The popular TV series is fun and educational, but not without error.
Each Wednesday night, you can watch the Mythbusters on the Discovery channel. The show is filled with explosions, shooting, car crashes, and oh yes, science. The hosts are not scientist, and they are not engineers, but they dabble in both. The show draws in its audience with the gags and explosions, and somewhere along the line, the audience finds itself interested and entertained by the science content of the program.
This show is one of my favorites, and I believe one of the best on television. It engages its audience and gets them to ask questions, even argue about the results presented on the show. This is another element of the science of learning, to ask questions, to dispute findings, and to seek a broader understanding of the world in which we live. While the show and its hosts do a great job, they do occasionally make mistakes. Here are a few potential mistakes I have observed on the show.
NASA Moon Landing A Fake
On this episode, the Mythbusters claim a full 20 percent of Americans believe the moon landings were a fake, filmed in Hollywood style as a part of a gigantic cover-up. During the episode, the Mythbusters looked at several of the so called "flaws" in the NASA cover-up. These included photos, film of the astronauts walking/running on the moon, footprints, and the flag flapping in a vacuum.
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The work done on the suspected flawed photos was remarkable and explained the apparent discrepancies very well. The other elements were also covered well, but the tests were done at NASA facilities, with NASA personnel working with the Mythbusters crew. Therein, lies the potential error. The conspiracy groups will certainly have noticed this flaw.
If NASA faked the moon landings and have maintained the cover-up for all these years, it stands to reason you would not want to use their facilities to conduct your tests. Nor would you want their people involved in any manner. After all, they want your tests to show the moon landing was real and will do everything in their power to make certain the test results come out in their favor. It is the fox guarding the hen-house scenario. If you really want to convince the doubters the moon landings were real, any tests conducted at NASA or with NASA equipment or assistance must be thrown out. You cannot allow the suspected conspirators to help examine the conspiracy; it just does not work. (For the record, I believe the moon landings were real.)
Super Human Punch
The next myth concerned the super punch as demonstrated by the character from Hell Boy. The creature punches down on the front of a speeding SUV causing it to flip through the air over his head. The Mythbusters attempted to duplicate the punch by using a huge metal fist dropped from a crane onto the front an SUV.
After several attempts, the fist strikes the SUV in the correct location, causing the rear end to rise up off the pavement, then it quickly fell back to earth. The conclusion was that the scene as depicted in the movie was impossible. However, the experiment was flawed. The fulcrum on the SUV in this experiment was the front axle of the vehicle. When the giant fist, weighing thousands of pounds, was dropped onto the front of the SUV the rear of the vehicle began to come off the ground. As the momentum of the vehicle caused it to continue forward, the giant fist was propelled toward the rear of the vehicle. As it moved, the weight passed the fulcrum point and began acting against the upward movement of the vehicle.
In a larger test, an even larger weight was dropped on a platform constructed over the front of the SUV. The hope was the extension would move the fulcrum far enough back to allow lift. Once again, the weight struck the front of the vehicle/extension but then slid back to the opposite side of the fulcrum and began working against the upward momentum of the vehicle. It is doubtful the car would have flipped, but the weight used to create the super human punch actually prevented the experiment from being conclusive.
Hit The Ground Running
This myth claims it is better to hit the ground running than to take off from a dead stop. The process eventually lead to testing the myth with a car. The car was timed taking off normally, then had the front end raised, the engine revered up and the car dropped. This was an excellent method to test the myth, but the process was flawed.
When the car was raised, the wheels were eight to ten inches off the ground before the car was dropped. The drop caused the car to bounce, limiting its ability to immediately grip the pavement. Had the car been raised only one inch before dropping the resulting bounce would have been eliminated and the results of the test would have been far different.
Minors flaws or oversights, but that is the fun of the show; they invite fans to point out errors. They have even done entire episodes when they re-visit myths fans have said they got wrong. Overall, the show is fun, educational and very accurate, with a few minor exceptions
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