"Attention, viewers." "Do not try anything you are about to see at home." "We're what you call experts." "On this episode of "Mythbusters,"" "Adam and Jamie go on a grime wave with two frightfully filthy fables." "That is nasty." "First, they call in the rat pack." "Oh, I see some rat urine on a can." "For the terrible tale that rat pee on a pop can can kill." "Oh, this one is so gross!" "Then they test the myth that everyday items are dirtier than your toilet seat." "Mary had a little lamb." "Its fleece was white as snow." "Meanwhile, Jessi, Tory, and Grant cut to the chase..." "Why'd you stop?" "You were supposed to skip it." "...as they find out if a souped-up supercar..." "That's a fast car!" "...can bounce across the surface of a lake like a skipping stone." "We're like Thelma and Louise!" "Who are the Mythbusters?" "Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman." "Relax." "This won't hurt a bit." "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." "Joining them..." "Tory Belleci Grant Imahara..." "We're good to go." "...Kari Byron..." "That is terrifying!" "...and featuring Jessi Combs." "This is gonna be so rad!" "They don't just tell the myths." "They put them to the test." "What do you got there, a story about very small things?" "Yep." "We're talking about millions of tiny organisms that you come into contact with every day." "But some of them could have a nasty surprise waiting for you and be really harmful." "I got one that fits that bill." "I got a chain letter recently that stated a woman had died from a deadly pathogen she contracted drinking from a soda can tainted with rat urine." "That's exactly what I'm talking about." "Well, let's get to it." "Okay." "Wherever there are rats, filth follows." "But are soda cans really contaminated by rat pee?" "And, if they are, could drinking directly from the can be deadly?" "So, how do you want to test this?" "Well, you know, this myth is so pervasive, we need to get it right." "And that means we need to have a nice, large sample size." "Okay." "And I think we should start with a positive pee control so that we know what rat urine looks like, we know how to test for it, we know how to know when it's there." "And we need to just get a whole passel of rats, a bunch of cans, and let nature take its course, huh?" "Is "passel" the collective noun for rats?" "I don't know." "Well, actually, it's a horde, swarm, rabble, or pack of rats." "But before they get started..." "But I don't understand." "How is it possible that rat pee could kill you?" "Yes, it's not rat pee itself that could kill you." "It's the fact that rat pee could potentially carry both leptospirosis and hantavirus that makes it potentially dangerous." "I see." "According to this myth, deadly pathogens transfer from rat through rat urine to soda can, and from there, to people." "So first, they're starting with a positive control." "Now, normally, we certify our tasty, tasty Mythbusters cola as both a life-extending elixir and rat-pee free." "Until today." "Today, 1,000 of these puppies are gonna be set up as a rat run to be used as what we like to call a control for exposure to rat pee." "Adam and Jamie will hone their rat-pee-tracking technique before moving on to test real-world soda cans." "So, why go to all this trouble to clean the cans just to have rats pee on them?" "Well, it's because all we want to find is rat pee, not random dirt or other false positives that may be introduced into our test." "So, we scrub every single one." "And I got to say, looking at 1,000 cans, there's a lot of dirt to be cleaned up." "Now that the cans are pristine, let the rodent incontinence begin." "Oh, I see some rat urine on a can." "Nice!" "This is awesome." "This is one of those sounds that you'll only hear on "Mythbusters"... the sound of 40 rats on 1,000 cans." "And after 90 minutes of the pitter-patter of ratty feet..." "The rat party is wrapped." "Let's put them back in their cages." "There's certainly rat pee on those cans." "And the first tracking technique... black light." "Did you know that rat pee fluoresces under black light?" "That's the next thing we're gonna do." "Get some black lights and go take a look for 'em." "I feel like I'm in one of those police procedural dramas." "And with plenty of glowing puddles..." "It's got to be urine." "Lights up like a pinball machine." "Oh!" "This one is so gross!" "Look at that!" "...the boys are positive that the black light is the perfect way to pinpoint the pee." "Well, that's gross." "I guess it's time to collect our real-world random samples now." "Well, we better get started." "We've got 1,000 cans to collect from all over the