mythbusters
gregladen | December 11, 2016The White Rabbit Project is a Netflix project in which former MythBusters cast members Tory Belleci, Kari Byron, and Grant Imahara lead the viewer down various rabbit holes to explore a range of interesting and often strange things.
Before going any further in this review, I need to tell you two things. First, since this is a MythBusters related thing, and Mythbuster fans hate everything (especially myths, of course), you will probably see a lot of iffy reviews of this project. (This isn't just a MythBusters thing, it is a skeptics thing, a science-cheerleader thing, a geek thing. Just comes…
gregladen | September 3, 2016What I mean by that is that the real guts of the defunct TV show Mythbusters, Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara, are all over this new thing they are doing for Netflix!
Apparently this is a thing: Network TV shows almost all die a certain kind of death. They get more and more expensive to run every year because the expectation is that contracts become more and more valuable if the show is successful. So, eventually, the producers have to start killing off the staff. For a fictional TV show, this is done by ordering the writers to do in various characters. For a live action non…
carlyo | May 1, 2012The 2012 USA Science and Engineering Festival was a huge success this past weekend! More than 150,000 attendees battled the rain, traffic and crowds to celebrate science at the Convention Center!
The Festival would not have been possible without the hard work of our amazing volunteers! Over 750 volunteers dedicated their valuable time and showed incredible patience and enthusiasm during their shifts at the Festival. We are so grateful to ALL of you! We received wonderful feedback about our exhibitors and the amazing hands-on activities. Exhibitors made each person feel welcome and…
carlyo | April 27, 2012
The excitement is filling the air at Sneak Peek Friday today as we are gearing up for an amazing weekend! The Festival takes place Saturday from 10-6 and Sunday from 10-4 at the Walter E Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Please visit our "Plan Your Day" section on our website for important information regarding attending this FREE event. Those attending the Festival will be in for quite a treat with over 3,000 hands-on science and engineering activities and over 150 stage shows!
We have had some incredible events leading up to this weekend including our AT&T Sponsored…
carlyo | April 18, 2012
By Larry Bock
Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival
Similar to what the legendary Woodstock Festival did in gathering and celebrating the best and the brightest in the world of rock, the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival hosted by Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest celebration of science and engineering, has assembled some of the country's top innovators, celebrities and innovations in the realm of science and engineering to wow visitors at the Festival's upcoming Expo celebration.
The Expo -- set for April 28-29 at the Walter E. Washington Convention…
carlyo | April 4, 2012
We are excited to share the news that the 2012 USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo Map is out! The Festival will run from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturday, April 28th and from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Sunday, April 29th. We will also host free evening shows including the Stargazing Party and our Featured Author Panel Discussion both on Saturday night. The "Largest Celebration of Science" will take place this year in Washington, DC at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
The Festival is packed with entertainment for the whole family with 3,000 exhibits and over 150 stage shows…
carlyo | March 5, 2012
By Larry Bock
Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival
Encouraging and motivating kids early in science and engineering via exciting, hands-on interactions in discovery may be one of the most important steps to boosting their interest and performance in these fields.
But if you think this job falls to teachers alone, you're wrong. Parents can, and should, play an active and frequent role outside the classroom, especially in creative ways that keep children's innate sense of curiosity and exploration alive.
"Kids love the chance to try experiments, visit zoos, or watch…
carlyo | January 24, 2012Last week marked the 100 day countdown for the 2nd Annual USA Science and Engineering Festival! The Festival is scheduled for the weekend of April 28th & 29th at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. With less than 100 days to go we are gearing up for quite an extraordinary Expo this year!
The Expo is open to all ages and is free of charge! The Festival will feature over 2000 fun, interactive exhibits, more than 100 stage shows and 33 Author Presentations. Major Science Celebrities including Bill Nye the Science Guy and Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman from the…
carlyo | January 20, 2012
By Larry Bock
Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival
Ahh celebrities. From music and acting to the world of supermodeling and sports -- they are respected, admired, even worshiped, for their talent and magnetism. But herein lies the danger when these stars publicly espouse or endorse viewpoints and products in health and medicine without first thoroughly exploring the scientific validity of such claims.
Why danger? For segments of the population -- especially kids who are easily influenced by star role models -- celebrity statements and viewpoints (however misguided…
sb admin | October 21, 2010From the White House, to an Expo hosted by Lockheed Martin and put together by 850 leading science organizations, to over 50 satellite events across the nation, everyone from pre-schoolers to grandparents will be celebrating science this weekend at the USA Science and Engineering Expo --October 23-24, 2010.
The USA Science & Engineering Festival, which has developed and hosted most of these events, is expected to draw more than a million people to the first and biggest weekend of science the people of our nation have ever seen.
