"I know it looks like we have fun on this show, but we spend weeks and sometimes months planning how to do our myths safely." "So, please, don't try this at home." "NARRATOR:" "On this episode of "Mythbusters" there's real genius..." "Today's forecast..." "70% chance of science." "NARRATOR:" "...lots of laughs..." "[Laughter] ...and a whole heap of explosions." "Like a wet-T-shirt contest, really." "NARRATOR:" "First, Adam and Jamie take on a classic urban myth." "This looks awful." "NARRATOR:" "With the top down, can you stay dry by putting the pedal to the metal?" "Whoa, look at that!" "NARRATOR:" "Then Kari, Grant, and Tory have a two-part popcorn parable." "Let me have itl" "NARRATOR:" "First, they're asking, can you cook corn with explosions?" "And then lasers?" "ALL:" "Whoa!" "Am I missing an eyebrow?" "NARRATOR:" "Who are the mythbusters?" "Adam Savage..." " Am I missing an eyebrow?" " NARRATOR:" "And Jamie Hyneman." "You know, I usually don't let people do that." "NARRATOR:" "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." "[Laughs]" "NARRATOR:" "Joining them..." "Kari Byron..." "That was a rush!" "NARRATOR:" "...Grant Imahara..." "Burn!" " NARRATOR:" "And Tory Belleci." " Light it on fire" "NARRATOR:" "They don't just tell the myths." "They put them to the test." "So what's up with the umbrellas?" "I'm planning to use them to paint a metaphorical picture." "I want you to imagine that you are having a midlife crisis, and you run and spend a bunch of your dough on a really nice convertible sports car." "Okay." "Further imagine you're driving it down the street and it starts to rain..." "What do you do?" "Pull over, and you put the top up." "Aha!" "That's where the fansite myth states that you might be wrong." "That instead of wasting your time putting the top up, that you should floor it, go as fast as you can, because there is a speed at which you can drive that no rain will enter the driver's compartment." "Sounds kind of unsafe to me." "Sounds really fun to test to me." "NARRATOR:" "Aerodynamics..." "Aahl" "NARRATOR:" "Dangerous wet-weather driving... and a classic urban myth." "This is "Mythbuster" country." "Because viewers want to know, if you've got the top down when it starts raining, will putting your foot down keep you dry?" "So, does this mean we get to drive a fancy car" " really fast in the rain?" " We do." "But we are in sunny California, and that presents a little bit of a problem." "I think, just as we did in running in the rain, we're gonna have to manufacture our own rain here." "It's a bit of a chore, but I think we can handle that." "We still get to drive a really fancy car fast in the rain, though, right?" "Yes, but slow down there, cowboy." "I think perhaps we ought to take this model car and run some shop tests." "Sprinkle some water at it, look at it on the high speed, see if there is anything at all to this myth." "Then we get to drive a really fancy car fast in the rain." "We'll get some driving lessons, we'll wet down some tarmac, we'll go out next thing and drive a fancy car." " All right?" " All right." "NARRATOR:" "So, to keep revhead Hyneman happy, they shelve the shop tests in favor of..." "Well, the first thing on our agenda is to get some training in foul-weather driving on wet roads." "And in lovely, sunny California, there's nothing better for that than a perfect sunny day." "NARRATOR:" "But being the Boy Scouts that they are, they came prepared to make their own." "This is gonna be fun." "NARRATOR:" "That's the bad weather." "So all we need now is a convertible car." "JAMIE:" "If you've seen "Mythbusters" before, you know that generally when we have cars, they explode." "But not that one, I don't think." "NARRATOR:" "Guiding the guys through their wet-weather driving instruction is Brian Frazer." "JAMIE:" "Brian's the guy that trains anybody that drives an emergency vehicle how to do it right." "That means police, fire, ambulances..." "Brian's the guy." "FRAZER:" "There goes that understeer." "You let a little bit of the steering out." "Right." "JAMIE:" "If I had a car like that," "I wouldn't be letting Adam drive it." "NARRATOR:" "Harsh, but, given Adam's track record and current over-caffeinated mood..." " [Boing!" "] - [Laughs]" "NARRATOR:" "Fair." "[Boing!" "]" "[Coughs]" "[Man laughs]" "Whoo!" "I might have gotten the microphone wet there for a second." "NARRATOR:" "Despite Adam's best efforts, the microphone still works, and they get down to business." "The surface is now wet." "We're gonna lose that cohesion between the tires and the concrete surface." "We're on a concrete pad out here today." "[Adam laughs]" "FRAZER:" "Hydroplaning can also be a factor" " if we got standing water." " [Tires screech]" "Ways to deal with this... we get off the gas, slow our speed down." "It's gonna multiply any reaction we do, so you want to not be jerky in