Don't try anything youou've sen on this show at home.
We are what you call... ...Experts.
Bad...
Oh!
And the downright bizarre.
That's insane!
First, surf's up, as Kari, Grant, and Tory...
This will become a projectile!
Get gnarly with some movie mayhem...
That's what you get for chasing Mel Gibson!
As they find out
if a surfboard can ever become a lethal weapon.
That was a perfect shot!
Meanwhile, Adam and Jamie also cause some car carnage...
Adam: Whoa-oh!
I like the car better this way.
As they buckle up
for the most bizarre race-off in "Mythbusters" history...
This is shocking front-page science news.
Finding out if a retro racecar
was really more streamlined backwards than forwards.
Dude, this is so much fun!
Who are the Mythbusters?
Adam savage...
All for the glory!
And Jamie Hyneman.
I call it my little pop-gun.
Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience.
Success!
Joining them... Grant Imahara...
Are you okay?
Tory belleci...
Did we order some exploding pants?
And Kari Byron.
Now, we're moving on to... the big guns.
They don't just tell the myths. Hey.
They put them to the test.
First up... a myth that's back to the drawing board.
I've got one for you.
Shoot.
A friend of mine used to say
about a specific make and model of sports car
that it was in fact so poorly designed
it was more aerodynamically efficient
going backwards than forwards.
That's good.
I thought you'd like that one.
Car development today is a multi-million dollar industry,
with aerodynamics at the forefront.
But that's not always been the case,
because, according to this myth,
in the 1970s some car designers put fashion before function,
crafting cars that sure looked sleek,
but may have actually been more aerodynamically efficient
if the body was switched 180 degrees.
So, what kind of car are we talking about?
That's an interesting question, actually,
because this claim turns out to have been made
by a whole host of automobiles
from Europe, Asia, America, over the last 40 years.
But after extensively crunching
the references we found on the Internet,
we have honed in on this
as the most commonly cited culprit of this myth.
Well, since this myth is all about aerodynamics,
let's test it out in the wind tunnel first.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
Ultimately, this full-speed fable
will come down to the most random race-off in history.
But before that checkered flag,
it's time for some small-scale science.
This is a 1:24 scale model
of the sports car that this myth is about.
Now, we're gonna put it in this water channel back here
and inject dye into the stream of water
as it goes past the car.
We'll put it in and look at it going forward,
then we'll reverse the car and look at it going that way
and see whether we can tell any difference.
Expert engineer Kurt long's
the guy with the dye.
Red dye coming in.
But other than looking cool, what does it all mean?
Well, while this car's shape may announce to the world
that it slips through the wind and that it's aerodynamic,
the water tunnel here tells a different story.
See this big batch of red behind the car?
That is a low-pressure zone,
creating a lot of drag on this car.
It's not as aerodynamic as it looks.
Will that change when we flip it around?
Well, let's flip it around.
Flip 180 degrees,
and the result is not exactly crystal-clear.
What do you think?
I don't know.
It doesn't look that much different, really.
In fact, side by side, the dye pattern looks near-identical.
So it's time for "plan b"... cue NASA toy number two.
This device right here is an indraft wind tunnel.
Now, we're gonna attach the car to a device in the middle
and it's gonna register the amount of drag in pounds.
The higher that number, the more drag.
It's ready.
In other words,
this machine should be able to yield some hard data.
Okay. Firing up the wind tunnel, car facing forward.
Okay, we're spinning up.
518!
584!
756 rpm!
889 rpm!
915. We're pretty much there.
Although it doesn't look like it,
their toy car is sitting pretty in a 100-mile-an-hour Gale.
But watch the all-important drag force.
Now, with the car in this position,
the wind pushed this car with the force of .34 pounds,
a shade over a third of a pound.
We're about to flip it around and run this test again.
And if this myth has any merit to it,
we should expect to see
the wind push on this car with less force.
We should expect to see a number lower than .34.
A flip of the car, and a flip of the switch,
and... drumroll, please...
