"Do not try what you're about to see at home." "We consult with experts, we take every precaution, and we have years of experience in dangerous situations." "On this episode of "Mythbusters" we've got a classic collection of iconic conundrums." "I think we killed Captain Kirk!" "First, Jamie and Adam answer the age-old western question... can you light a match with a bullet?" "Punch in!" "Then, can you really safely dip your digits into searing hot molten metal?" "Is this the first Terminator you've ever cooked?" "And in a camp prank classic..." "Got my jammies." "I'm ready to go to work." "...will a wet hand lead to a bed-wetting?" "I don't think he's involuntarily urinating yet." "Then Grant, Jessi, and Tory..." "Holy crap!" "...tackle the nauseating tall tale of the earwax candle." "Let's burn it." "And finally..." "Yes, yes!" "...can you blow away a "Star Trek" baddie with a bamboo bazooka?" "Whoo-hoo!" "Who are the Mythbusters?" "Adam Savage..." "That is science." "...and Jamie Hyneman." "Things are gonna start to get a little crazy in here." "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." "Joining them..." "Kari Byron..." "Grant Imahara..." "It's lethal, people." "...Tory Belleci..." "Aah!" "Aah!" "...and featuring Jessi Combs." "That was awesome!" "They don't just tell the myths." "...Are you ready?" "... I'm ready." "They put them to the test." "So, you're trying to tell me you're nuts, right?" "No." "Simply that this coconut is the perfect symbol for what this episode is all about." "... How so?" "In a nutshell, we get a lot of myths that are too small to test." "...We call them mini-myths, right?" "... Yep." "Until now, those myths have been a tough nut to crack, but I think that we've nutted out a solution, and that is to throw as many mini-myths into a single episode as possible, specifically this episode." "...How many?" "... Six." "And I figured we'd begin with a classic... can you mail a coconut without any packaging?" "I thought we'd start out by putting a stamp and our address on it, see if it comes back to the shop by the end of the show." "And you know?" "There's one I've always wanted to try, which is... can you light a strike-anywhere match with a bullet?" "Well, let's get started." "It's a match made in mini-myth fan-request heaven." "A single testable question that could be answered in one glorious afternoon down at the gun range." "Through the magic of editing, allow me to demonstrate exactly what we hope to achieve today." "Okay, I'm ready." "Okay, don't move." "I won't." "That's what this story's all about." "Can a bullet light a match?" "Well, when you get right down to it, it's all about friction." "If this myth is true, we're going to be able to light this with this while this is traveling at nearly 800 feet per second." "The question is whether that bullet is able to cause enough friction when it grazes that match to actually ignite it without blowing the head of the match off." "I'll tell you..." "I'm not sure it's gonna work, and it's not about the precision." "That I feel that we can solve." "I think it's about the length of time this bullet will be in contact with this match, and whether that length of time is long enough to set the lighting chemical..." "Conflagration in motion." "So, the guys are ready." "Gun is going hot." "They have their .45-caliber gun with its large, slow moving slug, perfect for this experiment, aimed by a laser at the tip of the match." "Firing in three..." "Surely this won't take long." "...one." "Maybe it will." "Not lit." "Not even gone." "Apparently it's too low." "Despite Adam's pleasure at the quality of the high-speed shot..." "That is so pretty." "It's so crisp." "You can see the reflection of the match head in the bullet." "Even with laser-guided precision, they completely missed." "So, they're reverting to a more utilitarian method of marking the bullet's trajectory..." "Let's do it." "...cardboard and trial and error." "Three, two, one." "Plenty of error..." "That's crazy high." "Well, you shot the head right off." "...and plenty of trial." "Oh, it missed it!" "So, close, but it's not touching it." "Well, we're a few shots in, and we have not gotten the match to light yet, but we're in the thick of it." "So close!" "We knocked most of the red off the match without destroying it, so we're really, really close." "We're trying to get this grazing action, without destroying the match head, which we've already done." "Too high." "We want to just graze the very tip of it." "I don't know." "To get one to light may take another few shots may take another few hours." "What do you think?" "I don't see