your steering movements." "Oh [bleep]" "FRAZER:" "So, just smoothing out your steering and backing off speed can keep you in control of the car." "Ohh!" "[Laughs]" "ADAM:" "The clearest difference between driving on wet ground versus the dry ground is that it's a lot slipperier." "NARRATOR:" "And that's the key." "By simply getting to grips with the car on a wet surface, they can be sure they won't lose their heads at high speeds on the real test which means they're licensed for wet-weather science." "I keep losing my hat." "NARRATOR:" "Now, in part one of "Popcorn Pandemonium,"" "is it possible to pop popcorn with an explosion?" "[Woman screams]" "[Laughs] I love this." "Watch this part." "Going to the movie theater is one of my favorite things to do, but what does this have to do with the myth?" "The fans love popcorn as much as I do, and they've sent in a ton of myths" " about popcorn." " Yeah, like what?" "Can you pop popcorn with explosives?" "Now, how is that supposed to work?" "Explosions generate a lot of heat, and the fans think that is just enough to pop popcorn." "Cool." " It's delicious." " So nutritious." "MAN:" "It's a taste delight." "NARRATOR:" "Popcorn and its distinctive explosive expansion is a ready-made recipe for myth and disaster." "And the fans want to know, can you put the pop in popcorn with a bang?" "Okay, so popcorn with explosives?" "How are we gonna test this?" "Well this myth comes in a whole variety of forms." "Everything from a torpedo hitting a container ship full of popcorn to an industrial accident at a popcorn-popping plant." "Whoa." "What are we gonna do?" "I think we should take our favorite explosions from our favorite myths, apply them to popcorn." "This is gonna be fun." "Oh, this is the part where she dies." "NARRATOR:" "Despite the various outlandish sources for this fan request, the basic premise for each is the same." "Heat and pressure from an explosion causes raw popcorn kernels to cook in an instant." "To test this one central theory the team is taking two classic blasts from the past..." "[Laughter] ...and reigniting them at the bomb range." "And first up..." "GRANT:" "Now, we do have a myth from James Bond that is the exploding propane tank." "If this doesn't pop the popcorn, I don't know what will." "GRANT:" "Gonna strap some C-4 onto a propane tank, put some popcorn kernels on top, and see if we get this rain of cooked popcorn." "Now, we know that heat is what causes popcorn kernels to pop into popcorn." "You can do it on your stove." "And I think it's fairly likely that the size of the fireball that we'll get will generate the sufficient amount of heat to make something pop." "NARRATOR:" "So, will the explosive C-4-and-propane cocktail cook the corn?" "Or will it simply be shaken, stirred, and sprayed, shrapnel-like, all over the bomb range?" "All right, here we go." "In 3, 2, 1." "[Cheers]" "[Laughter]" "TORY:" "Wow." "That was some heat." "You think we popped popcorn?" "I don't know." "NARRATOR:" "That's the burning question." "But up at the corn-carnage epicenter, the signs aren't good." "GRANT:" "I see a lot of unpopped kernels on the ground." "TORY:" "No popcorn." " KARI:" "Nothing?" " TORY:" "Nope." "There's more foil over here." "NARRATOR:" "It seems the force of the C-4 explosion and the rapidly expanding propane fireball distributed the raw kernels far and wide, without actually cooking and popping any of them." "My propane-popcorn empire!" "[Sobbing] Why?" "!" "KARI:" "I don't think there was quite enough heat, and it wasn't sustained for long enough for the popcorn to pop." "I think we just kind of blew it out everywhere." "NARRATOR:" "It's a popular fansite fable..." "Can you keep the rain out of your convertible by putting the pedal to the metal?" "After taking their luxury soft-top for a wet-weather test spin..." "[Tires screeching] ...Adam and Jamie are back at the Batcave for preliminary shop tests." "ADAM:" "This is our scale testing rig for driving in the rain." "And since it's about two things, wind and rain, we're creating both in a small scale." "I've got a leaf blower here creating the wind over the car," "I've got Jamie perched up there in the scissor lift." "He's gonna be the rain." "He's got a pressurized bottle of some blue dye so that we can actually see the raindrops." "Oh, that's nice." "Hopefully, if there's any validity to this myth, that the rain, somehow by the aerodynamics of the car going fast, won't get in the driver's compartment..." " Are you ready?" " I'm ready." "ADAM:" "I would expect to see these blue raindrops coming down and the wind coming over the car, inhibiting them from continuing their journey onto the passengers in the convertible." "NARRATOR:" "To simulate driving through the rain, they've got a 15-mile-an-hour wind..." "All right, go for it." "Oh, yeah." "[Laughs]" "NARRATOR:" "Followed by a