On this episode of MythBusters...
We expected something and something happened.
...Adam and Jamie have a movie myth they were "Bourne" for.
Can a gas leak and a magazine in a toaster...
I feel a little bit it's not going to be very happy in here.
...make a room go kaboom?
I love running for safety.
Then...
I'm starting to get a little nervous.
...Carrie, Grant and Tory tackle the tall tale of blue ice.
That is incredible!
Can the contents of an airplane's toilet really fall from the sky...
That thing is falling.
...in one frozen chunk?
This is an awesome day.
Who are the MythBusters?
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.
Am I really that ugly?
Between them, more than 30 years of special effects experience.
Joining them, Grant Imahara...
My God!
...Kari Byron...
I'm gonna wreck this car.
...and Tory Belleci.
We survived.
They don't just tell the myths,
they put them to the test.
MythBusters 9x02 - Blue Ice Original air date April 13, 2011
Corrected by atrn97g www.addic7ed.com
Have you seen the "Bourne's Supremacy"?
I love that movie.
I love the whole Bourne trilogy.
Have you got a myth from "Supremacy" we can test?
There is a scene where Bourne broke into an apartment
and he knows the bad guys are coming
so he has to make an escape.
What he does was he breaks the gas line
where it goes into the stove to let the gas flow.
He grabs a magazine, shoves it into the toaster,
sets the toaster on and 20 seconds later
when the magazine sets on fire the whole apartment blows up.
So Bourne makes his escape.
That's like perfect for us to test.
I think I have a pretty good idea where we should start.
OK, but before you tell me
I actually want to demonstrate how much I love the Bourne movies.
You know I collect movie props.
This is actually Jason Bourne's red bag
from the "Bourne's Identity" in a waste basket from the Swiss Bank,
not only that, it's actually full of all of the props
that were actually in that bag in the film.
All these trinkets and even the stunt pistol.
It's made of rubber.
Isn't that cool?
We need to find out whether a magazine would actually
set on fire when it's put in a toaster.
OK.
There are three ingredients to this Bourne-style get-away,
the toaster, the magazine and the natural gas.
And first in the mix are one and two.
How long does it take to toast a magazine?
- You ready? - I'm ready.
The guys start the clock
using a magazine like the one in the movie,
and the toaster rigged to stay "on".
You know in the movie it was already on fire at this point.
As it turns out, toasting a magazine takes a
little longer than the 20 seconds of the film.
Three minutes over schedule.
I think we're really close.
In fact it takes over 12 minutes before they get ignition.
Hey! We got fire. Ta-da!
Remember kids, we're professionals.
So reality's 12 minutes versus
the movie's 25-some-odd seconds.
Hey! We got fire.
What do you think?
Well, what I think is that this magazine is a worst case scenario,
because... look how thick those pages are.
And magazines are all different shapes and sizes.
So, you think we should try a whole bunch of different kinds of magazines
and see if they have different rates at which they catch on fire.
Exactly.
I love it. Let's do it.
Lots of toasters now.
It's clear the real world magazine
doesn't light up like its movie counterpart.
So now the MythBusters
are on the trail of a best case scenario.
In order to cover our basis here and working off the theory that
different type of magazines composed of different kinds of paper
are going to catch alight at different rates,
we're about to put a half dozen of them to the test.
Everything from our original magazine
to something much harder to catch on fire,
comic book, something that would probably catch on fire in like seconds.
We're gonna put one in each of these toasters,
start this timer and log how long each of them takes to catch alight.
What could be more fun?
Well, with the six magazines in place,
let the char grilling challenge commence.
We're experimentally doing something that should just never ever be done.
I like that.
- Flame. - Number three, 1 minute, 40 seconds.
This time around it seems the
contenders are a little quicker to toast.
2'20".
Yep.
Here we go.
Number 4, 3 minutes, 15 seconds.
Ow! Number 1, 3 minutes, 20 seconds.
Let's listen for that sound.
There we go.
There it is.
Four minutes, 36 seconds.
And finally bringing up the rear...
There it is.
...is the original magazine at 12 minutes.
As we suspected, it does make a difference
what kind of magazine is stuck in the toaster.