no fire." "No lit match." "But a quick look at the high-speed confirms they are on target." "Oh, perfect!" "It's just knocking off a little bit of the white there." "Just barely touched it." "That's what's required." "The bullet grazed the match head, but it didn't kick start the chain of events that end in a lit match." "This is how matches work." "In the head of a match, you've got a fuel which is a sulfur-based product." "You've got an o xidizer, which is usually potassium chlorate, and you've got glass powders, all held together in a binder on the head of the match." "The striker has glass powder, but it also has a small amount of red phosphorus, and when you strike the match on the striker, that glass-on-glass friction generates enough heat to convert the red phosphorus into white phosphorus," "which happens to burst into flames when it's exposed to air." "Now, in a strike-anywhere match like this one, all those same ingredients are on the head of the match, and so you can strike it on any abrasive surface, same reaction occurs... generates heat, generates white phosphorus... you've got a lit match." "And back on the range, despite feeling like they've got a busted myth on their hands, the guys lock and load for one last shot." "Firing in three, two, one." "Yeah!" "Nice!" "Punch in." "You asked for it, and we made it happen." "Well, that's fully burnt." "We did it." "But keep in mind that it took us nine tries to make this happen." "We had precision equipment and the accuracy required was down to, you know," "1/1,000 of an inch or so." "That's great." "That is so cool." "Yeah!" "Well, I was wrong again." "This was fully able to light this when they were only in contact for 1/12,000 of a second." "That's mighty short, but it's mighty confirmed." "All right, quick-hit myths from the fan site." "What do we have?" "Well, the first one comes from the movie "Shrek. "" "..."Can donkeys talk?" ... No." "That's confirmed." "Can we hear the real one?" "Okay, well, in the movie," "Shrek uses his own earwax to make a candle." "Ugh, that's disgusting." "I'm interested." "Please go on." "Okay, well, first we need to find out if earwax is flammable." "And finally we need to collect lots and lots of it." "I always wondered what was in my ears." "You might want to get this checked out." "It's a classic scene from the, uh, green screen." "Shrek pulls enough wax from his ears to form a fully functional, flammable candle." "And to find out if this simple and nauseating concept is even possible, the team has brought in an expert." "...You ready to go for it?" "... Oh, let's start digging." "Digging?" "I thought we were cleaning." "Well, that, too." "First up, Dr. Lustig is digging up a sample for a proof-of-concept flammability test." "Holy crap." "What'd you get?" "We got a little bit there." "Not too bad." "With the sample secured, the team gathers, ready to burn the evidence." "So, what do you guys think of the earwax?" "...That came out of your ear?" "... Yeah, pretty gross, huh?" "Let's burn it." "Hang on a second there, pyromaniac." "Now, since this is about candles," "I have some commercial candle wax to compare, as well as some beeswax." "All right, this'll be good." "We'll see which one is more flammable." "So, the whole point of today's experiment is to find out if human earwax is, in fact, flammable." "But not only that... to be able to compare it visually to the types of waxes that are found in commercial-grade candles, namely paraffin or beeswax." "...Cool." "... All right." "...Okay." "... Should we move on to the earwax?" "Ooh, it's sparking!" "Dude, that was in your ear!" "The paraffin and the beeswax burnt normally, as I would have expected." "The really astounding thing is how well the human earwax burned." "And it's not, like, a slow burn, like the paraffin or the beeswax... sort of a more aggressive burn with a crackling." "It was a" "Which..." "I'm not exactly sure what that is." "Maybe it's skin cells or little hairs." "But very surprising that it burnt well." "I think this looks good for our myth." "And that means they can move on to stage two... collecting enough earwax to make a candle." "But what's immediately clear is it's gonna take a while." "You have clean ear canals." "We're gonna have to call in a lot of people, huh?" "We're gonna need a lot of people." "All right, everybody, come on in!" "Cue the usual suspects... the Mythbusters team in all its waxy..." "Victory!" "...oily..." " Wow!" "...hairy Got it!" "... All right then." "Happy to help." "...and greasy-eared glory." "...Can I take these off?" "... Oh, yes." "Otherwise it'll be really hard." "After