small-scale hurricane, with mini wind speeds of 30 miles an hour..." "I almost feel like I'm driving it!" "NARRATOR:" "After which Adam is confident this myth holds water." "ADAM:" "I'm thinking that our scale tests are actually proving pretty fruitful." "There may be something to this." "We've run three tests, and they're showing me what I would expect to see if this myth were actually true, i.e., we've run it with no wind and some rain, a slow-speed wind, 15 miles per hour," "and a high-speed wind, 30 miles per hour, and I'm seeing what looks like a bubble forming over the driver's compartment with less rain seems to want to get into." "Yeah, it does show the rain kind of zipping over the cockpit, but I'm not that sure that the wind and the rain scale that well." "We're gonna have to do it full size." "[Laughs]" "I knew you were gonna go there." "NARRATOR:" "But before said dangerous wet-weather driving," "Adam has a couple of issues." "The first problem with this as I see it is that this was loaned to us by a friend and a fan of the show, and it's worth over $100,000." "And we're mythbusters." "There's an inherent danger factor just letting us near something of this value." "The second problem is that we've got to figure out a way, at some fairly extreme speeds, to be able to know whether water has gotten into the driver's compartment." "JAMIE:" "We need to have a rain detector for inside the car, but because the amounts that we're dealing with are really quite small, it's not like we can put a funnel and a collector or an electronic instrument or something in there." "Like this." "I figured that if we put something that would, by virtue of getting wet, show a dot, that that would do the trick, and so I thought of tissue paper, because when it's opaque," "you can't really see anything through the other side of it." "But when it gets wet, like so, all of a sudden, you've got a very clear indication that there's a drop of water that hit." "Uh, it's like a wet-T-shirt contest, really." "It shows you what's underneath, don't it?" "[Laughs]" "NARRATOR:" "So far, popping popcorn with explosives is not looking good." "That didn't work very well." "Didn't work at all." "NARRATOR:" "The extreme expansion of gases typical of an explosion is simply distributing the kernels over the bomb range without cooking them." "[Cheers]" "But our intrepid trio have yet to light the fuse on their final conflagration." "KARI:" "Of all the fireballs that I've seen from explosions that we've done, creamer cannon has given us the most slow fireball." "It goes into the air and then [imitates explosion]" "[Laughter]" "And we're gonna have the popcorn kind of mixed in with the creamer." "Yeah!" "That's a recipe for disaster." "Hopefully kettle corn." "So, maybe the sticky creamer will stick to the popcorn, creating that heat for long enough that we'll get kettle corn." "GRANT:" "I'm ever the optimist." "I think that this actually has a chance of working." " Lf you guys want to run..." " KARI:" "I do." "GRANT:" "What happens is, you launch the cannon, the creamer and the corn goes up in the air, the corn's surrounded by fire." "Somehow, it's going to make us kettle corn." " Right to go." " All right." "In 3, 2, 1!" "ALL:" "Whoa!" "TORY:" "I saw a bunch of burning..." "Look at all those burning kernels!" "GRANT:" "I think there's kernels out there!" "TORY:" "Let's see if we got some popcorn!" "NARRATOR:" "The fine-grained creamer once again proves extremely flammable leading to a satisfying fireball." "And there appears to be flaming food falling to the ground." "[Cheers]" "We popped popcorn!" "It's kettle corn flambé!" "It's burnt, but look!" "TORY:" "No, that's just burnt creamer." "KARI:" "That's not popcorn?" "No, but I saw it rain down!" "Unfortunately, it was just little bits of creamer." "But there was such hope there for a minute." "I thought we actually did it." "My kettle-corn empire!" "[Sobbing] I'm wrong again!" "NARRATOR:" "So, with the myth looking pretty much busted, it's back to the shop, where Kari meets a popcorn professor." "Now, we've been trying to pop popcorn with explosives, and I'm wondering if we just don't have enough heat generated." "Why do you think that it's not working for us?" "Popcorn pops best at 450 degrees Fahrenheit." "When the popcorn is exposed to that heat, the moisture inside the kernels expand and expand, like your grandmother's old-fashioned pressure cooker, until finally, there's enough pressure to break open the kernel, and what you're eating is the starch" "that has been condensed inside." "Yum, yum, yumi" "NARRATOR:" "That's the key." "A popcorn kernel is basically a pressure vessel made up of three layers... the tough outer shell, the starch-filled middle layer, and the small, central germ." "Add sustained heat, and the moisture in the center turns to steam." "This heat and pressure