Best case scenario is something
that amounts common newsprint,
but even that took about three times
as long as what it did in the movie.
Interesting.
So it's clear that even with the best case scenario magazine,
toaster ignition takes a lot longer
than the 20 seconds it took Bourne.
And now to test the next ingredient of this explosive combination,
the methane.
Now, methane, here, is a natural gas,
and it's most of what comes out of your stove, at home, to cook with.
It is a flammable gas,
but it's not flammable on its own, it actually requires a certain
amount of oxygen out of the air in order to burn.
How much oxygen?
Well, that actually turns out to be a very particular relationship.
The relationship of oxygen to flammable gas is called stoichiometry.
To create fire, it takes heat, fuel and oxygen,
and when it comes to flammable gases,
the amount of fuel to oxygen is a complex relationship called stoichiometry.
Too much fuel, or too little, and there will be nothing close to a flame.
But get the perfect mixture and you'd get an explosion.
Now, according to the movie, it took Bourne 20 seconds to get that explosive
ratio of air to gas just right.
So, now the MythBusters
are dialing in to find out exactly what it is.
We know that if we're gonna get methane to burn,
we need a ratio of between 6% and 17% fuel to air.
The ideal range is about 9% methane and the rest air.
What we don't know is what that actually means.
Does that mean if we are a little off we get sort of a whoof,
but if we get right at the 9%,
we are getting a real strong bang?
Before we go full scale, we wanna really know what we're doing.
So, what we've done is make a ten inch by ten inch by ten inch cubic box,
and that will allow us to really easily dial in
on these ratios to see what it means.
And while Jamie is boxing,
Adam has the ratios in the bag.
One of the ratios I want to
play with is 9% flammable gas to air.
This bag holds 9% of the volume of this chamber,
I will fill it with gas.
I will then hook it up to the chamber,
open up both of the valves,
press the gas into the chamber.
I'll be displacing air that
comes out of this little hole right here.
Seal it up, walk away,
ignite it with a neon transformer and see what happens.
Adam's bags will help the guys
zone in on exactly what ratio of methane to air is explosive.
And speaking of methane...
So that we can ignite this thing safely
we're gonna remotely turn on this neon transformer
that will create a high voltage spark
inside the methane chamber.
And here, we'll be able to vary the methane concentrations,
ignite it, and see what we get.
First up,
a test at the very bottom of the stoichiometric zone.
6 percent.
We're good.
Okay.
6%.
In three, two, one.
We expected something and something happened.
Our frangible box separated just as we hoped it would and it's actually
kind of a little bit of a pop.
I was expecting a little more from an explosion,
and I'm interested to see if our optimal stoichiometric ratio gives us that.
Me, too.
Well, let's set it up.
Ok.
6% is explosive,
but what if Bourne achieved the optimal ratio of 9% methane to air?
9% in three, two, one.
Well, that was more energetic.
9% was definitely more energetic,
but for Adam, the surprising thing is that at both ratios
they scored the mythical explosion
they were looking for.
This is awesome.
We think that 6% means we'll see a small pop, and 9%
means we will see a big pop.
In this case, that's not the case.
And that actually makes it look better for this myth.
If we're getting a pop at the very lowest end of the stoichiometric range,
that's making Bourne's... use of this as a diversion technique
more feasible.
I'm not saying it's probable, but it's making it look more feasible.
Later, the MythBusters build a house...
It ain't pretty, but it's home.
...but can the myth bring it down?
And Carrie takes to the skies on the tale of blue ice.
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You're looking excited.
That's because we have a myth
that's spectacular, gross, and challenging, all wrapped up into one.
What's the story?
It's the one with the pilot jettisons the contents of an airplane toilet,
which promptly freezes at altitude
and turns into a deadly projectile.
Ah, you're talking about the myth of blue ice?
Exactly.
When mysterious substances of suspect origin fall from the sky,
urban myths are sure to follow.
And the conspiracy theory that has the message boards in a spin
is the infamous blue ice.
And here is how it happens.