plumbing the "ear-y" depths of the last few team members, family members, and passers-by," "Dr. Lustig is finished, and the ear-wax candle making can begin." "Next up is an actual prank." "Let me start with a question... have you ever gone to sleep-away camp?" "I was a camp counselor for years." "Okay, did you ever play pranks on the kids in your charge?" "Of course." "In fact, that was a job requirement." "Ever take a sleeping person's hand and dip it in a bowl of warm water to see if they'd wet themselves?" "Actually, no, but I have always wondered about that one." "You're not gonna have to wonder much longer, 'cause we're gonna put it to the test." "Well, all right then." "Aside from our sleeping human guinea pigs, the only piece of equipment the team requires for this test is this moisture-activated voice alarm." "So, how is it that these shiny strips of metal are able to detect liquid?" "Well, when water crosses over two of these strips, it'll allow a minute amount of electrical current to pass through it, and this alarm right here is sensitive enough to detect that and start yelling at me..." "Oh, my God!" "What the hell are you doing?" "...when it does." "Next, the guys need a place to sleep." "Got my jammies." "I'm ready to go to work." "And, here, at the California Sleep Lab, in this bedroom with a view, they've got state-of-the-art monitoring equipment." "This is a camp prank... a staple of camp pranks the world over for generations, I swear." "And it is simply that if you take a sleeping person's hand and place it in a bowl of warm water, that person will involuntarily wet themselves in their bed." "Oh, my God!" "What the hell are you doing?" "Yeah!" "And that's where we come in." "...All right, so we're gonna start your hook-up now." "... Okay." "We have come to the California Center for Sleep Disorders, and Jamie and I are each going to take turns being the test subject." "One of us will fall asleep in this bed, and when we reach the correct phase of sleep, the other one will sneak in with a bowl of water and see if this is, in fact, true." "Do I think this is gonna work?" "Well, in my case, not so much." "As it happens, I'm a very light sleeper, and my suspicion is that... if somebody comes in in the middle of the night and tries to mess with my hand... the other one's gonna hit them square in the face." "And that is surely the key stumbling block for this myth." "Is he sucking his thumb?" "Unless they are absolutely out for the count, getting the sleeper's hand into the water without waking them up will be tough." "But that's where clinical director Michael Salemi comes in." "His eyes are closed, but he's definitely not asleep." "With all the electrodes on Jamie's head, what are we looking at there?" "These are his eyes right here, and we're looking at eye movements, and this is his EEG." "So, we're looking at his brain wave patterns here, to see if there's any changes that would indicate that he's actually fallen asleep." "Basically, by monitoring the brain's electrical activity, we can tell how deep is Jamie's sleep." "Stages one and two are light, transitional stages that won't be ideal for this test." "Stage three, also called slow-wave sleep, is the goal." "Here, brain activity is significantly reduced, and the sleeper is less easily woken." "But Jamie's playing hard to get." "He's not sleeping." "He's waiting." "And Adam... geared up with night-vision goggles... loses patience and goes in." "Oh, you're totally awake." "You've had, like, two hours man." "Sorry." "Nice getup." "Thank you." "I think your time is up." "I think it's my turn." "So, I was right about Jamie not sleeping." "He was waiting, and he waited us out." "He waited so long, we had to throw him out as a test subject." "I've always wanted the cyber hair extensions." "And now... it's my turn." "As soon as Adam's down, he's out and, finally, things are looking up." "Or are they?" "Although Adam dropped to sleep really quickly, he may not be a good candidate for this, either, because Adam has sleep apnea, which means that he's struggling for air from time to time, and it's waking him up." "So, he may not be able to get down into that deep sleep that we need him to be at to do this trick." "But before the team runs out of patience," "Adam finally descends into stage-three sleep." "However, there's another complication." "Both of his hands are under his head, so I don't know what to do other than try it." "If he doesn't wake up, maybe we'll get what we need." "With Adam twisted awkwardly," "Jamie manages to get Adam's hand over the bowl." "But the best he can do is gently pour water over the