gelatinizes the starch until, finally, the shell bursts." "As the steam is released, the starch cools into the fluffy white ball we know and love." "So let me get this straight." "The explosives didn't work because we didn't have any of the right circumstances." "You're saying we need 450 degrees, even heating over a period of time, more like a minute, before we can actually get the popcorn to expand." "So, there's really no way for us to flash-heat and have explosives make us popcorn." "That's my understanding." "Well, as exciting as that was, we didn't really pop any popcorn with explosives." "KARI:" "There's one more myth I want to test that fans sent in, and that's why I brought you to the theater." "Which one's that?" "Well, do you remember a little movie called "Real Genius"?" "Yeah, I patterned my life off of it." "Do you remember the last scene in the movie?" "A laser pops an enormous amount of popcorn in the house, blows out the windows and doors just from the power of popcorn." "And that's what we're gonna test?" "Yep." "That's what we're gonna test." "Check it out." "NARRATOR:" "A template for Grant's life, a monument to geekhood..." "Let me have itl" "NARRATOR:" "...and a source for this myth." "Can a 5-megawatt laser really cook a gigantic ball of popcorn?" "Ohl" "NARRATOR:" "And can the expansive power unleashed really bring down the house?" "All right, well, first, we need to see if you can even pop popcorn with a laser." "And we need to characterize the force of popping popcorn." "Let's start out with some due diligence." "Before we unleash the power of popcorn on an actual house, how about you and I go check out a military-spec laser, see if it pops popcorn, while you run some tests on force and expansion." " All right, let's go." " We can't leave yet." "The credits are rolling." "People work hard on this." " We didn't work on this, did we?" " No." "NARRATOR:" "Jamie and Adam are on the runway at Alameda, raising a rainmaker..." "ADAM:" "It's a little lwo Jima moment here." "NARRATOR:" "...because to test the myth that driving fast keeps you dry..." "ADAM:" "Holy crapola." "NARRATOR:" "...they need wet weather at the flick of a switch." "[Echoing] Hello!" "NARRATOR:" "And for that, they're going back to their movie roots." "ADAM:" "Hollywood, like mythbusters, doesn't wait for ideal weather conditions." "They make their own weather, and this device is one of the ways they do it." " This is a rain bar." " Got it." "And it sprays water through a set of spouts... these spouts." "There are six of them." "And if what you want is torrential rain, it can deliver 1,200 gallons a minute." "For us, it's gonna be delivering a linear swath of rain 200 feet long." "Well, everything's hooked up and in place, and the next thing we're gonna do is a dribble test." "We're just gonna pressurize all the lines to the point where water starts dribbling out the rain heads because of several things." "[Laughs]" "This amount of rain is perfect for our test." "It's just about 2 inches per hour." "One, that's a lot of weight of water... about 600 pounds per bar... and the weight distribution could change, and they could swing, so we need to control them." "Two, there's a little bit of a west-to-east breeze here." "We want to make sure the rain falls where the car's gonna drive." "So we might adjust our final bar position based on what we see here." "[Laughs]" "That's perfect." "NARRATOR:" "With the rain ready to fall and the cameras ready to roll, it's time to bring in the star... the car." "ADAM:" "We've modified this car in a couple of ways to turn it into a data- collection device for this test." "First, because it's a fancy car, we've protected the whole interior with absorbent fabric so that no water can damage the car." "Second, to measure what water does get in the car, we've got these two boards, which is basically a piece of plywood faced with acrylic and tissue paper." "Any water that hits this surface is gonna create a nice dark spot that's easy to see, easy to count, and should give us a really nice comparative analysis of how much water's getting into the driver's compartment" "under the different conditions we're testing." " Well, let's get to it." " Okay." "NARRATOR:" "And by "to it,"" "they mean using their driving instructor as a human-crash-test guinea pig." "The biggest danger posed by this experiment is hydroplaning." "That's where the car floats up on a cushion of water, and you lose all control of it." "[Tires screech]" "Okay, go rain and Brian." "[Engine revs]" "So, Brian, our safety trainer and driver, is actually going to take this run at 120 miles an hour across the rainy tarmac to make sure that it's safe for Jamie and I to do." "NARRATOR:" "Brian's about to hit what's essentially a sluiced-down skid pad at 120 miles per hour." "This could be interesting." "ADAM:" "Okay." "NARRATOR:" "Out