Welcome to the week of firsts for science education.…
rallain | June 10, 2010In the last episode of MythBusters, they wanted to see if a tornado could make some glass cut off a person's head. The first attempt was just to take some glass and through it at a simulated human neck. Clearly, this wasn't quite the same as a tornado.
So, here was their plan. If they want to simulate glass moving at 300 mph, they could get a bigger piece of glass and put it on a truck moving at 80 mph. The result would give a piece of glass with the same kinetic energy as a smaller piece moving at 300 mph. Their calculations look to be correct. However, the question is: would this make…
rallain | May 16, 2010I am excited. This Wednesday, the MythBusters are doing the giant water slide jump. Maybe you are new to the internet and you haven't seen this video. Here it is:
And since it is as old as the hills, of course I have already analyzed it - actually twice. First, the video is fake - but it is an excellent fake. Here is another site with details on how this was created.
What did I look at in my previous posts? Here is a summary.
The video is difficult to analyze because of perspective changes.
Even with these problems, nothing says it has to be fake. The vertical acceleration during the…
rallain | May 13, 2010Yes, I am going to talk about the MythBusters latest duct tape episode. A couple of pre-post points:
They call it "duct" tape. I call it duck tape. It doesn't work very well with ducts. Also, it is good for water proofing stuff - you know like a duck. For the rest of this post, I am calling it duck tape. (Wikipedia agrees there is some naming problem)
You know I love the MythBusters - right? I hope you don't think I sit around waiting for them to make a mistake so I can pounce on them (I save that for ESPN Sport Science). In this case, they just made a small mistake. A mistake that…
rallain | May 8, 2010I have one more comment about the previous MythBusters episode where they compared two cars crashing into each other at 50 mph vs. one car crashing into a wall at 100 mph. At the end of the episode, Jamie reflected on the experiment. He said something like (regarding how he incorrectly thought one car at 100 mph was the same as 2 at 50 mph):
"....that was a mistake. You know what? I am ok with that. That is how you learn stuff"
What a great attitude. I think this is something many students miss out on. Which is better, taking a class where you know everything and don't even need to…
rallain | May 6, 2010I already mentioned the MythBusters' crashing two cars episode where they correctly doubled the speed of a pendulum type object. Overall, this was a very visual (although expensive) demo. There was one part that left a sour taste in my mouth - the final explanation from the narrator. First, they showed this.
And then they had an explanation that went something very similar to to this (after restating what the sign above said)
"Although the two-car crash doubles the speed, the energy the crash is transferred to twice the mass resulting in a crash that looks like just one car hitting a wall…
rallain | May 6, 2010In the last episode of MythBusters, Adam and Jamie wanted to test something that Jamie had said earlier:
"Two cars crashing head on at 50 mph is the same as one car crashing into a wall at 100 mph"
Jamie was wrong, but that is not what I am going to talk about. Instead, I am going to talk about Adam's small scale test of this situation. Really, it was a nice set up. Basically, he wanted to collide something into a wall at one speed and then double that speed. Then he was going to collide two things together at the lower speed. He had a cool way of measuring the collision. He put a piece…
rallain | April 9, 2010So, I complained about MythBuster's explanation of relative velocity. How would I explain this? I would start by saying that velocity is relative. Here is the definition for velocity:
I put the "avg" in there because it is more true. If the acceleration is zero, I could drop this. For the rest of this post, I am going to assume zero acceleration. Ok. But what is the r vector? It is simply a vector from the origin to the object. Here is a picture.
Simple, right? And so the velocity tells how this vector r changes. But wait. Who says that I used the correct origin? How do you…
rallain | April 8, 2010In the last episode of MythBusters, they tried to reproduce the following experiment. Suppose you are driving in a car at 60 mph and you shoot a ball backwards at 60 mph (with respect to the car). Will the ball just drop (with respect to the ground)? Actually, it is a cool demo - I saw some Japanese show did this a while ago.
So, what is the problem? The problem is with the MythBusters' use of their terms to explain this thing. Let me look at a couple of the things they said to explain this (surprisingly, they described it several different ways). This first one is my favorite.
Bad…
rallain | January 12, 2010In a MythBusters episode some time ago, Adam and Jamie jumped off a building. There was some cool stuff in this, but I want to focus on the acceleration data they collected. Before jumping into a pit of foam, they first wanted to test the set up by dropping a dummy into it and measuring the accelerations. Lucky for me, they showed a quick screen shot of their data. Note: I previously posted the calculations for jumping and stopping off of a building.
For me, I see this and think - numerical integration. Before that, let me look at the physics. Here is a diagram of someone jumping off a…
grrlscientist | January 4, 2010tags: Polishing a Turd to a High Gloss, silly, funny, mythbusters, poo, technology, streaming video
Is it possible to polish a turd to a high gloss? Well, it depends upon how you define "high gloss" but these two men had an unambiguous standard for measuring "high gloss units" and they set out to find out if it is possible to accomplish this.