The drag force for the backward car is...
.37 of a pound.
That's a number, and it's...
Higher than the previous number.
That's more drag.
More drag facing reverse.
It's not looking very good. No.
No.
For car conspiracy-theorists, it's not looking good, at all.
The numbers are in.
Facing forward, this car produced .34 pounds of drag.
Facing backwards, .37 pounds of drag.
The numbers don't lie.
Facing forward, this car was
more aerodynamically efficient than backwards,
which was the opposite of what the myth says.
Now, that's in scale.
Will that translate to full-size?
We know there's only one way to find out.
Next up, a surfboard shocker.
Okay, so, the myth we get to work on
is from a classic action movie, "lethal weapon 2."
I love that movie. What's the myth?
Do you remember the chase scene
where there was a big pileup in the middle of the road
and one car had a surfboard on top of it, and it crashes?
Oh, yeah. And the car stops, but the surfboard keeps going.
Exactly.
The surfboard goes through a windshield,
and, well, it messes our bad guy up pretty bad. How bad?
Well, it definitely kills him, possibly decapitates him.
That's pretty bad. That's pretty bad.
It's a classic car crash from a classic movie.
A stomp on the brakes sets off a rube goldberg chain reaction
that culminates...
Eventually...
With it being "surf's up" for the bad guy.
But can a surfboard really fly that far and be fatal?
Okay, guys. I got a plan, and I have some props.
Go ahead.
We've got our car here with the surfboard on top
with a cable on it.
The cable is attached to our pickup truck.
We've got our crash car here
and our target car about a truck-length away.
We tow the whole thing, and psssh!
The crash car crashes in, and pfff!
The surfboard hits the target car.
Well, then we'll find out if the surfboard has enough power
to penetrate the windshield and kill the guy.
Sounds like a plan.
Pshhh!
It's a plan
that's got "full-scale" written all over it.
The surfboard car will be towed into a parked crash car
at the movie's 40 miles an hour.
40 feet away is the bad guy's car
that the surfboard, thanks to its momentum,
must then hit and penetrate.
But will it all be "tow" good to be true?
We're out at the Alameda runway to re-create a crash
where a surfboard flies through a windshield and kills a guy.
Time to set up, cue the heavy equipment,
and, rain clouds... please move aside.
That looks good!
And with the cables...
600 pounds, 1000 feet of 3/8-inch braided-steel cable.
Pulleys...
This will ensure that our crash vehicle goes
exactly where we want it and not where it wants to go.
Cars...
Forget the gym!
Aaah!
And crash barriers in position...
Safety first!
The sun comes out to kick-start this myth.
So, this is our towed vehicle, an s.U.V.
Just like the one in the movie that carries the surfboard.
We've attached our tow cable here onto the steering bar,
and this is gonna allow us to tow this vehicle
straight towards the crash vehicle at 40 miles an hour.
And on top of our moving vehicle, we have our shortboard.
Like the surfboard in the film, this will become a projectile.
And 400 yards downstream...
This is the crash zone.
This cable will be pulling our car, with the surfboard,
at 40 miles an hour, straight into this parked vehicle.
Once it hits there, it's gonna come to a complete stop.
However, the surfboard will be continuing at 40 miles an hour
because of the momentum of the moving vehicle.
This is our target vehicle,
located 40 feet away from the crash site,
just like in the movie.
The real question here
is whether the surfboard will come off the crash,
fly straight through the air all this distance,
and still have enough power
to Pierce the windshield and kill the bad guy inside.
Buster's set to take another for the team, and here's how.
So, there are three possibilities for lethality
if the surfboard actually hits the guy's head.
One... decapitation, which is obviously certain death.
Aah!
Two, coup, which is the impact
of a moving object to a stationary object,
namely, the head.
And contrecoup,
which is the brain hitting the back of the skull,
resulting in a lethal brain injury.
Well, it's time to get the flock out of here and find out.
All right, this is "surf and turf," in 3...2...1...
Here we go!
20 miles an hour.