On a bright sunny day, a passing
pilot supposedly jettisons the contents of the toilet's tank,
and apparently at high altitudes the subzero temperatures
freeze the liquid into a damaging and disgusting missile.
All right, we know a little bit about airplane toilets
because we did a myth on them.
We know for fact you can't get sucked into them if you're sitting down.
And we know the reason why it's blue
is because they use that chemical to cover the smell.
But what we don't know is
what happens to the waste.
Yeah, can you actually eject the contents in mid-air?
I guess this is where we start.
So, first up, Carrie hits Stockton airport
to find out when and how
a pilot dumps his... waste.
You're an airplane technician.
What do you think of our old blue ice myth?
Well, Carrie, as you can see from this cockpit,
there are thousands of buttons and switches
of which none are labeled "Dump the toilet".
Which is bad news for the myth,
but if the pilot can't jettison the john mid flight,
is there any way the liquid blue waste can escape?
Failure of components.
So there could be a mechanical problem
that causes the blue ice instead of the pilot?
Yes. Like with most systems on an airplane,
there are redundancies and with the lav, it's no different.
Yeap, there are three fail safes
that have to be breached in order for the liquid to leave.
The dump valve on the holding tank
and two water tight seals leading to the exterior of the fuselage.
If all three of those components fail, that's a problem.
It's not likely.
Is it possible?
Absolutely.
Multiple components that fail leading to a problem.
This myth is looking good.
All right, Kari. So how did it go?
Well, part of this myth isn't looking good.
There's no way for the pilot
to jettison the contents of the toilet.
True. But that doesn't rule out ice falling off the plane.
That's right. There are still two scenarios that could happen.
There could be a major malfunction
that leads to either all of the contents coming out at once
freezing and falling to Earth,
or you could get a nice slow leak that created an ice ball.
Now, the question is
how are we going to test them?
Actually we've been talking to our friends at NASA
and they've agreed to let us use their Icing Research Tunnel
which can simultaneously duplicate temperatures of minus 20 degrees
and wind speeds up to 250 knots.
That is the perfect conditions for high altitude.
Well, it sounds like before we leave
we're gonna have to build a leaky airplane toilet.
Now, this myth is about airplanes, but in order to test it
we don't need to build a full airplane.
All we need to do is make something
that has similar aerodynamic properties.
So this is our design.
And this will have low drag and
a place to leak which are the most important things.
So, for their tests at NASA,
Kari builds a waste system
designed to fail in two ways:
either with a slow leak, or a catastrophic dump.
Now, according to NASA's specs,
it had to be out of aluminum,
'cause that's what our planes are made of,
and we were not allowed to weld anything,
'cause they didn't want anything breaking apart inside the wind tunnel,
'cause there was gonna be so much pressure created by the wind.
So, we had to drill, and rivet, over six hundred rivets,
to put our airplane together.
And what we have right here is our valve.
This is where we're gonna have hooked up to a water tank
and we're gonna be doing two tests.
One where we dump the water completely, and then one
where there's a slow leak, to find out: can you grow
a chunk of ice on the side of a plane?
Jason Bourne knows how to make an explosive exit.
But could a magazine in a toaster
really toast a gas filled apartment?
After getting to know their enemy in the shop,
the guys are ready to go full scale.
If we're going to replicate
the natural gas explosion in this guy's apartment from the movie,
we're gonna need, clearly, two things.
Yeah, they said get your own show,
it'll open all sorts of doors.
One is methane natural gas which is easy to get
and two is the guy's apartment
which we don't actually have.
So, we've come out to the bomb range
where they got plenty of room,
and in a few hours we're gonna build this guy's apartment.
Not to code,
we just need it to be a gas containment device
that is in the shape of the apartment.
But it will be properly appointed, I'm sure.
So to find out if you really can get a room to kaboom with just gas,
a magazine and a toaster,
they'll precisely replicate the circumstances
of the movie, starting with the apartment dimensions.
16 by 32 feet.
Once the roof has been successfully raised,
it's time for the resident
exterior decorator to take over.
After you blow enough things up,
you start to look for esthetic finesse in the explosion.
I'll give you an example: first hot water heater.
We painted that little house red.