of control through 450 degrees is exactly why the expert was behind the wheel and not Adam or Jamie." "ADAM:" "What happened there, buddy?" "That's what we call hydroplaning." "Wow." "That seemed quite intense." "It was very intense and a lot of fun." "[Both laugh]" "JAMIE:" "I got to say, Brian gets real props for that one." "Looking at the footage," "Brian's expression didn't change at all." "He didn't flinch while he's spinning out of control around and around and around at 120 miles an hour." "NARRATOR:" "So, one thing's clear..." "These tests will be dangerous." "Hitting a wet surface at higher than highway speeds has the potential to put you into a spin cycle." "How do you feel about it, Jamie?" "He did it." "I'll do it." "TORY:" "Whoa!" "[Grant sobbing]" "My kettle-corn empire!" "Why?" "!" "NARRATOR:" "Our intrepid trio are looking into unconventional ways to pop popcorn." "Ohl" "NARRATOR:" "And to test this popcorn-themed scene from the silver screen Kari and Tory go back to school because they want to know if there's any science at all in this science-fiction-sounding scenario." "Now, what we're trying to find out here is, can you pop popcorn with a laser, and, if so, could you do it from a plane?" "URBANEK:" "I believe they're both possible." "Just a matter how much laser power you have." "Now, how realistic do you think the laser in the movie was?" "URBANEK:" "5 megawatts is a stretch." "I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a stretch even for chemical lasers, which typically operate... the highest power is about 100 kilowatts." "I don't think that a 5-megawatt laser is around the corner just yet." "TORY:" "Now, one serious question that Grant wanted me to ask you was, how close are we to lightsaber technology?" "[Chuckles]" "Oh, that's classified." "NARRATOR:" "So, as unlikely as it sounds, there's a "kernel" of truth to this myth." "And for proof of concept..." "Here is my popcorn kernel." "Here we go." "...they've got a 10-watt laser pointed right at it." "[Lisping] We're popping popcorn with lasers!" "KARI:" "I'm looking at the thermal camera." "I'm seeing heat at the top and bottom of the kernel, and they're expanding very slowly." "I'm pretty sure this is not how Mom used to make it." "KARI:" "Maybe this is how Grant's mom used to make it." "[Cheers]" " It popped!" " TORY:" "Proof of concept!" "[Cheers]" "KARI:" "Well, now that you can laser-pop popcorn, let's just concentrate on the power of popcorn." "That is cool." "Let's go." "Pretty good." "So, now all we need is a 5-megawatt laser, and then we can finally find out if popcorn can break down doors and windows." "Uh... no." "In fact, 100 kilowatt is the most powerful you're gonna find, and that's even in military applications." "Yeah, so basically, we're never gonna find a laser big enough to pop a houseful of popcorn." "GRANT:" "If we can't get a laser, we can substitute another heat source." "Already on it." "Induction heating." "We just have to switch out the tinfoil for some sort of steel container." " Sounds reasonable to me." " So, did you ask him about that thing we were talking about, the laser sword?" "Actually, I did." "And guess what." "I got a prototype right here." "There you go, buddy." "Don't turn it on inside." "I said don't turn that on inside!" "You're gonna cut somebody's head off!" "NARRATOR:" "So out goes the science-fiction-sized 5-megawatt laser, and in comes a giant steel frying pan, heated by electromagnetism?" "TORY:" "So, we're trying to find out, does popcorn have the expansive power to blow open doors and windows of a house?" "Now, we know, in theory, that a laser can pop popcorn, but there's no way we're gonna be able to get a laser powerful enough to pop a whole houseful of popcorn." "So I'm gonna make a frying pan, and not just any normal frying pan, but a giant steel, electromagnetically heated frying pan." "This is gonna be crazy." "[Clang!" "]" "NARRATOR:" "It's a big pan, but it's not house-sized." "And that's because the second change to the movie scenario is one of scale." "The team are starting small, with just one window." "KARI:" "In the movie, the weak point was the windows." "So, I'm constructing a window, putting it in a wall, making that the lid for our pan." "Now, if this myth is true, the popcorn should pop like crazy, pop with mythical power, bust through the windows, and spill out everywhere." "NARRATOR:" "That's the setup." "And inside, Grant is using his..." "Apply the Jedi mind force." "NARRATOR:" "...uh, mind..." "GRANT:" "[Laughs]" "NARRATOR:" "...to crunch the crucial numbers for the expansion potential of popcorn." "Ah." "So, the popped kernel has an increase in volume of approximately 30 times, which is pretty good." "NARRATOR:" "Next, he uses the force... gauge to measure the pressure of that expansion..." "[As Palpatine] Rise, popcorn, rise." "Push