Looking good. Grant: Yeah.
30 miles an hour. Getting close.
40 and holding.
Wow! Wow!
Wow. I didn't see that one coming.
No.
But you know what?
The surfboard did fly through the air.
Yeah, but it didn't smash through the windshield.
It was a wipeout, all right,
but to really clarify the chaos, cue the high-speed.
Here we go.
Pretty good so far...
And...
Impact.
All right, look at that.
The surfboard is released, but it's nosing down.
It's got a downward trajectory.
It's true that the surfboard did drop like a stone.
But the crash was not like the movie.
The surfer car failed to come to an immediate stop,
and consequently, the board did not fly off cleanly.
Now, if you watch the high-speed,
there's a lot going on.
There's glass flying everywhere.
No, we didn't manage to stop our s.U.V. Like in the movie,
but the surfboard flew out fairly straight.
It had a fairly straight flight path.
The only thing is that as it was going, it started to dive down.
So we're gonna reinforce our barrier,
and this time we're gonna try and stop the towed vehicle,
and then we'll compare
what actually happens to the surfboard.
In other words, reset.
Next up... time to buckle up,
as Adam and Jamie unleash the big boys' toys.
Whoo! Whoo!
Whoa!
Adam and Jamie are testing the myth
that certain older-model sports cars
were more aerodynamic backwards than forwards.
In scale, forwards was better, but not by much.
That's more drag.
So now it's time to test this back-to-front fable for real,
with the ultimate symbol of 1970s jet-set ego...
The red sports car.
And here's how.
This myth is all about aerodynamic efficiency,
specifically, this car slipping through the air.
The rule of thumb is that the easier it is
for this car to slip through the air,
the less energy it expends pushing against that air
and the more fuel-efficient it is.
So we're gonna run our forward-facing car
through three test methods...
a quarter-mile time trial, a 0-60 acceleration test,
and a fuel-efficiency test.
When we've gathered all that data,
we're gonna cut the body off, flip it around,
drive that car through the same test,
and see if there really is any advantage
to it going backwards as opposed to forwards.
And, by the way, I'll be driving.
What do you want to do first?
Let's time me to the quarter-mile.
Okay.
I'm standing right at the quarter-mile
from where Adam's at at this moment.
All I'm gonna do is time how long it takes Adam to get here.
Okay, Adam.
Quarter-mile, starting in 3...2...1...
Go.
Our red road warrior
slips through the air with the greatest of eas
14 seconds.
14 seconds, on the nose. But one run ain't enough.
So Adam races through again.
14 seconds again.
Like any good mythbuster,
Adam's happy to go the extra quarter-mile.
I could do this all day long.
14 seconds.
In the forward position, the sports car
was able to do the quarter-mile in 14 seconds very consistently.
Thanks, Jamie.
We'll flag that information later.
With the quarter-mile testing ticked off,
it's on to baseline test two.
Here's how this test is gonna go.
I'm gonna start right here on the starting line.
Jamie will be down there with a timer.
He is gonna go, "3...2...1," and start that timer.
The very moment he says, "1" and starts that timer,
I'm gonna take off from the starting line,
banging it out, hell-bent for leather,
towards Jamie, like this.
About this far down the track, about 800 feet,
Jamie will be standing here with a radar gun...
and, remember, his trusty stopwatch.
And he is gonna be watching that radar gun
until my speed is 60 miles an hour.
And then he will click that stopwatch a second time.
And we'll get the metric
of how long it takes me to get from 0-60 miles per hour.
Let's get started.
All right, Jamie. I'm back in position on one.
Okay, stand by for my mark.
Copy that.
Start moving the car...
Here we go.
In 3...
2... 2...
1... 1...
I don't get tired of that.
Pretty quick. Looks to me like 8 seconds.
And back we go to one!
I'm heading back to one.
Like the quarter-mile run,
Adam's gonna do the acceleration test three times.
Go.
And just like the quarter-mile run,
the car is amazingly consistent.
So, what are the results?
