Mythbusters Were Great

[qos]

I'm very glad I took Wolfling to see the Mythbusters last night. It was a great show. No experiments, and the only explosions were on a video clip (more on that later), but the guys were utterly engaging. It was a conversational/Q&A format, and they sat on tall stools with a UW Physics professor who served as moderator for the first part of the evening. Later they took questions from the audience -- and they commented several times on how smart and articulate the kids here are.

Seeing Adam and Jamie walk out onstage was a pleasant jolt. Here are two guys I've enjoyed on tv for years who I never would have expected to see in the flesh, but there they were. (Celebrity is funny thing.) In person they are exactly what you see on the show: Adam is animated, a joker, and frequently interrupts Jamie. Jamie is quiet, methodical - almost pedantic - and was wearing his beret.

I wish I had a transcript of the evening, or had been taking notes. The points I remember:



1. It's easier and less expensive to blow up all your explosives at the filming site rather than get the proper permits and file the driving plan to transport them back to your home site. This is why they blew up the airplane. They had a lot of detcord left over and were going to give it to their explosives guy but he said that he couldn't take it because he didn't have the permits to take it anywhere. He was going to detonate it by itself in the desert. They said, "No! No! Put it on the airplane!"

2. If you want to do something that's illegal for private citizens, call the FBI. They can monitor it as a "training exercise."

3. They were doing the "shooting fish in a barrel" episode and were at a city pool that was going to be re-surfaced. They had set up for the shoot and were taking their lunch break with a pile or weapons next to them. They heard sirens in the neighborhood and their producer asked "You don't think they're coming for us, do you?" Adam reached down and picked up one of the larger guns and said, "I think we can hold them off for at least forty minutes."

4. Yes, they have shot episodes that Discovery Channel will not let them air. One of them involved the myth that the cardboard of the cereal box is more nutritious than the sugary cereal inside. They tested the myth using mice. When they came back after the weekend only one of the three mice was left in the cardboard diet cage. He had eaten the other two down to their skeletons and tails. They also did not air the bit of Adam testing whether or not you can set a fart on fire. You can. It's not a big flame, but yes, you can.

5. They are not, in fact, highly educated geniuses. ("Busted!" Adam laughed.) Adam has a high school diploma (B- average). Jamie has a degree in Russian. The moderator conferred honorary (and unofficial) Experimental Physics doctorates on them at the end of the show.

6. They openly acknowledge how different they are and the fact that they can get on each other's nerves -- but they credit their differences for being one of the reasons the show works, and claim that their different perspectives allow them to come up with much better material than either would alone. Adam also said that however different their temperments, they are enough different from everyone else around them due to their experiences and expertise that it does make a strong bond -- and that they always agree on the big, important stuff.

7. Don't get into a prank war with them. Just don't.

8. On several occasions they've bhad military and other groups ask to borrow their footage, or been told "Yeah, we spent $6 million testing that and got the same results."

9. Their use of pressure stickers to determine lethality of explosions has been picked up by the military (which is in the process of making it more sophisticated) to help determine if a soldier has been exposed to leathal pressure from shockwaves that don't produce external damage but may have caused internal injuries.

10. Their largest explosion was actually set off by the build team a few days ago: 5,000 pounds of dynamite(?) to test the myth that you can create diamonds if you can produce enough pressure.



The evening ended with a video of outtakes (some were hysterical) followed by a "Greatest Hits" of explosions, including the famous "hot water heater as rocket" sequence. The theater had a big double speaker array and as the explosions got bigger my chest started vibrating. The last segment was edited to the 1812 overture. It may be out there on YouTube somewhere, but it's going to lose a lot at not being on a big screen with a professional sound system.











Wolfling and I had a great time together.

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I am jealous. :)

[silverhawkdruid.livejournal.com]

Me too! :-)