Look at that! Isn't that beautiful?
So we're gonna give the same treatment to this thing.
We're gonna paint the outside in lovely orange,
so that when it finally blows up,
the high speed shot will be especially gorgeous.
Well, it certainly will be explosively tangerine.
There.
I wouldn't call it livable,
but I'd call it blow up-able.
It is blow up-able.
And the final finishing touches are to furnish it before
they step on the gas.
Excellent.
It's got a nice view here.
You know? The valley out the window there.
The house may be complete,
but soon it will be filled with highly flammable gas.
And, in the event they don't get an ignition, Adam has created this.
What I got here is an exhaust system,
so that I can evacuate the gas from this room.
Because one of the most dangerous things
that could happen to us in this experiment is nothing.
We found this on "cell phone destroys gas station",
we had a room full of gasoline fumes,
and we didn't get it to ignite,
and nobody wants to approach a room full of fumes.
Hello explosion, hello?
So, if nothing happens I've got a switch I can turn that will start these fans all up
and get all the gas out of this room, so it's safe to do a reset.
I think that's the last piece of the puzzle.
I will get to a safe location.
And that's not the only safety precaution
they're taking with this test.
This is our methane outlet, which has tin sill on it,
which we'll be able to see moving
if gas is coming through here on our remote camera.
This is our tank of methane.
We have a regulator, and a flow meter attached to it.
This rig is set up to give us the same kind of input of gas
into our house as you would normally have
in a domestic gas line going into an apartment.
Now this valve here I have with a line attached to it
that goes to our bunker.
I'm gonna pull on this line if there is anything
that bothers me about this setting.
Because, you know, it's gas.
It's flammable.
If there's something we don't like
we wanna be able to shut it off.
And from this distance I can safely pull the plug,
if there's something I don't like.
The list of things Jamie doesn't like may be a long one,
but if the explosion of the movie is anything to go by,
putting this myth to the test could be very dangerous.
Shall we get started?
Yeah.
After you.
Next up, it's full speed ahead.
All stations reporting with the go / no go.
But will the blue ice myth be blown away?
Kari, Grant, and Tori
are tackling the infamous tall tale of blue ice.
Can a leaking toilet midair lead
to a deadly chunk of ice down there?
To find out for sure,
Tori and Grant touch down in nerd Nirvana.
All stations reporting with a go / no go.
Roger. Prepare to release the geek.
Because this place has a heap of hard core hardware.
This massive fan is the heart of NASA's icing tunnel.
It's powered by a 5,000 horsepower
direct drive electric motor.
It has 12 individual custom fan blades
for a diameter of 25 feet.
It's capable of generating wind speeds over 300 knots.
And that's only half the equation.
This is the other half of the equation.
The icing tunnel itself.
The wind comes rushing through here
refrigerated to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Those are the spectacular specs.
And now, to put them to good use.
The way we're gonna test this
is we're gonna stick our section of fuselage
into their wind tunnel...
Does this mean I'm the R2D2?
Oh, boy.
...and recreate the same wind speeds and temperatures
that you would find at altitude.
Then, we're gonna create a leak inside the valve,
let it sit there and see if those conditions would cause
that blue liquid to form into a chunk of ice.
Remember, there are two leaky valve scenarios the team will test,
and first up is the catastrophic dump.
We have our model in position. We're ready to go.
All right. Fire it up.
All right, let's go, fire it up.
Maximum warp.
Sorry, I just made that really...
We're trying to make science cool, dude.
There we go.
And for cool science, let's make it so.
The fan winds up, whipping up a 290 mile an hour wind speed.
Then the heat exchanger drops the air temperature
to a high altitude minus 20 degrees celsius.
Our model is holding together perfectly.
Then they are ready to pull the pin on the catastrophic failure test.
Will the blue liquid instantly freeze into a chunk of blue ice?
So, this is full tank dump.
In three, two, one, go!
- Wow! Wha, ha, ha ha! - On my God!
Look at how fast is going out.
That is awesome.
As soon as the liquid exits
the aircraft, it's ripped away by the sheering force of the wind.
And despite the bitterly cold air temperatures,
it's unable to form the mythical slice of ice.