All 3 runs, 8 seconds.
Excellent!
With an 8-second average in the acceleration test,
that just leaves fuel efficiency.
The essence of this story is wind resistance.
Now, how we're gonna measure that during this next run
is by determining how much fuel was used over a one-mile course.
How we're gonna do that is really simple.
We fitted the car with a removable fuel tank,
and we're going to weigh the tank before and after the run.
That's all there is to it.
Where we at?
Okay, the start weight of the tank is 20.12 pounds.
Fuel efficiency over one mile. Here we go.
With the fuel cell in place,
Adam does the first of three runs.
Each run is a mile long at 50 mph.
The results?
On that last run, Adam used 0.87 pounds of gasoline.
All right. Well, I'll go back to the start,
and let's do it again.
Yep. Away we go!
The average fuel used over the three runs is 0.87 pounds.
So, what's next?
Well, we got the data we came for.
Let's go back to the shop and flip the car.
Hop in.
By the time we come back to this location,
we will have done something very, very unnatural
to this car.
On the other side of the break...
Never get tired of this.
There's more "lethal weapon" wreckage.
Just a recap... we are testing
the movie myth from "lethal weapon 2",
where a car carrying a surfboard crashes into another car.
The surfboard flies off the top of that car,
into another car, through the windshield,
killing the driver.
Now, we had a little proem with our last test.
The car carrying the surfboard didn't come to a complete stop,
which means we may have lost some energy
that could have been transferred to the surfboard.
So we have added more mass to our barrier.
We have a new car, and we have four more k-rails.
This will ensure that our barrier does not move,
so when our car carrying the surfboard hits it,
it'll come to a complete stop.
And all that momentum from the car
will be transferred to the surfboard.
All right, Kari, you ready?
All right, here we go.
This is "surf and turf" in 3...2...1...Take it away.
I'm going for it.
Moving straight.
Yeah. It's looking really good so far.
It's going right for the barrier!
Oooohh...
Oh!
It didn't even go anywhere!
Uh...
It ran right into the crash vehicle!
There's a wealth of wreckage,
but having flown just 3 feet,
the surfboard was not a lethal weapon.
So, what went wrong?
In the movie, a car carrying a surfboard
crashes into another car, stops cold,
and spits the surfboard out.
And that's exactly what we did here.
This car carrying the surfboard
stopped completely, right on target.
The only thing is, the car we crashed into
crumpled up like this and blocked the surfboard's path.
You can see a green line right where the surfboard hit.
And if I look from the holder all the way out,
past the green line,
I could see it's heading right towards the windshield.
I think, definitely, this merits another shot.
The team resets again with new cars.
All right, this is
"lethal weapon" surfboard decapitation myth.
Here we go, in 3...2...1...Hit it.
Once again, Kari accelerates to 40,
towing the surfer car 400 yards behind her.
Until...
Yeah!
Oh, my gosh! That was a perfect shot!
It hit the ground and bounced up and hit the windshield!
Tory's right... the board did hit the target windscreen,
but not quite as the movie portrayed.
Like take one, the surfboard
very soon starts taking a nosedive... but that's not all.
That is incredible. Look at that.
It's kind of flying okay.
But now look at it starting to twist.
I mean, there's, like, no aerodynamics there whatsoever.
So, after three
proof-of-concept full-scale tests,
what have the guys learned?
So, we are 0-for-3 today.
None of our surfboards have pierced the windshield,
and the bad guy lives on to fight another day.
However, you might think that I am sad about this,
but actually, I'm quite excited.
The reason is that we've noticed a trend.
All of the surfboards have come off the rack
with a significant amount of forward momentum.
But they've also pitched forward and rolled slightly,
which indicates that there's something going on...
maybe something about the shape of the surfboard...
that's preventing it from getting to the windshield
and killing the bad guy.
So what we need to do is break this down to its elements
and really figure out what's going on.
Meaning it's time to scrutinize
the science of the surfboard.
Later...
Oooh, this is gonna be fun.