on the plate with force." "NARRATOR:" "Which turns out to be .22" "PSI." "TORY:" "So, we're about to heat up the pan to cook the popcorn." "The way we're gonna do that is we're using an induction heating system." "How that works is there are copper coils underneath the steel plate, and they send out a high-frequency A.C. Current." "Now, that current creates a magnetic field which will move the molecules around in the steel." "As those molecules are moving, it creates friction, which creates heat." "And that's how we're gonna cook our popcorn." "In essence, we're making a giant skillet." "[Lmitates sizzling]" "Aaah!" "GRANT:" "So, now we're gonna coat the bottom of the pan with coconut oil to spread the heat evenly..." "Mm." "Smells like popcorn." "GRANT:" "And then fill it with 3/4 of an inch of popcorn kernels." "NARRATOR:" "According to Grant's earlier calculations, 3/4 of an inch of kernels should expand to over 20 inches." "And with the window a mere 6 inches above the uncooked corn, we're all set to find out if popcorn has the power to break out." "GRANT:" "So what we're looking for in this experiment is whether the force of the popping popcorn will actually break the window." "MAN:" "Okay, it's on." "GRANT:" "Now, in my earlier experiment," "I found that the popcorn generated .22" "PSI..." "They're popping!" "1, 2, 3!" " TORY:" "Yeah!" " GRANT:" "Yeah!" "...which doesn't sound like a whole lot, but consider this is a relatively large surface area, and the window's over 1,000 square inches, which means, potentially, 220 pounds of force." "NARRATOR:" "But despite a sterling, stirring effort..." "Rake it, Grant!" "Now's your chance." "Show us what you got, boy." "NARRATOR:" "The popcorn fails to make an impression on the window, and it never will, because confining the popcorn while it's cooking prevents it from popping." "So it looks like most of our kernels popped, and you might be thinking, "If they didn't bust the window, why don't they just add more popcorn?"" "But there's actually a maximum amount of kernels you can use before not only does the compression start making them pop smaller, but everything just burns." "This is the most popcorn that's going to pop in these circumstances." "NARRATOR:" "So, it's a catch-22." "Putting pressure on the popcorn means it doesn't pop and can't exert that expansive pressure." "But the guys aren't giving up yet." "KARI:" "We do know from your experiment the pressures that the popcorn should exert." "So what if we took the cooking out of the equation, used pre-popped popcorn, and applied our own force?" "Yeah." "Then we could see if the popcorn is strong enough to break out of a house." "Or whether the kernels would simply crush under those conditions." " So, back to the drawing board?" " Yeah." "NARRATOR:" "Adam and Jamie are lifting the lid on a myth that to stay dry, you don't put the top up, you put your foot down." "ADAM:" "First up is the control." "See, the myth states that if it starts to rain and you're driving your convertible with the top down, you shouldn't waste your time putting it up." "You should gun it, floor it, go as fast as you can." "So of course we're gonna gun it, floor it, and go as fast as we can." "But what do we compare that to?" "We compare it to the control, which is driving into a rainstorm, stopping, putting the top up, and seeing how much rain we gather that way." "NARRATOR:" "With a direct line to the weather gods..." "All right, stand by for pressure." "NARRATOR:" "Or at least John, the rain-bar operator," "Adam commences the rain." "Today's forecast..." "70% chance of science!" "Go ahead and pressure it up." "Jamie, come on in." "[Engine revs]" "NARRATOR:" "Remember, this is a control for comparative purposes." "ADAM:" "All right, now stop and put the top up." "[Laughing] Oh, this looks awful." "NARRATOR:" "If you're foolish enough to be driving with the roof down while there's a rainstorm approaching, we want to know how wet you'll get in the time it takes to pop the top back on." "Now go ahead and drive off." "NARRATOR:" "And it's pretty clear, because that's one wet Hyneman." "[Laughs]" "How was that?" "Looks like you got soaked!" "JAMIE:" "I think so." "ADAM: [Laughing] Oh, look at our test boards!" "There's no drops to count." "They're just 100% soaked." "I don't know whether there's gonna turn out to be something to driving really fast to keep rain out of your convertible, but it's pretty clear that stopping at all, even to put the top up," "is gonna get you saturated with rain pretty quickly." "All right, now stop and put the top up." "Now that we've got a good control, it's time for some real testing." "If there's any merit to this myth, we should see a lot less rain on our rain-collection panels than last time." "NARRATOR:" "But the weather gods, the real ones, otherwise known as the physical forces of