city." "1,000." "Okay, let's do it." "With their identification method lighting up the pee, the main test begins as the guys collect 1,000 cans from a variety of sources, and a variety of storage conditions... some upmarket, some, uh... not so much." "All set?" "Ooh." "Uh, check this out, man." "First can, I see little fluorescing spotty spots." "That's a good sign." "I'm gonna put that in..." "no, it's a bad sign!" "I'm gonna put it in the "for further research" category." "A sign that gets worse with every can." "Spots." "Ooh." "Ugh, spots." "The whole world is contaminated!" "Spots." "What are we gonna do, dude?" "I mean, these can't be all contaminated, can they?" "Next, a myth that's sink or "skim. "" "Well, you guys may have figured out by now that, well, me and cars, we kind of have this thing." "And there's a myth on the fan site that I really want to test out." "All right, what is it?" "Are you familiar with the "Cannonball" films?" "Sure." "From the '80s, right?" "Okay, so, it's the third installment that our myth comes from." "The beginning of the movie, there's a red Lamborghini that is trying to evade the cops." "Well, there's a lot of speeding and a lot of weaving and trickery." "But, man, the cops are not going to accept defeat." "So what the sports-car driver does is he drives off the road and heads straight towards the lake." "He totally floors it, skips across the water, makes it to the other side, and gets away from the cops." "...Exactly." "... I love it." "Fast car skipping across the water?" "You should come here more often." "To flee the force, a speedy sports car skips the lake fantastic." "But is this filming fantasy or stone-fold fact?" "Could a 1.2-ton car really skim a pond like a skipping stone?" "So, what's the plan?" "I have watched the scene over and over in slow motion, and what I have found, that by watching frame by frame and measuring points of reference, the car wasn't going very fast... maybe 50 miles an hour." "It went off a little launch and skipped about four times over a 100-foot body of water." "Okay, sounds easy enough." "We get a Lamborghini, drive it at 50 miles an hour, and see if it can skip across 100 feet of water." "Who is gonna let us borrow their $250,000 car and drive into a lake to test this?" "I mean, it's not gonna happen." "This isn't gonna be easy." "No, it's not." "But although you can't always get what you want, sometimes, you get what you need." "What in the heck did she get that for?" "That doesn't look like a Lamborghini." "Yeah, far from it." "Supercar it ain't, but it's still a perfect stunt stand-in." "On price tag and top speed, the luxury car has ours beat." "But for this myth, what's key is that the surface area, weight, and weight distribution are almost identical." "But because nobody is volunteering to drive it into a lake, our resident control geek gets to work." "I got a plan." "I got a plan." "With Grant's remote control under control," "Tory's talking tracks." "Now, for this myth as well as the car, we need two things." "One, we need a long, straight road that we can get this car up to some pretty high speeds." "And two, at the end of that road, we need a 100-foot pond for this car to try to skip across." "Now, we've looked all over San Francisco." "We've looked all over California." "And we've come up with nothing, which means only one thing..." "road trip, baby." "Wouldn't it have been easier if we could fly?" "With local lakes few and far between, the team hits the road to a familiar location." "The last time the team visited the test track of Freightliner, they put some big-rig myths to the test." "With open space and miles of trackway, it was the perfect place to put their lives on the... what?" "And this time, they've added a crucial addition to the end of the track..." "a giant purpose-built pond ideal for a sports car to skip." "Only not this one." "This is just for show." "Why'd you stop?" "We're supposed to skip it." "Yeah, but that's why we have make-believe Lamborghinis." "Where did you get that car?" "Well, a good friend let me borrow it." "Forget the car." "What do you think about our pond?" "This is a gorgeous pond." "It's a little bit bigger than I thought it was gonna be." "Yeah, we made it to the same dimensions as in the movie... 