A bungee-cord board goes ballistic.
Wow!
Adam and Jamie have put their 70s sports car
through its forward paces.
I could do this all day long.
Meaning now it's time to do a 180.
Bring her on in. All right.
The next step in testing this story
is to separate the body of the car from its chassis,
flip it around, and re-attach it
so that the back end of the car is facing forward.
Now, this is a pretty complicated task,
so we've decided to bring out the big guns.
Mike Alan is the senior automotive editor
for "popular mechanics" magazine.
He's gonna make sure it gets done right.
Time to rip it and strip it, and Jamie thinks it might just work.
What do I think about it?
Well, water naturally forms a perfectly aerodynamic shape
when it forms a teardrop, like so.
And if you look at this car, it's kind of teardrop shaped
if you look at it going backwards.
So, as far as I'm concerned, this might actually be possible.
But before "possible" becomes "practical",
some heavy-handed surgery is required.
But with all these bits ripped out,
won't the backwards car be lighter and therefore faster?
I'll let Jamie handle that one.
I know what you're thinking.
"Wait a second... you can't remove all that stuff
"because that'll skew the results.
The car will be lighter."
Well, yes and no.
Yes, because it would skew the results
if we didn't account for it.
No, because we're going to account for it
by putting sandbags or barbell weights in the car
before we do our testing.
Now to slice, dice, and desecrate
one formerly cool car.
After dozens of hours and hundreds of carefully made cuts,
it is finally time to take this sports car...
which looks like it's in one piece,
but, in fact, it's in two...
pull off the body, turn it around,
put it back down and see where we stand.
How are we gonna do that? Well, we need some muscle.
Muscle?
Like an Egyptian.
You guys ready?
All right. On my count.
3...2...1...Lift.
Oh, look at that.
Anybody having problems?
Fans of these classic cars
are probably having their first coronary right about now.
Is there a wire there? Mike?
Lovely.
I don't know. I like the car better this way.
It's the ultimate convertible, eh?
Yeah. Yeah, this'd be cool.
It's ready to lower?
After three days of cutting...
Piecing...
Hammering...
I think it's finally ready to lower down and stay on.
Well, let's do it. Let's do it.
Come on down.
Tilting forward. Coming down.
That's good.
Whoa-oh! Hey, hey!
It's on.
I'm confused. What exactly is this?
Just one more touch,
and this mechanical misfit is ready.
Next stop... back to the track.
Sweet.
For this myth to be confirmed, we're gonna need the surfboard
to fly off the car at 40 miles an hour.
We're gonna need it to fly straight as an arrow for 40 feet,
and we're gonna need it to bash through the windshield
and take out the bad guy.
And we are getting none of that.
In fact, the surfboard immediately takes a nose-dive,
and then banks right or left in an unpredictable way.
I mean, right now, this myth doesn't look true at all.
What do you guys want to do?
We could try driving the vehicle faster.
Or we could do a small-scale experiment.
We could make a mini-surfboard, take it over to NASA,
put it in their water channel,
and find out if we're ever gonna get
a stable flight pattern out of a surfboard.
A little aerodynamic analysis. I like it.
And at NASA, Kari will be armed
with not one but two baby boards.
So, I've been hand-shaping my little surfboard here
for our small-scale experiment over at NASA,
and I think I have a little too much of a nose lift.
Instead of scrapping this and starting over,
I need perfection so I'm gonna go high-tech.
I am going to go to a 3-d printer, throw in a cad drawing,
and print out an exact replica to our life-sized surfboards.
So if the hand-carved one doesn't cut it,
the 3-d one should do the business.
And before you can say, "I want one," it's ready.
A little resin, and it's done.
Aerodynamically speaking, both water and air are fluids.
So what we're gonna do
is submerge our surfboard under the water
and inject dye upstream.
As the dye flows over the surfboard,
we should get an idea of whether they'll generate lift
or, more importantly, maintain stable flight.
Like Adam and Jamie earlier,
they'll also be helped by aero expert Kurt long...
who, on seeing Kari's hand-carved board duck and dive,
is already unimpressed.