Behind me are the results of our complete release test
where we dump the entire contents of the waste tank.
Now, it didn't atomize all the way,
because you can see some of it formed on the surface here,
but it also did not form one big chunk that could fall on someone.
Yeap, although most of the blue waste was vaporized on contact with the wind,
some did form a thin layer,
just not enough for a blue icicle.
I mean, it's incredible.
We got an actual layer of ice, and pretty quickly.
All right, well let's try again, and this time have the slow leak.
All right, let's see if that gives us a big chunk of ice.
Once again the NASA techs simulate the same high altitude conditions
and then sabotage the plumbing for the drip test.
And once the leak is leaking...
Look how quick the ice is building up.
...the results are astonishing as they are immediate.
Hey, this is looking great, and it's blue.
That is fantastic.
It hasn't even been two minutes yet.
Oh, my gosh! That is incredible.
The liquid moving over the surface of the aircraft
is protected from the extreme wind speeds
by what's called a boundary layer.
What that means is that not all the air
traveling over the airplane goes at the same rate.
Over certain areas, it actually travels a lot slower.
Which creates a protective cushion
where ice crystals can form.
This thing is like this big.
I'd call that baseball size right there.
If that whole thing broke off,
that would be just like the myth.
The guys are blown away,
unlike the ice.
Question is, how big can it get, and will it fall off?
I just can't believe how big it's getting.
20 minutes later, with the diameter around ten inches,
the blue icicle seems to have reached a size plateau.
It's approaching soccer ball size.
And with plenty of water still in the tank,
that's not the limiting factor,
but Grant thinks he knows what is.
Now, an interesting thing to note here
is that as the ice is getting thicker
and pushing away from the skin,
it's actually pushing its way out of the boundary layer.
Once it exits the boundary layer,
it actually hits the faster moving air and... just goes away.
It doesn’t allow it to freeze up.
Which may be a reason why the ice doesn't get really really big.
Let's see if we can get it to fall off.
Let's pretend like it's at its final descent, temperatures are rising,
maybe we can get it to break off
and find out exactly what happens when it does.
Perfect.
All right. Start warming it up.
It's a good theory.
Because as the aircraft descends and the air temperature warms...
Oh, we're getting bigger chunks breaking off!
...surely it's only a matter of time before
the blue ice barnacle becomes a blue ice missile.
Minus 7 degrees.
And, as it turns out,
when the wind tunnel conditions match those
of an altitude of 12,000 feet...
...we have lift off.
That thing blew off in one giant chunk.
That was perfect.
This myth is starting to look very, very believable.
Yeah, but you know what the next step is?
What happens to the ice after it falls off.
I can't believe it.
Coming up later...
&*^#$ we're burning this building down.
Here is the story we're testing.
Jason Bourne, knowing that the bad guys are coming,
wanting to buy himself a little extra time for the chase,
opens up the gas line of the house he's in,
walks over to a toaster, grabs a magazine
and sticks it in that toaster
and sets it as a remote fuse, and then he exits the house.
30 seconds later, a massive explosion
gives him the lead time he's looking for.
Now, is that remotely plausible?
Well, those are the circumstances we've got set up in this house right here
and that's gonna be our first test.
In other words, this test will be exactly like the movie,
but with one exception.
According to our testing, it actually takes about two minutes
for the toaster to set the magazine on fire.
So that means that we've had about four times the amount of gas
going into the room,
in that two minutes, as what Bourne had, for the whole house to blow up.
Now, that two minutes, in our case, is only allowing about
seven cubic feet of methane to go into the house,
and it's rising towards the roof.
Meanwhile, our source of ignition is about 15 feet away.
I don't expect to see any kind of explosion at all.
And that's down to stoichiometry.
In theory, for a room this size,
seven cubic feet of methane will be
too low a concentration to ignite.
All right. I'm ready.
Okay, Adam. Go ahead and turn on the gas.
Copy that.
But this is MythBusters,
and it's not a fact until you test it.
It's pretty eerie, watching flammable gas
go into a room in which we've started a fire.
Or are about to.
Oh, I see some fire.