100 feet long, 27 feet wide, and 3 feet deep." "Yep, with a perfect pond to skim," "Tory and Jessi break out the heavy machinery." "All right, so now what we're doing here is we are building a little ramp before we actually hit the water." "Why?" "Because that's what they had in the movie." "We can look at it as close as we possibly can, and that Lamborghini had a little bit of lift before it went across the water." "A little lift that equates to a movie-matching 8-inch mound." "With that time-lapsed into place," "Jessi casts the first stone." "Now, this whole myth is about skipping a car across the water like a stone." "I'm sure you've all tried it before." "If you get a smooth enough stone and you fling it just right, it'll actually bounce across the water surface." "But why?" "Well, it's all about spin and speed." "The spin of the stone stabilizes it and stops it from simply falling into the water." "And if the stone is traveling at a fast enough speed, then each time it hits the water surface and pushes some of the water downwards, the stone is forced upwards, so the stone continues to skip along the surface" "until, eventually, it runs out of speed and sinks." "So if skimming is all down to spin and speed, will a car that isn't revolving skip?" "There's something that doesn't look quite right with this car." "It doesn't look fast enough." "That's a fast car." "We are ready to find out if this car is gonna skip." "Is it gonna work?" "Probably not." "What I think is gonna happen is it might skip once." "Maybe." "Probably not." "Probably not." "It's not gonna make it to the end, either way." "Well, all is about to be revealed." "As Jessi heads to her vantage point, a clearly excited Grant starts the engines." "The car is on!" "This is it, you guys!" "And Tory gives the countdown." "The car skip just like in the movie." "Here we go." "In 3, 2, 1." "Hit it." "Dirty rats!" "They're everywhere." "But are these crafty rodents leaving disease-ridden calling cards on soda cans?" "Well, after examining 1,000 cans from all over San Francisco..." "I'm starting to lose my appetite." "...Adam and Jamie are worried." "So where does this leave us?" "Am I lying on a mountain of rat-pee-infested cans?" "Are we gonna need to add it as an ingredient on every soda can?" "Or..." "Did we just happen to see a bunch of other run-of-the-mill things that happen to fluoresce under black light?" "Well, the only way we're gonna know is by taking testing to another level." "Clearly, we need to swab the top of our sample and take it to a lab and find out what's on top of them for sure." "First up is the rat-pee-positive 1,000-can control." "I'll tell you one thing..." "I am never letting my rats play on my soda cans again." "The things you learn on this show." "Using a sterile swab dipped in sterile water, each can is swabbed, and then a vacuum extracts the sample." "I got to tell you." "This may be boring, and it may be painful, but it's also really cool." "Yeah, this is so much fun I can hardly stand it." "Oh!" "Oh-ho-ho-ho!" "Oh, it's like a concentrated pet store." "That's what that smells like." "The lab should show that their positive control is brimming with rat pee." "But will the random cans also have rodent remains, or did the black light get it wrong?" "You got to try the one-handed bag-opening can flip" "I got going on over here, Jamie." "It's really saving me time." "I can see that." "That is my last can." "I'm done." "I'll see you later." "Okay." "Eventually, with both samples collected, the Mythbusters head to Stanford University Thank you, sir." "... You're welcome." "...where Chris Adams and his mass spectrometer find out just how the two compare." "This meticulous machine will detect exactly what each sample contains... rat pee or otherwise." "The results are in." "...We're done?" "... The results are here." "First up is the positive control." "We identified 15 proteins specific to rat urine in the positive control samples." "Urinary proteins." "That would be rat pee." "...That's rat pee." "... Okay." "But what about the reason we're here?" "Yeah, was there any urine on the random sample?" "Absolutely none detected." "The real-world cans are clean!" "They are!" "That is a load off my mind." "Let's go get some sodas." "Turns out the black light had it wrong." "That glowing organic matter?" "Not rat pee, but harmless dust." "The mass spectrometer, however, is completely precise." "This machine is capable of detecting peptides on a femtomole level." "Something like one in a bazillion." "Or, in other words, it's extremely sensitive." "So if it says rat urine's not there, it ain't there." "But, given that millions of sodas are drunk every day," "Jamie's not prepared to call this without a second opinion." "He wants to find out if you could ever contract a deadly pathogen via a soda can." "So, how likely is it you could catch one of these bugs in this way?" "Highly unlikely." "In the case of leptospirosis, number one, the usual route of transmission is through broken skin that comes in contact