So, the board seems to be pivoting.
What does that indicate to us?
In this particular case, it means that,
although momentarily it might try to fly straight,
very quickly thereafter, it's gonna veer dramatically
upwards or downwards, nothing resembling controlled flight.
So Kari's board's a bust.
But will the more accurate, 3-d printed one
get a different result?
Okay, this is our surfboard, with a less severe nose lift.
Let's see how it slices.
To the untrained eye, this looks much better.
The board is certainly stable,
but remember... Kurt's eye is far from untrained.
The board itself just isn't really doing anything.
That's a good thing,
because it will slice through the air a lot easier.
However, because it's not changing
the flow patterns very much,
it's not gonna get much lift.
I believe this board would not fly stably at this angle.
What I'm gathering from all these tests
is that surfboards were not meant to fly
through the air like an arrow.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
They make wonderful surfboards, but that's about it.
All right. Guess it's back to the drawing board.
Next up...
That's insane!
The guys get in touch with their inner road warrior.
In "reverse engineering,"
it's time for the most surreal time-trial
in "Mythbusters" history.
Well, I know, for all intents and purposes,
it looks like I'm sitting on the hood, but check this out.
That's the exhaust.
There's three tests today...
0-60, quarter-mile drag, and fuel efficiency.
And each test will put the frankenstein car's aerodynamics
to the ultimate test.
Adam? Let's start testing.
I'm ready. Let's do it.
Here we go.
First up... 0-60.
The forward-facing car did 0-60 in...
8 seconds.
For the myth to be true,
the backwards-mobile should hit 60 in less time.
Okay, Adam.
0-60 in 3...2...1...
Go.
9 seconds.
That right there is a rush.
To get the hard data,
Jamie and Adam run the tests three times.
Not that Adam's complaining.
Dude, this is so much fun!
9 seconds again.
8 seconds.
So, how did I do on that?
The runs with the car facing backwards
were an average of 8.66 seconds.
How does that compare to the forward-facing test?
The average on the forward-facing car
was 8 seconds.
So the backwards was a little slower.
It is.
Test one, and the myth's got a dent.
Rather than being quicker than the forwards time,
the backwards car took longer to hit 60.
When we do the math, we find that our backwards-facing car
was accelerating 7.5% more slowly than the normal car.
Still too close to call...
so bring on test number two.
Shall we go on to the quarter-mile?
Let's go on to the quarter-mile!
Front-first, it did the quarter-mile in 14 seconds.
That's the time to trump.
All right, Jamie, I am in position and ready to go.
Okay, Adam.
Quarter-mile in 3...2...1...
Cramped up against the rear windscreen
is not what you'd call an ideal driving position,
but it is very "Mythbusters."
17 seconds.
Here we go.
Yeah!
Whoo-hoo!
17 seconds.
The same on run two. And one more time.
Let's go.
16 seconds.
How did I do on the quarter-mile?
You're doing the quarter-mile in an average of 16.6 seconds.
And how does that compare to the forward run?
Forward test was 14 seconds.
A little bit slower.
Yep. Nice.
Time to gas up
for the backwards-facing fuel-efficiency test.
In the forwards-facing test,
the retro racer used an average of 0.87 pounds of fuel
over three runs on a 1-mile track at 50 mph.
Now they're at it again...
filling her up and weighing the tank...
There we go. 29.32 pounds.
Running the mile...
Go.
That is the most uncomfortable car...Ever.
Then weighing the tank to see how much fuel was used.
28.6 pounds.
But after three runs over the same distance
at the same speed, the results are puzzling.
Okay.
The difference between forwards and backwards
is much larger than in the other tests,
and that's got Jamie concerned.
Our runs with the body on reverse
are showing an increase in fuel consumption of 44%.
That's an awful lot, and it makes me suspicious.
Suspicious that the data may not be correct.
Uh...
I have no idea what that means.
Jamie and Adam are stumped. They're gonna need a "plan b."
