn’t possibly work. Yet there it is with a perfectly logical explanation. I still find it irritating even if I accept the reality of it. (Episode 165 if anyone’s wondering)
That said, I still follow Adam on various platforms. That enthusiasm and joy of discovery is all still there, along with some maturity and some life observations. Literally the only celebrity figure I follow.
I still wanted them to see how much dynamite it would take to remove a dead whale.
I wish more people in general would be OK with being wrong. Noone ever learned something new without knowing they’d been wrong
“Replicate the circumstances, then replicate the results.”
That and writing down results.
The quote at the end is perfect. Be excited when you are wrong because it’s information.