hand until our camp-prank victim awakes." "All right, then." "So, Adam, I noticed that your hand is wet." "Is there anything else that's wet?" "Nope." "It's all dry." "Darn it!" "It's definitely not looking very good for this myth at this point." "Well, I mean, it's obvious we don't have enough earwax to melt it down into a big vat and dip the wick in like you would normally make candles." "So, why don't we try and melt that, lay it out and roll it around a wick, kind of like you do with those beeswax type of candles?" "Yeah, that might work." "I'm not really sure how this is gonna work as a candle." "Yeah, it's flammable, but it's not quite the same as regular wax." "...All right, well, are you ready to melt?" "... Yes." "The bigger question for me is actually getting it into candle form." "They look more like boogers than earwax, don't they?" "Yeah." "Those with sensitive..." "Are you gonna throw up?" "...not-so-steely stomachs might want to avert your eyes around about now." "Why are we making this candle?" "I almost threw up!" "Well, maybe if you just keep breathing it, you get used to it." "Probably not." "All right, it looks pretty soft." "Do you want to like smash out a big..." "That sucked!" "All right." "Here's your wick." "Making a candle was a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be." "Cool." "It's like a little ear-wax taco." "It's not like it's a prepackaged material that you pull out and form into a shape of a candle." "I mean, this is earwax you're talking about." "It's actually working, kind of." "There's hair in there, there's skin cells, and to get it melted down into the shape of a candle was hard enough." "Look at that!" "We got a candle!" "Well, almost." "The final proof is in the lighting." "Okay, so for our side-by-side comparison, we have..." "Oh, are you're gonna stick it on that cupcake?" "A regular birthday candle." "Be careful it doesn't fall apart." "Ugh." "With the earwax all together and the wick in it, personally, I don't think it's gonna melt like a normal candle because, when we tested it, it sparkled." "Go!" "Okay." "So, it's either gonna be like 4th of July, or it's gonna go completely out." "It's lit like a candle, but we'll see if it lasts." "Look how it's bubbling up, right around... oh, that's going down." "Yep, it's burning up, just like in our little sample test." "It burns up, and then that's it." "It's done." "I don't think it's gonna last." "Nope." "...Oh." "... It's going out." "It's going out." "Okay." "23 seconds." "Not much of a candle at all." "Mnh-mnh." "Nope, and that's down to the composition of candle wax, as opposed to earwax." "The long-chain hydrocarbons in paraffin or beeswax melt and, in liquid form, get pulled up the wick where they burn in a slow, controlled fashion." "Earwax, full of dead skin cells, hair, fatty acids, and cholesterol may be flammable, but, critically, it doesn't melt or burn consistently." "All right." "Looks like this one's busted." "...Busted." "... Totally busted." "...Happy birthday!" "... Happy birthday!" "So we've got one last chance, and, for that, we're gonna induct Matt, our runner, and we'll see whether we can get him to wet his bed." "Let's make mama proud." "Sweet dreams." "And mere minutes after lights-out, sweet dreams it is." "There we go." "They're starting to spread out." "All right, let's get a bucket of water ready." "Let this be a lesson to you kids, lest you think working for "Mythbusters"" "is all fun and games, even the runners are not above getting humiliated on national television." "This is perfect." "Matt's hand is in the bowl." "It's the ideal illustration of this myth." "I don't hear the alarm, so I don't think he's involuntarily urinating yet." "Not yet, but after five minutes of hand and wrist immersion, this happens..." "Oh, my God!" "What the hell are you doing?" "Oh, my God!" "With the alarm going nuts and bedlam in the bedroom, it's not until the lights are switched on that the offending puddle can be examined." "Dude, did you think you peed yourself?" "I don't think I did." "Roll over." "Let's see what's going on here." "Looks like it could be a spill." "Yeah, it's not from the source, unfortunately." "How did it get that separate puddle over there?" "If Matt says it's not from the source," "I'm gonna go with him." "Yeah." "Looks like it is just on the side." "I don't see wet pants overall." "Well, if that is the case, then it didn't work, 'cause his hand was full-on in that water for What was it?" "Five minutes or better?" "... Yeah." "Did you even feel it?" "No." "That's awesome." "I really thought that we'd hit pay dirt with this myth