All right... this myth is on thin ice.
Because of the surfboard's shape and its fins,
it's not gonna have a predictable flight path.
Meaning a surfboard flying off the roof of a car,
crashing into another windshield...
just probably never gonna happen.
True, but there's still
one part of this myth we haven't dealt with.
What would happen if a surfboard hit a windshield
at 40 miles an hour?
I mean, yes, in the movie, it looks a little suspect.
But, the fact remains... would it take out a guy?
What if we build some kind of surfboard slingshot,
put it on some rails, hook in a bungee cord,
pull it back, let it rip, and fire it into a windshield
at point-blank going 40 miles an hour...
see if it busts through.
Okay, that could work.
Yeah.
Both the NASA data
and the full-scale proof-of-concept tests
prove that the movie scene's a sham.
Yeah, but it didn't smash through the windshield.
But what if the crash had been a regular head-on?
By eliminating the 40-foot flight,
would the surfboard then become a "lethal weapon?"
To find out, Tory's got a plan for a surfboard surprise
that should be way more reliable than the towing system.
This is gonna be a serious slingshot.
It's a seriously beefy build...
That's a good way to start.
That expert builder Tory is relishing.
All right, so, I have my rails set up
that the surfboard can run along.
I also have a track down the center.
So I can attach the surfboard to this little trolley,
and this trolley will fit into the track,
and we will know the surfboard is gonna go
exactly where we point this thing.
And with some serious science about to get sprung,
let's step outside.
Okay, so, now that Tory
has finished the surfboard-firing rig,
we need a way to accelerate our surfboard
up to our target speed of 40 miles an hour...
and we're gonna do that using this industrial-grade bungee.
What we need to do is calibrate how far back to pull the bungee
in order to get the surfboard up to 40 miles an hour.
And with a high-speed gauge, a target,
and a mattress-cum-crash-pad in place...
That looks good.
It's time to commence the calibration.
Shall we start at 10 feet?
Yeah, we'll pull it back to 10 feet
and see how fast the surfboard flies.
All right, let me know when to stop.
Grant triggers the winch,
and when the board hits the 10-foot marker,
it's over to Tory.
Surfboard calibration in 3...2...1.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
That was amazing! Oh, my God.
That might be going fast.
Kari's spot-on.
The 10-foot pullback
resulted in a speed of over 70 miles an hour.
So for test two, they dial it back to 6 feet of tension.
All right, this is launching from 6 feet away
in 3...2...1.
Wow!
Once again, the shot was on the money,
and once again, at 52 miles per hour, it was too fast.
So Tory dials it down for test three.
Here we go.
Surfboard slingshot calibration test
at 5 feet in 3...2...1.
Okay, it looks like it's going 17 frames over a foot.
So that's about 58?
58.8 feet per second. Okay.
That's 40 miles an hour! We hit our target speed!
That's crazy. We actually got the exact speed?
That never happens.
With the rig calibrated, what's next?
Now it's time to set up the car, put the man inside,
and see if this surfboard will punch through the window
and kill that guy.
Coming right up...
The heat is on for Adam and Jamie.
Hot in here!
Then Buster's staring down the barrel.
Good luck.
Since humans first conquered the waves,
the surfboard has been the tool of choice.
But in the wrong hands, can it really kill you?
So, we are set. We have our vehicle in place.
Inside, we have our man with the human-analog neck.
Careful.
Stretched across the door opening,
we have our bungee cord, which is hooked in to our surfboard.
The surfboard is hooked up to a quick-release,
which is also connected to this cable.
Now all we need to do
is pull the surfboard back with the winch
till we get to the right position
on our surfboard slingshot.
Then we're gonna release it and let it crash into the windshield
going 40 miles an hour...
And find out if this myth is, in fact, true or not.
All right, here we go. In 3...2...1.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Wow!
The surfboard came in, hit the windshield,
the windshield absorbed the impact,
and the surfboard glanced off the top.
