10/4/2008 - Adam & Jamie draw a MONA LISA in 80 milliseconds!

Two weeks from today, the Mythbusters will be in town for their campus tour show and I have my ticket. Everybody who watches their show will tell you that if they could have any other job in the world, it would be their job. Not only do they blow things up without remorse, but they get to play with and invent the coolest gadgets. I can only hope the show is as exciting as this demonstration at an NVIDIA conference:

4/15/2008 - Mythbusters Elephant vs Mouse

By the name alone, the Mythbusters are all about busting myths... but there are those times that myths are actually confirmed (or deemed plausible). One of the plausible myths that astounded me was the myth of elephants being afraid of mice. You see this myth presented all the time in the old cartoons. I'm pretty sure I saw this in a Tom & Jerry episode myself. Never did I imagine that it would be scientifically proven true by the Mythbusters!



I guess it wouldn't be of much use to test if women are really afraid of mice too.

12/5/2007 - Australian Toilet Flushing - TRUTH EXPOSED!

I was wondering when there would be imitators to the Mythbusters. Sure, not everybody has access to explosives like they do, but there are some simple myths out there that people can try to bust or confirm. One such myth is the Coriolis effect where water swirls down a drain according to which hemisphere of the Earth you're in. This urban legend has been perpetuated by such shows as The Simpsons and the X-Files. So how could you test this myth? Well, travel to a country in the Southern Hemisphere of course! And that's what these two "toilet Mythbusters" did. They just happened to be in Australia and filmed their experiment. So is the myth busted or confirmed? You decide:

5/10/2007 - Banned Mythbusters Segments (2 videos)

One of the coolest Mythbusters episodes was the one with "Facts about Flatulence". I admit it, I laugh at toilet jokes, so this episode kept me rolling on the floor. You'd have to admit it too, the idea of a grown man trying to collect a sample of his own "gas" with a flatulence containment unit while laying in a bathtub is pretty funny. Adam Savage did this to test the myth that you can die from your own fumes (this myth was false, by the way).

Despite being on cable, they sort of held back on what they could do on the show. For example, they purposely did not use the "fart" word. Instead, they used the scientific term "flatus". As it turns out, the Discovery Channel banned them from airing two more flatus myths: Pretty Girls Don't Pass Gas, and Farts Can Be Lit. I only found out about these banned segments through YouTube, of course. These were shown at MIT when the Mythbusters visited the campus:





Where can I get one of those Flatus Ignition Seats?

5/4/2007 - mythbusters

I like my job, but I'd leave in a heartbeat if I were chosen as an intern for the Mythbusters. I know there is a lot of work behind the scenes, but what is onscreen looks like so much fun. What I also like about the show is that they generally follow the scientific method in their pursuit to bust popular myths.

One of the great appeals of the show is that they love to blow stuff up. From toilets to airplanes, they've blown up everything. Their most spectacular explosion, I believe, is when they blew up a cement truck to test the myth that you can clean the dry cement within the truck by using dynamite. The build-up to this explosion is great and I just love the sound of the explosion and Jamie's reaction to it.