meteorology, decide to rain on Adam and Jamie's scientific parade." "The tissue-paper rig is not gonna work in these conditions." "Well, why don't we do some runs anyway, and shoot it on high speed, look at it closely, and see if we can detect any kind of pattern from it?" "Okay, that sounds good." " Let's do 25 miles an hour." " Okay." "NARRATOR:" "For this stately 25-mile-an-hour test, out go the rain-detection boards, and in comes the high-speed camera." "Then, after a quick reset," "Jamie ups the speed to a healthy 55 miles an hour, before heading back to compare the two runs." "JAMIE:" "At 25 miles an hour," "I don't see any plume coming off the windshield at all." "You will." "It's coming up in just a minute." "There, see?" "JAMIE:" "Yeah, it's pretty small." "ADAM:" "But still, you can see the effect." "Looks like a lot of it is going into the cockpit, though." "Yes." "Here's 55, though." "The difference is actually pretty marked." "So, no plume." "Look at how the plume appears." "JAMIE:" "Oh, yeah." " ADAM:" "Isn't that nifty?" " JAMIE:" "Yeah." "Just totally clear." "NARRATOR:" "Totally clear?" "Well, there seems to be more of a plume at the faster speed, but is the cockpit actually staying drier?" "There's no way of knowing for sure until the real rain lets up." "I'm not gonna say this too loud, but it looks like it might actually be clearing up." "We might get a window for testing soon!" "NARRATOR:" "Kari, Grant, and Tory are asking, can popping popcorn blow out your house?" "It's kind of tinkling against the window." "I thought they'd be more aggressive." "NARRATOR:" "Large-scale cooking didn't work, so they're taking heat out of the equation to focus on the expansion potential." "Now, what we do know is that if you can pop popcorn, it does exert a certain amount of force." "So, PSI .22." "So, we're gonna try this experiment again but in a different way." "TORY:" "We're gonna take a bunch of pre-popped popcorn, fill a house that we build, add our own pressure, and see if the popcorn is enough to destroy the house." "Ow!" "That kettle's hot!" "Am I missing an eyebrow?" "KARI:" "We've done the calculations." "To fill a house that is 6x6x6 feet, we're going to need 30 55-gallon garbage bags' full." "So we've got six popcorn poppers, all popping at the same time, and we're working around the clock so we can fill the house." "NARRATOR:" "After the corn mountain peaks," "Kari's four-legged vacuum cleaners move in, and the team can move on." "And with a house built to code in fast-forward," "Grant steps up with a larger-than-necessary piston to apply the popcorn power." "Ta-da!" "I'm not compensating for anything." "[Both laugh]" "So, I'm standing underneath what would be the floor of our house." "We're gonna fill up the entire house with popcorn, and then this cylinder is going to push up." "[Laughing] Oh, yeah!" "It fits." "Now, initially it's going to be just the popcorn force, just to see if, under ideal conditions, if we popped every kernel, what would happen to the house?" "Would it push up and blow out the windows, or would it do nothing?" "Here we go." "Pump's on!" " All right, you guys ready?" " TORY:" "Yep." "GRANT:" "Okay, so, this is regular-popcorn popping force." "3, 2, 1." "TORY:" "It's moving." " KARI:" "Yeah." "Slowly moving." " [Creaking]" "You hear the creaking?" "TORY:" "Yeah." "Something's gonna give." "Is it the popcorn?" "Is it the house?" "NARRATOR:" "As it turns out, neither." "Popcorn power, which, according to Grant's calculations, is 0.22 PSI and exactly the pressure exerted by the piston, just isn't enough to do any damage at all." "So basically the expansive pressure popcorn exerts doesn't come close to denting the door or windows." "That means..." "This part of the myth is looking busted." " Yep, busted." " Yep, busted." "But you know what?" "We still have a houseful of popcorn." "I say we max it out, see what happens." "I want to see what's gonna go first, the house or the popcorn." "Do it!" "All right, let's wreck this house!" "NARRATOR:" "With Grant's piston cranked to the max... 3, 2, 1." "NARRATOR:" "...this "test"" "is a transparent excuse to destroy stuff." "The only question is, will the popcorn crush into dust, or will the house come tumbling down?" "[Cheers]" "NARRATOR:" "And as it turns out, the popcorn wins out..." "Raise the roof!" "It blew the roof off!" "NARRATOR:" "Or at least Grant's giant piston did." "KARI:" "It wasn't really popcorn power." "That was how many tons of force?" "15." "So it was really just popcorn as a spacer." "Yeah." "So popcorn power didn't really destroy the house." " No." " But that was cool!" "[Laughter]" "NARRATOR:" "Adam and Jamie have already seen hints of the aerodynamic basis for this myth." " JAMIE:" "Oh, yeah." " Isn't that nifty?" "NARRATOR:" "On the next 70-miles-per-hour run, they're looking for physical evidence on the