when I heard this start screaming, but, no." "It's late in the middle of the night, and after Matt's hand was in that bowl for five minutes, some of the water sloshed out and caused our alarm to go off." "With all of this, I can't see that we can call this myth anything but busted." "It's not quite a mini-myth, but this trekkie tall tale is too good to resist." "I tell you what." "I cannot believe how popular this next myth is." "Yeah, fans have been requesting it for years, and when I announced that we were doing this on the Internet, the reaction was massive." "You're talking about the Gorn episode of "Star Trek"!" "This is the episode from the classic "Star Trek" series where Captain Kirk battles a reptilian creature called the Gorn." "Yeah, and right when you think Captain Kirk is about to get defeated, he devises a weapon using nothing but the things he finds on this alien planet." "Doesn't he make his own gunpowder, as well?" "Heck, yeah." "He's Captain Kirk!" "Let's get this going." "Enterprise, three to beam up." "You getting reception?" "Yeah, mine's real." "In a memorable "Star Trek" moment, a marooned Captain Kirk channels MacGyver and makes a bamboo bazooka." "Yes, yes." "What?" "What is it, Spock?" "An invention, yeoman." "After scavenging the three basic ingredients of gunpowder and diamonds for ammunition..." "They would make formidable projectiles." "Oh, here comes the Gorn." "...Kirk goes to work mixing his materials and constructing the cannon." "Can he do it?" "If he has the time, yeoman." "If he has the time." "Of course he has the time." "He's Kirk!" "But what about reality?" "Can you really make your own gunpowder, and can you really make a bazooka out of bamboo?" "Now, gunpowder's composed of three things... potassium nitrate..." "Charcoal..." "And sulfur." "Now, on their own, each of these three things is nonexplosive." "But the question is whether you can combine them together without further refinement to create gunpowder capable of firing a projectile out of a cannon." "So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna make Captain Kirk black powder." "We're gonna take these elements, mix them up just like he does in the TV clip, and compare it to regular black powder." "Now, the next big question of this myth is whether or not we can build a cannon out of bamboo that will withstand the explosion of gunpowder." "So, I'm gonna have a stab at this, while I leave the boys to their pyrotechnics." "And our pair of pyromaniacs begin Pyrotechnics 101, with the assumption that Kirk knew the correct ratio of the three key ingredients." "And, also, like their hero..." "Okay, dude, Kirk or Picard?" "Are you kidding?" "Kirk." "...they're not using any tools to grind and mix the black powder, just some rocks from the floor of the set." "...Mr. Spock or Lieutenant Commander Data?" "... Spock." "...Did Han shoot first?" "... Yes, he did." "So, we've been at this for a good 15 minutes or so..." "It's starting to look like black powder." "...no longer than Kirk might have had while down on the planet." "And now it's time to test our black-powder formulas." "First, what we're gonna do is let off some real black powder, just to see what it's supposed to look like." "Good!" "Then we're each gonna try our own recipes, and see what we've got." "So, that's what the guys are aiming for." "That's the kind of reaction Kirk achieved by hand-mixing his gunpowder." "And we're about to find out if that's possible." "...Hey!" "... Hey!" "It's kind of doing something." "It's a little something something." "...Yeah." "... It's weird." "Kind of burning like..." "It's like those snakes that you get at 4th of July." "So, no, we didn't get the big poof like black powder on our first test, but I'm actually pleasantly surprised, because I fully expected nothing to happen... no ignition." "Wow, look at that." "That's a little better." "But we did get ignition, and it smelled like black powder, and, furthermore, we got these sparks." "...Hey." "... Whoa." "So, that actually means that we're on the right track." "I think it's just a matter of time till we find the right ratio." "While our budding kitchen chemists mix things up with a few new recipes," "Jessi cooks up a bamboo cannon." "So, Captain Kirk was put on this barren wasteland." "He was very lucky to find a broken-off piece of bamboo... one that is appro ximately the size that we've chosen here, which is a 6-inch inside diameter." "Well, the problem that we're having here is that his piece of bamboo didn't have these inner walls where it blocks off all of these sections." "So, what I have to do is get rid of those inner