Fire. Great.
All right.
The magazine may finally be on fire,
but the methane is not igniting.
Oh man. That toaster is totally burning.
And even after a further 60 seconds
there's still no hint of a Hollywood blast.
Gas is off.
Starting up the fans to evacuate the room.
That was cool.
That was very cool. I was a little... I was a little tense.
Flammable gas, a fire, no boom.
No boom.
So it's time to send in the MythBusters fire brigade.
Oh, yeah.
There's your problem.
So, we've replicated all the circumstances for Bourne's
evasion technique, and it totally didn't work.
I think that's a pretty clean busting of the myth.
Yeah, it's busted.
- But, you know, I was thinking... - Yeah?
...if we put something in that room that burned for longer,
eventually something's gonna happen.
You mean, eventually the gas and the air will reach a mixture
whereby we will get some kind of reaction?
Yeah.
I love it. I think that should be the next test.
Although the exact circumstances of the movie
won't get the bad guys off your tail,
the question is, could a little more gas and a longer fuse
get the big Bourne boom?
We know from our small scale testing in our research
that it takes a minimum 6% fuel to air mix
for methane and air to support ignition.
The way we've got it planned out, if we take the contents of this methane tank
and put it in our test room,
we'll have the right fuel-air mix.
How we're gonna get a long burning open flame, well
we're throwing out the toaster and the magazine,
and we're going with a supermarket fireplace log.
Light this puppy on fire, it will burn for at least an hour.
This is for real.
The log will burn
while the gas builds to the 6% ratio.
That's it.
But, when it hits the stoichiometric zone,
will they get the bad guy repelling detonation of the movie?
Back in the safety of the bunker,
at first things go just as planned.
Did you leave a log burning on the kitchen table?
Oh, crap, I did.
But, in a dramatic turn of events, after four minutes...
Oh, you know what's happening?
The gas is actually making the whole room catch on fire.
...things suddenly get incendiary...
I see smoke on the...
$%#^#, we're burning this building down.
...and out of control.
There we go. We had a blow up.
That's it.
Well, I don't know if we're putting this building out.
Ah, we should get up there with the hose.
All right. Let's turn off the gas.
Gas is off.
The MythBusters initiate the safety protocols
and cautiously approach their apartment inferno.
Don't go in.
I'm not seeing any flame.
There's the hole we blew.
It may not have been the blast of the movie...
It's a horror show in there.
...but the methane sure made a mess of the apartment.
So all of a sudden, a fire is going up and reaching the ceiling,
I could see smoke coming out at the top,
and then the mixture hit the bottom of the stoichiometric range
and we saw this hrrummm! across the whole room.
I've seen broken glass on a bunch of windows,
on the back double doors,
it's clear that we got a significant reaction,
but nothing close to what we saw in the movie.
Nothing close to a kaboom,
but certainly enough of a conflagration
to distract the bad guys.
It's really clear from all the melted plastic in there,
and even our exhaust fans melted,
it got super-crazy hot in there very quickly.
I mean just the whole room was absolutely...
I didn't even know what temperature it could be at,
but it was really hot.
But you know we're not gonna leave it there.
No, no.
Next...
I think Kari is gonna scream her head off.
She may potentially pee her suit.
But I think that block of ice
is gonna land on the ground in one big chunk.
So here is where we're at.
We've looked into airline toilets
and found that they can leak through an external valve.
Is it possible? Absolutely.
We've made our own fuselage,
went to NASA's wind tunnel
and found that you could actually form a giant chunk of ice
which then fell off the airplane.
Now, what we're going to test
is what happens to that ice after it falls.
What we need to see for this myth to be confirmed
is for that ice to fall through the air as one giant chunk,
and hit the ground as one piece with deadly force.
This is the final piece of the blue ice puzzle.
While falling from 12,000 feet,
at a terminal velocity of 160 miles per hour,
will the ice stay in one piece,
or will wind erosion and warming temperatures
cause it to break up into a harmless blue rain?
To track that, the team has a spectacular plan of action.
We have our airplane.
We are gonna load it up with a large chunk of ice,
take it up to altitude and then throw it out.