tissue-paper rain detectors." "Jamie, you may start your run now." "This is 70 miles per hour, gunning it." "NARRATOR:" "Gun it, Jamie does hitting his mark and holding steady at the target speed for the length of the course." "And cut the rain." "NARRATOR:" "And with no hydroplaning or dangerous spinout, it's time to take in the results." "Whoa, look at that!" "Wow, that's far out." "It looks like no rain at all hit the middle here, but we've got wetness up top here and on the left-hand side here." "JAMIE:" "It's important to note that whatever little water came in here on the 70-mile-an-hour run was a tiny, tiny fraction of what came in on the control." "ADAM:" "Totally." "I predicted there'd be less rain in the car on this run... not nearly this little." "There really seems to be something to this myth." "NARRATOR:" "A conviction only confirmed by the high-speed camera." "ADAM:" "That's really clear." "It's like there's a line." "It's a really visible bubble, isn't it?" "JAMIE:" "Yes." "That's what the windshield's for." "[Adam laughs]" "So it would seem." "NARRATOR:" "But the guys aren't done yet." "Adam, who will observe from a safe, dry distance, feels the need for more speed." "ADAM:" "Well, as far as I'm concerned, we should go for 100 miles an hour and see if we can get those boards to stay bone-dry." "I'd go ahead and leave the traction control on." "NARRATOR:" "But Brian, our safety driver, is concerned about the additional soaking the surface took from the real rain, so he suggests sticking to 90 miles per hour." "Try to countersteer it," " but if you can't, let it go." " Got it." "ADAM:" "Let's go to full pressure." "JAMIE:" "I am set and ready to go." "Awesome." "Jamie, you may start your 90-mile-an-hour run now!" "Let it rip." "And cut the rain!" "Nice work, Jamie!" "It didn't hydroplane." "Awesome!" "Let's open this top and see how we did." "Ho ho ho ho!" "Dude!" "Look at that!" "JAMIE:" "We wanted to find out whether driving fast when it's raining will actually keep you dry, and it turns out it does." "Around 25 miles an hour or so, it's not so effective, but as you go faster, it actually does deflect most of the rain." "Now, it's not that hard to understand, really, because the rain's coming down like this." "If you're going this way and got something in front of you, then it's gonna catch all the rain and send it up over the top of you, and you stay dry." "ADAM:" "So it does make sense to gun it." "The faster, the better, in fact." "Yeah, you might die in the process, but..." " You'll be dry." "...you'll be dry." "ADAM:" "Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for my closing argument," "I'd like to call your attention to exhibit 24, which is footage from the "Tailgate Up or Down?" Fuel-efficiency myth that "Mythbusters" filmed." "If you'll notice here at the water-oatmeal test, there's a bubble formed in the back of the pickup truck that allows air to flow over the back of the pickup truck." "The self-same aerodynamics that the engineers put into this sports car that allow it to be aerodynamic, even with the top down, create the same kind of bubble over the passenger compartment, and I contend that that's what keeps the passenger dry" "at high speed." "This is a conundrum, because I don't feel like it's right to call this one confirmed." "Yeah, driving really fast in the rain can be very dangerous." "How about plausible, but not recommended?" "I'll buy that." "NARRATOR:" "It's been a long and winding road for this popcorn parable." "Kari, Grant, and Tory have discovered explosions won't pop your corn." "That didn't work very well." "It didn't work at all." " NARRATOR:" "But lasers will." " [Cheers]" "NARRATOR:" "However, a giant ball of corn popped by a 5-megawatt laser leading to a house explosion is pure fiction." " KARI:" "Busted." " Yep, busted." "[Horn honks]" "TORY:" "Now, our house hasn't exploded yet, and this myth calls for an exploding house." "So we're out here at the bomb range, and this is the plan." "We're gonna load it with C-4 at the top and the bottom, and when this day is over, we should see splinters and popcorn, and that's all." "I don't think they taught me this in bomb school." "KARI:" "Well, we started with a bang, we're ending with a bang." "So, basically, we've got a boom-popcorn sandwich." "TORY:" "All right, you guys ready?" " Ready." " In 3, 2, 1." "ALL:" "Whoa!" "Look at the rain of popcorn coming down!" "Ohh!" "The rain of house, too." "Whoa!" "Now, that is exploding a house with popcorn." "Well, not really popcorn." "With C-4 surrounded by popcorn." "GRANT:" "To get this result, we had to go very far away from popcorn power." "It didn't really push up on the house." "It didn't blow the windows open." "It didn't really do a whole lot." "KARI:" "Popcorn power turned out to be science fiction." "This explosion... real genius." "[Chuckles]"