walls." "The heat is on to find the perfect, hand-mixed, black-powder formula." "Now, in this one, I added more charcoal and more sulfur." "After working their way through over 30 different formulations, the guys decide they've found the best possible combination that could be made by hand." "...Hey!" "... Hey." "You know what?" "That's not too bad." "I mean, I don't know if you'd be able to make it in 30 minutes during the heat of the battle, but, I mean, so far, it's looking good." "You look like you're thinking of something pretty good." "I am." "There's a myth going around that you can stick your hand into molten lead and not get hurt." "Molten metal... it's pretty nasty stuff." "Just look at these shots of a foundry." "It would seem that, if you touched any of that stuff with your hands, you'd be horribly, horribly burned." "But maybe not so." "See, there's a myth going around that if you take pure lead and you melt it, that you can dip your hand in it and not be burnt or horribly injured." "I know." "The trick is supposed to be that you wet your hand before doing it, and it exploits what's known as the Leidenfrost effect." "The Leidenfrost effect?" "Well, seeing as it's the scientific basis for the myth," "Adam, with his hot, steel ball and fish tank is on demonstration duty." "Wow!" "Look at that." "You can see a clear skin of..." "I guess it's steam around the whole thing." "What you're seeing in this demonstration is known as the Leidenfrost effect." "It's like an atmosphere." "It's interesting because the steam that's created when you expose a hot surface to water is actually insulating that surface." "And it makes sense, because steam being a gas, conducts heat less rapidly than the water itself does." "And that's the key." "When cool water is exposed to an extremely hot surface, a layer of water vapor, which is a relatively poor heat conductor, provides a thin protective barrier." "So, it's time to get cooking for this hair-raising stunt..." "Is this me?" "...with the one and only ingredient..." "lead." "Is this the first Terminator you've ever cooked?" "No, I've done this a lot before, actually... every time I get a robot that's misbehaving." "The problem is you've got to keep them cooking, otherwise they reformulate and try and kill you." "It's about 725 degrees." "Well, that's about 100 degrees more than melting temperature." "I think that's about right." "Let's do it." "Cue the stand-in digits." "This meat is raw, and if it actually gets too hot, it's gonna change color because it's cooking." "If these finger-sized sausages sizzle, then Adam and Jamie won't be going anywhere near the hot pot." "Well, now, that seems to be a problem, doesn't it?" "A very slight change of color." "But, also, lead stuck to I wouldn't want that to happen to my finger." "... No." "While not burnt by the standards of any backyard barbecue, the sausage is being cooked." "But they're not giving up yet." "A hair's breadth over 800." "In order to avoid burning their stand-in digits, they're going to raise the temperature and try again." "That worked pretty well." "Yeah." "Where's Tory?" "Gosh dang it!" "This is the fourth time this week!" "...He needs to get a new service provider." "... Right?" "Our intrepid trio of trekkies are tackling the tall tale of the Gorn cannon." "They want to know..." "can you hand-mix black powder?" "Can you really build a bazooka out of bamboo?" "And can the cannon fire with enough force to take down the Gorn?" "We're working with different elements here, so the chances of everything working together..." "I'm thinking slim to none." "The gunpowder looks promising." "The bamboo, I think, is gonna completely fail." "And then the Gorn actually being hit by diamonds?" "Um, not so much." "Hey, nice vine you got there." "Yeah, you know, it's amazing how it grows in three cords here on this planet." "In the episode, Captain Kirk takes the vine and wraps it around the bamboo bazooka at the combustion chamber." "I guess that's to strengthen it or something." "All right." "I think that's tight enough." "All right, now it's time for the secret sauce." "Our own formulation of black powder." "After 33 formulations, this is the most potent." "And just to remind you... this is using only the chemicals that Kirk had on the planet, which were potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal." "And speaking of James Tiberius Kirk, here he is..." "... All right, buddy, it's time." "...or at least his stunt double." "...You know why he's wearing the red shirt, don't you?" "... Why?" "Every "Star Trek" fan knows, if you beam down to a planet in a red shirt, you're