Now, we're gonna have a few sky divers
jump out with the ice to track.
Kari is gonna be one of those sky divers.
Yeap, and sky diving team leader Nick
also has the crucial job of timing the drop.
Because, if the myth is true,
and the blue ice falls in one chunk,
missing the mark could be deadly.
Let's hope they can see that.
Okay, so here's the plan.
Kari and our expert Nick will go in the plane with the ice.
They're gonna go up,
and based on prevailing conditions and Nick's calculations,
they'll know when to release the ice,
at an altitude that they deem safe.
Nick will jump out, and so will Kari, following the ice down.
You'll be fine.
I'm gonna double check this.
Meanwhile, Tori and I will be on the ground, tracking
the ice in the air and looking for the impact zone.
And as for the blue ice, well, earlier,
Kari prepared a similar size block
to the test at NASA.
It's approximately the diameter of a basketball,
eye catching and easily retrievable.
To make sure that we can watch this ice fall,
I've done something a little different.
I've made it red instead of blue,
so that it's going to stand out on the blue sky.
I've added some really long streamers
so that we can track it,
and I'm going to put a GPS on it.
Now for this myth to be confirmed,
we need to see that block of ice drop from altitude,
and get to the Earth in one solid chunk.
Good luck.
- Good luck you guys. - Thank you!
What I think is gonna happen?
I think Kari is gonna scream her head off,
she may potentially pee her suit.
But I think that block of ice
is gonna land on the ground in one big chunk.
Okay. Here is the package.
Good luck.
And despite all of their precautions,
they will need some luck.
Their goal is to drop the ice
and Kari from 12,000 feet...
Here we go, Kari.
...the height at which Grant and Tori
saw the ice release from the fuselage at NASA.
OK. Now I'm starting to get a little nervous.
But will it remain intact?
Traveling with an energy of 392,000 joules,
its impact will certainly be deadly.
However, if it melts in the rising temperatures,
it'll be rendered harmless.
After the break, the MythBusters touch down for blue ice.
Nice!
And can Adam and Jamie get a big Bourne boom?
At 12,000 feet, Kari and her free-falling friends
are preparing to deploy their blue ice cargo.
All I gotta do is look at the ice. One job!
But will it break up on descent,
or have the devastating impact internet reports claim?
Ah boy, this is it.
If the team misjudged the timing of the drop by even a second,
a 35 pound projectile, traveling at 160 miles per hour
could crash through a neighboring house.
But that's only if the ice actually stays in one chunk.
If it breaks up, the only thing busted will be the myth.
I got them. They are approaching the drop zone.
So, this is it.
It's time to drop out and jump off for science.
Okay. The ice is away.
So are they.
In a stunning piece of free-fall camera work,
Nick manages to capture the ice as it plummets.
- Look how fast it's falling. - That thing is hauling!
And Kari can see that it's so far, so good.
With the ice already at a balmy 5,000 feet,
it's still completely intact.
Look, it's staying in one chunk.
Dude, that's crazy.
But will it stay that way as they enter the final few thousand feet of descent?
I see the ice right there,
and is that... is that near the target?
That's great.
Did you see the size of that impact?
And did you see it stayed in one chunk?
Wow, that's maybe only 150 feet from the drop zone.
Let's go meet Kari, and we'll go find it.
All right, let's go get it.
Hi, Tory. Hi Grant.
Here she comes.
She's coming in hot.
- You made it. - Wow!
Nice.
What a ride and what a test.
And no wonder Kari's adrenalin is off the charts.
It's a good job.
Let's go check out the ice!
- Did you see it? - Yeah, yeah.
Everything went according to plan.
For the majority of its decent,
there was visual contact confirming that the ice retained its shape and mass.
And then, thanks to Kari's visual aids,
and Nick's awesome aim,
finding the impact site is a breeze.
There is a streamer.
Is it intact?
It was a chunk before it hit the ground.
And that is still a chunk of ice.
Check it out. It dug itself into the ground!
Wow. That is a serious impact.
Yeap, and it may have melted slightly in the time it took to find it,
but the crater created is a clear testament to its destructive power.