That's because this safety glass,
which is standard on modern American automobiles,
has many layers...
and those are designed to absorb that impact energy
and keep the driver safe, which is exactly what it did here.
Or, to put it anher way...
Windshield's busted, and so is the myth.
At 40 miles an hour,
surfboard is not gonna penetrate the windshield
and kill our target.
Yep, even point-blank,
a 40 mile-an-hour surfboard will not be fatal.
But how about faster still?
With a new windscreen in place...
Oh, yeah. That fits nice.
The team's ramping it up.
11 feet.
Looking good!
12 feet.
Winch is slowing down.
13 feet!
All right, that's as much as the winch is gonna pull.
Hold it. We're at 15 feet.
You guys ready? Hold it.
With the winch maxed out under the tension,
it's time to unleash the beast.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Ho-oh!
The 15-foot pull turned into an 85-mile-an-hour hit.
But what happened to Buster?
Even with the surfboard traveling 85 miles an hour,
the windshield still absorbed all the energy of the impact
and stopped it before it hit our driver.
That means that this myth is not just busted,
it is double-busted.
So, we busted this myth in multiple ways.
Number one... aim.
When you have a real vehicle hitting another vehicle
with a surfboard on the top,
hitting your mark is very difficult,
not to mention transferring the energy to the surfboard.
Number two... aerodynamics.
We've analyzed the aerodynamics of the surfboard,
and they make it very difficult
for the surfboard to fly straight through the air.
Number three... force.
Even at 85 miles per hour, twice the speed that's in the myth,
it just bounces right off the safety glass and doesn't Pierce.
No matter how you look at it, this one is busted.
Back with the driving duo...
And this reverse rally is gearing up for a grand finale.
I've got two problems with this story right now.
One is our data.
I don't feel like it's definitive,
and I don't feel like it answers the question yet.
And the second?
The second is, I can't shake the feeling
that I want to see a race-off
between our backwards-facing car and a forwards-facing car
racing each other at the same time.
Yeah. Me too. I'm glad you're on the same page.
Let's do it.
So roll on up for one last run.
So, this is what we've come up with.
Two cars... identical make and model.
One of them as the manufacturer intended,
the other one with its body on in reverse.
We're gonna see which one's more aerodynamically efficient.
So, how are we gonna make this race a fair fight
when these two cars' engines might be tuned differently?
Here's how.
Starting from this starting line,
when we hear the "go" signal, Jamie and I will both
put our foot to the floor, pedal to the metal,
and bang it out of here as fast as we can to this green flag.
By the time Jamie and I get here,
we want to be going neck-and-neck and about 100 miles an hour.
At that point in time, Mike will give us a signal
and we will throw both cars into neutral at the exact same second
and drift the next quarter-mile
solely under the power of our own momentum,
the only force acting against that momentum
being the air around us.
The first car, then, across this very finish line,
is by definition
the more aerodynamically efficient of the two.
That's how we'll get our answer.
So the two matching cars, which weigh exactly the same,
are going to run nice and steady at 100 miles per hour.
Then, at the green flag, they'll put the cars into neutral
and let them drift on through to the finish.
In the red car,
the "baron of backwards," Adam savage...
Its hot in here!
And racing nose-first in silver,
Jamie "high-speed" Hyneman,
with guest gearhead Mike Alan the man in command.
I'm in position and ready to go.
How do I think this is gonna work?
Well, we've done everything we can
to level the playing field with these cars.
It's all about wind resistance.
"Reverse engineering" drift-off. Gentlemen, start your engines.
3...2...1...Go!
40...60...
The guys are now toe-to-toe at 100 miles per hour.
Green flag approaching.
And...Drift!
Gearsticks in neutral.
The pictures tell the story. Front-first was first.
Ahh!
That is a result!
That was.
Awesome!
This is shocking front-page science news.
Apparently, the car designers
knew what they were doing to begin with.
Yep. And that means the myth is busted. Totally busted.
And with that said,
it's time to ride off into the sunset.
Okay, Adam. Let's try that again.
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