not coming back." "...Perfect." "... Yes." "We are about to test our bamboo bazooka." "Is it gonna be strong enough to withstand an explosion from our homemade black powder?" "Beforehand, I measured out an amount... two handfuls... which Kirk put in, and that's what this cup is." "And is this explosion gonna be strong enough to launch our projectiles into the Gorn to take him down?" "Load it up with the diamonds." "Or is this whole thing just gonna explode into splinters?" "I will be highly impressed if this actually works." "We are about to find out." "All right, this is Gorn cannon, just like in the episode." "Here we go!" "Kiss your butt goodbye, Gorn!" "It's quite endearing, really." "Grant and Tory's beaming faces full of anticipation, childhood dreams about to be realized." "That was interesting." "But unfortunately, all that hope has gone up in smoke." "I was hoping for, like, a" "This is so underwhelming." "I'm sorry, guys." "It appears the homemade black powder doesn't burn fast or aggressively enough." "The energy is simply dissipating rather than exploding." "I'm not gonna lie." "I'm a little disappointed." "All our cannon did was smoke profusely." "But I don't think, necessarily, that it was the gunpowder." "Maybe we lost containment." "I don't know." "All I know is that people have been making gunpowder this way for centuries with the exact same recipe." "Careful." "It might still be hot." "Maybe we should try this in the real cannon and see if it even works." "...I agree." "... All right." "So, our trekkie trio isn't giving up yet." "To confirm it's Kirk's gunpowder recipe that's failing and not the bamboo cannon, the team is switching in some hardware that they know works." "So, we're giving it another shot, put it in a proper cannon, and see how well that does." "Look at him." "He's laughing at us." "Here's that finger, bucket of water..." "Whoo... shake it off, into the lead." "And it looks pretty much perfect, and it's still cold." "Yeah." "So, 850 degrees Fahrenheit is the magic number." "The sausage comes through unscathed, which leaves just one question." "I'm game." "Are you game?" "I picture people yelling at their TV..." ""Go on, do it!" "Go on, try it!" "Ha!"" "Aren't you?" "Yeah." "All right." "We're about to go for it." "We're about to dip our hands into molten metal, and we've got plenty of evidence saying that this is safe." "It's clear from our experimentation that the conditions to do it safely are actually pretty precise." "I think we've got them." "And I think it's gonna be okay." "And this little piggy burned clean off." "Despite the sausage-based evidence... clearly a sentence never before used... there is still a healthy amount of trepidation." "Remember, the lead is at around 450 degrees Celsius, which puts this stunt firmly in the don't-try-at-home category." "Nothing." "Now, I just went about that deep." "Yeah." "Do you want to go a little deeper?" "My little finger is just fine." "Of course I only went in about that deep." "I was being a little careful." "I didn't feel a thing." "It felt kind of warm and pleasant, actually." "Go for it." "And a repeat performance with an index finger yields the same result." "Now, that one went in pretty good, and no problem." "No problem?" "No problem." "I guess it's my turn." "Adam has had the luxury of using Jamie as a human guinea pig, so, naturally, he has to up the ante." "He's going for four fingers." "Here we go, ladies and gentlemen." "One human hand in molten metal." "That's freaky." "You can feel the water boiling against your fingers." "You can feel that right there." "And that pretty much puts this lead mini-myth to bed." "So, Jamie and I just successfully dipped our hands into a pot of molten metal." "No lie." "The Leidenfrost effect is no myth." "It protected us." "Well, I'm unharmed." "You?" "I'm fine." "That's all we needed." "That's a myth confirmed." "Yep." "So, I got the cannon out." "This way we can test our homemade black powder to see whether or not it's even working." "We've used this cannon a lot." "We know it works." "I mean, we used it on Prison Escape, and we used it on Cheese Cannon." "It punched a hole right through the sail!" "So, we know the cannon works." "What we're trying to find out is... does our homemade gunpowder work?" "So, this test is focusing on the homemade black powder." "And, once again, the team use the same amount as Captain Kirk." "You know, if two handfuls of gunpowder don't set this cannonball off..." "If two... if two..." "Let's try that again from a safe distance." "You know, if two handfuls of homemade gunpowder doesn't launch this ball out, we