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Mythbusters myth gone wrong

MacNut

MacNut

macrumors Core
Original poster
Jan 4, 2002
23,014
10,020
CT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-CErr0VOY&feature=youtu.be

A wacky stunt for the TV show “Mythbusters” went haywire Tuesday and sent a cannonball tearing though a sleeping family's home in California.

The occupants miraculously escaped injury.

“It was crazy. That's for sure," Sgt. J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department told the Daily News. “If someone asked me two days ago, 'Could this homemade cannon shoot that far, off a hill into this neighborhood?' I would have said no way. But now it's confirmed."

He said the popular Discovery Channel show intended to fire the 6-inch steel cannonball to test its velocity. It aimed the projectile at huge containers of water meant to absorb the impact on the grounds of the sheriff's bomb disposal range.

But the ball somehow missed its mark, took an unforeseen bounce off a safety berm and barreled into the quiet Tassajara Creek neighborhood of Dublin about 4 p.m. Tuesday.

That's where the projectile turned into a suburban pinball, bouncing off a sidewalk, blasting through a front door, barreling up some stairs and careening through a bedroom where a man, woman and child were reportedly sleeping.

The cannonball then punched through the home's exterior stucco wall, sailed across a six-lane thoroughfare, ricocheted off the roof of another home and finally crashed through the window of a parked, empty Toyota Sienna minivan, where it came to rest.

"I had just got out of the van five minutes earlier," owner Jasbir Gill, 42, told local media, according to KTVU. "I'm glad my kids weren't inside the van. So lucky."

Sgt. Nelson said dust from the shattered sheetrock woke the sleeping family, not the sound of the ball.

Nelson said the San Francisco-based TV production has insurance coverage, but that the bomb disposal range has been shut down pending a safety review.

He said his department had worked with the producers on about 50 previous experiments.

"This show promotes science. It's one of the reasons we do the show. We believe in the message. But something like this obviously can't happen," Nelson said.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...calif-home-amp-lands-minivan-article-1.988169
 
What's wild is that the couple didn't notice it until the drywall was collapsing. The mean the projectile was traveling with such force that the resistance of the door and wall were so little that the force didn't have time to be transferred to the surrounding material - the point of impact just catastrophically failed and the cannonball went on its merry way.
 
I live a couple miles from where this happened, it made the local news Lol!! The place where they shot it from is a military training camp, I guess the cannonball flew way outside of where it was supposed to. Funny this all happened in Dublin, CA and I'm going there in a couple minutes.
 
MythBusters is a pretty awful show. I wouldn't mind if the bad press got it pulled off the air... :)
 
r.j.s said:
Yeah, I think they started out with science, but have moved into more of a "well that didn't work right, so let's blow it up" show.
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Demosthenes X said:
MythBusters is a pretty awful show. I wouldn't mind if the bad press got it pulled off the air... :)
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Comeagain? said:
What's wrong with it?
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I also think it has gone downhill pretty quickly... Still like some episodes but the science has become increasingly dubious and the myths ever so boring
 
charlieroberts said:
I also think it has gone downhill pretty quickly... Still like some episodes but the science has become increasingly dubious and the myths ever so boring
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They don't really do myths anymore, just see how they can blow **** up.
 
Comeagain? said:
What's wrong with it?
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The science is sketchy, at best. Like the episode where they test if a boat will split in half when hitting a stationary object... but they test it on land. Water has very different properties than air, so the whole test is completely meaningless... doesn't stop them declaring the myth "busted", though.

On a personal level, I also just find the hosts really annoying.

They occasionally have a decent show... the one about getting out of a sinking car was reasonably decent. But overall, I find it obnoxious enough that I'll turn it off rather than suffer through it.
 
chrmjenkins said:
What's wild is that the couple didn't notice it until the drywall was collapsing. The mean the projectile was traveling with such force that the resistance of the door and wall were so little that the force didn't have time to be transferred to the surrounding material - the point of impact just catastrophically failed and the cannonball went on its merry way.
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The CNN news report shows a hole in the side of the house! :eek:


Edit:
Missed MacNut's original video. Unbelievable stuff...
 
How the hell does a cannonball go up stairs, smash through a wall, bounce off all sorts of other crap along the way, and still have enough velocity to fly over a 6 lane road? That's nuts.
 
Blame it on the wind?

Comeagain? said:
What's wrong with it?
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They couldn't solve a high-school level physics problem? I did this in HS, first calculate where it will land, mark an X, smash the X with the ball, Easy A+, smaller scale and indoors, but still, do the math, it works every time.

This is a screw up on the level of smashing a billion dollar probe on Mars instead of a nice landing because some moron doesn't know the difference between feet and meters.
 
yg17 said:
How the hell does a cannonball go up stairs, smash through a wall, bounce off all sorts of other crap along the way, and still have enough velocity to fly over a 6 lane road? That's nuts.
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It's called physics
 
Demosthenes X said:
The science is sketchy, at best. Like the episode where they test if a boat will split in half when hitting a stationary object... but they test it on land. Water has very different properties than air, so the whole test is completely meaningless... doesn't stop them declaring the myth "busted", though.

On a personal level, I also just find the hosts really annoying.

They occasionally have a decent show... the one about getting out of a sinking car was reasonably decent. But overall, I find it obnoxious enough that I'll turn it off rather than suffer through it.
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in the boat test water or air really does not make much differences in the results of it since it is all about moment. Heck in water it would be harder to do not easier.
The only thing they might done wrong is the boat could of been turning witch would of provided that needed curve arch in the hit.

But your reasoning for calling it crap is not valid as water vs air would not of effected the result.
 
mythbusters_canon_RGB2.jpg


Fire in the hole!
 
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