This is the size of the block of ice
that we threw out of our plane, which is very similar
to the size of the chunk of ice that
we formed in the wind tunnel at NASA that fell off.
That block of ice reached terminal velocity very quickly,
it left a sizable impact crater area,
what's more, it stayed pretty much intact
all the way down to impact.
Okay, a pilot can't release all of the toilet water at once,
so that part's busted,
but I think the phenomena is confirmed.
I mean, it made it all the way to the ground.
Totally confirmed.
I agree 100%.
Confirmed. But three mechanical failures
leading to blue ice falling on
your house is in reality incredibly unlikely.
I'm gonna be looking up for blue ice to fall on my head now, right?
Dude, I'm gonna get blue ice insurance.
- I... I know a guy. - Yeah?
Let me know,
I'll give you his number.
At the MythBuster's mansion,
they've been renovating, Bourne style.
No boom!
However, the myth, as it appears in the movie, is busted.
But it aren't over until the man
in the beret gets a big Bourne boom.
So, next, they are upping the ante with more gas.
Now, when we empty this tank into that house
that means we will have just over 9% methane to air in there,
and that happens to be the butter zone for an explosion.
The guys know from small scale that 9% netted them
the most energetic boom. But this is large scale.
Will this test rip apart the apartment Bourne style?
Before they blow it up, they need to spruce it up.
We swapped out all the windows and doors.
All these holes that got warped and open,
we're gonna actually lay in a bunch of stripping.
We probably tripled the cohesive strength of this building,
and that ought to give us just the boom we're looking for.
Jamie is known for how he handles these fans.
This time around I'm running the methane into the house
through these holes that I've attached to the floor,
and I've drilled a lot of little holes in the hose, so that
we'll get these jets of gas coming out
that will mix with the air
that is being pushed across with these fans.
Kind of like a blender.
Just mix the air all along.
Yeah.
This squirreling mass of air I'm hoping will distribute
this fuel air mix throughout the room
and hopefully that will make the difference
between a "poof" and a "bang".
Jamie's fantastic method will circulate
the methane throughout the apartment.
And with the dangerous ratio of 9% gas to air,
they'll need something more sophisticated for ignition.
We brought back out the neon transformer from the small scale testing,
with the addition of a little piece of paper here.
Go ahead and plug it in.
We're gonna be able to set a fire exactly
when we want to set a fire.
Exactly when they achieve the goldilocks ratio of 9% methane to air.
Fans are rolling.
That's the last piece of the puzzle.
Shall we get to a safe place and go boom?
- Yeah. - Awesome.
- Let's turn on the gas. - Okie-dokie.
All right. We got about five minutes.
Let's get to the bunker.
Fire in the hole.
Hopefully.
Actually, I think they need a new signal for us, it'll be like...
Fire in the hole!... hopefully.
Hopefully is right.
The precise stoichiometric ratio should be
enough to detonate their apartment.
So our fire starters take cover
as the methane fills the room.
Oh, we're down below 20 cubic feet per minute,
and we're about 100 psi,
so I'm thinking we should go whenever you are ready.
With the room filled with 9% methane,
will this finally yield the Hollywood blow out?
All right, here we go.
Ideal gas-air mixture, Bourne explosion
in three, two, one.
That is awesome.
- We blew out the whole front. - Yeah.
We couldn't have done that if we planned.
That was perfect.
And there you have it.
One magnificent made to order apartment explosion.
But unlike the movie detonation,
this one is polite enough to put itself out.
Well, almost.
I hope this is a cautionary tale
what happens when you mix MythBusters with science.
Ok, here is the thing.
While that was fairly exciting,
I mean we blew out the wall,
I wanna point out that we didn't break any glass,
there was no bang,
it was a whoosh.
And that's something entirely different than what we saw in the movie.
The fact that this was an ideally mixed mixture with fans
and everything in the exact quantity
and that's the best we could do,
kind of tells you
what the real deal is, it's not what the movie showed.
Clearly we were "Bourne" for this job.
Yeah. But it's kind of too bad.
That was a nice view in that house.
Corrected by atrn97g www.addic7ed.com
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