might have to switch to normal gunpowder." "All right, fuse is going in." "...Whoo!" "... Whoo!" "Look at that." "The cannonball actually ended up behind the cannon." "Yep, and it clearly demonstrates that, although, you can hand-mix the raw ingredients of black powder to get an energetic product, you won't get an explosive result without more accurate refinement and measurement techniques." "Look, even as a hard-core "Star Trek" fan," "I think I'm gonna have to concede that black powder made in two hours on the surface of a planet with no tools just doesn't cut it." "All right, but we still have to test this bamboo cannon, so I say let's pretend like he was able to make commercial-grade black powder." "Let's take the same amount, load up our cannon, and see what happens." "This is getting good now!" "Easy." "Don't go too hard." "But even in this impossible, best-case scenario," "Tory has his doubts the bamboo cannon can." "Now, I think the weakest link in our bamboo bazooka is the fact that we're using the natural membrane of the bamboo as the backing of our cannon." "I mean, that is gonna be taking the full force of the black powder." "I just don't think it's strong enough to withstand that force." "Aah!" "Run!" "Run!" "I think we killed Captain Kirk, not the Gorn." "Yeah, the Gorn is still standing." "It totally blew out the back of the cannon." "How cool was that?" "But, look, it's obvious the bamboo was not strong enough to withstand the explosion of the black powder." "Blew right out the back." "Cracked it all the way up." "Yeah, but it looks like it did in the episode." "Yeah, but, I mean, look at Captain Kirk." "He does not look like he did in the episode." "This guy probably would have died." "And the Gorn escaped without a scratch." "Or did he?" "He looks pretty healthy from this angle." "Yeah, he's still standing." "But wait a minute." "Look at that." "That looks like a hit." "...No." "... Yeah, look at this." "Dude, it's everywhere." "Yeah!" "We actually got crystals to fire back." "Yeah!" "You know what?" "I mean, this one's still looking busted, 'cause it's like..." "the person shooting the cannon is gonna sustain way more damage than the person getting shot at." "Well, how can we make it better, though?" "I don't know." "We could always replicate the results." "All right." "But so far as this goes, this one's busted." "...Busted." "... Totally busted." "Okay, so the mythical Gorn cannon is busted, in more ways than one." "But is there any way" "Kirk could have made a cannon out of bamboo?" "The weak link was the membrane in the bamboo itself, so what we've done is we've taken 3/4-inch plywood, plugged it, put a steel rod across, and then we're gonna put some polyurethane sealer in there" "to help fill all those cracks, and, hopefully, the explosion is gonna go out the front end of the cannon and shoot all those crystals at the Gorn, the way we want it to." "You know what?" "I don't care if Captain Kirk wasn't able to make homemade black powder on the planet." "I don't care if this myth is busted." "We're re-enacting the Gorn episode, and you know what?" "I'm happy." "I probably should get out of here now." "...Oh!" "... Oh!" "Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" "Hey, that was good!" "I think we took out both the Gorn and Captain Kirk!" "Finally, the team gets its Gorn and hits the bull's-eye." "Shot to the head, the chest, the stomach." "And to the groin!" "Yeah." "But despite this brief moment of satisfaction... and Kirk's cult hero status... there really was only one result for this myth." "As sad as I am to say, since this is my favorite episode of "Star Trek,"" "this one is busted." "I mean, you cannot make homemade black powder strong enough to launch the projectiles." "Even if you could, the bamboo would not be strong enough to contain the explosion." "I mean, giving it the best possible chances, using the commercial-grade black powder, and reinforcing the bamboo, our bamboo bazooka still exploded, killing Captain Kirk." "I mean, any way you look at it, this is a bad idea." "I mean, you're better off giving it to the Gorn and letting him shoot you." "You guys want to walk?" "I don't want to walk." "Scottie, beam us out of here." "You know what?" "You might want to use yours, Grant." "I'm not getting a signal." "Enterprise, four to beam up." "Has anyone seen Jamie?" "Here I am." "Got the mail." "Bill, bill, bill..." "Coconut." "Coconut!" "Dude, our coconut came back!" "...Do you know what this means?" "... What?" "This means myth confirmed." "It also means we're gonna get a lot of coconuts in the mail." "Oh, you're right." "Nuts!"