with contaminated bodies of water." "Number two, the organism, when ingested orally, is rapidly killed in the stomach." "So, finally, leptospira is highly fragile, and it is rapidly killed when it's exposed to a dried environment." "So even if infected urine did make it onto a soda can, the pathogen would be long dead before anyone took a swig." "Hey, so what'd he say?" "Well, according to the good doctor, catching hantavirus or leptospirosis from rat pee on soda cans is all but impossible." "Well, that's great." "You couple that with our results where we found not a smidgen of rat protein whatsoever on 1,000 randomly collected cans, and I think we can call this one..." "Busted." "Yeah, busted." "Usually, when a car drives into water, it does anything but skip." "But according to this myth, a supercar can leap a lake in four bounds." "And at Freightliner H.Q., our intrepid trio is about to put that to the test." "The car is on." "Here we go." "We are about ready to take this and do exactly like they did in the movie, going 50 miles an hour, launching off the ramp, and "skipping" it across water." "Here we go." "In 3, 2, 1." "Hit it." "Grant's actuators put the pedal to the metal, and the mustard menace takes off." "As the car gains speed," "Grant expertly steers it straight down a guideline." "45..." "Until... 50 miles an hour!" "With a hop, a flip, and a thump, the car crosses the pond, but not quite as hoped." "That car didn't skip..." "it flipped!" "Oh, my gosh." "That was insane." "Look at what it did, though." "It actually made it to the other side of the pond." "That's not how it's supposed to do it!" "Wow." "Oh, wow." "Oh, my God, we destroyed this car." "Now, we matched pretty much every aspect of the movie... the ramp, the speed, the specifications of the car... and we got a completely different result." "What this means is that the movie stunt was faked, that it wasn't a real skip across a lake." "Now, the most likely scenario is that there was a submerged platform just a few inches below the surface of the water that the car actually bounced across." "In addition, in the movie, the car lands on its rear wheels first." "The only way it could have gotten that trajectory is if it were specifically weighted for the stunt." "Our car, on the other hand, was weighted to match a stock, off-the-lot 1980s-era Lamborghini, and it plummeted nose-first." "All this to say, however you look at it, this myth is busted." "Busted indeed." "But surely they're not gonna leave it there." "Next, Adam and Jamie go on a "grime" wave." ""Relative Filth..." "The Myth and the Plan,"" "take one." "Dude, this one's yours." "You're leading this one in." "...Can you remind me?" "... Yeah." "...Most people think their toilet seats are pretty dirty." "... Yeah." "This myth states that that's not necessarily the case, that there are many other locations and things within your average person's immediate vicinity that are far filthier than your toilet seat." "That's what we're gonna test." "We're gonna pick a bunch of different places, go out, take samples, grow cultures, compare the results, see what happens, that kind of thing." "Exactly." "Shall we start?" "...Yeah." "... Okay." "It seems every week there's a new claim about hidden household hazards." "But are the microscopic critters on everyday items more menacing than the beastly bugs found on the old porcelain throne?" "Well, the Mythbusters are on the "swab. "" "But where to start?" "Now, you may be wondering, what are the criteria under which we chose the samples that we are just about to test, and it's actually pretty straightforward... we looked for objects that you touch every single day" "that others might touch, too." "Great." "But since germs aren't visible to the naked eye, we'll need a way to track them down." "Allow me to demonstrate our sample collection methodology." "It begins with a dry cotton-tipped applicator, with which I swab a one-inch square of the object in question." "In this case, it's a scale model of the lunar lander." "Then, I dip that cotton swab in tryptic soy broth for exactly 10 seconds." "This is basically like a growth medium, sterile growth medium." "It's a liquid petri dish, if you will." "At the end of 10 seconds, which is... now," "I remove the cotton swab, cap and label my soy broth." "Later, I'll use it to try and grow some bacteria." "Yuck!" "If you'll excuse me, I've got some samples to collect." "First up, our yard stick..." "the toilet seat." "Mary had a little lamb." "Its fleece was white as snow." "3... 9... 10 seconds." "Money." "Mary had a little lamb." "His fleece was white as snow." "They're not regressing." "The rhyme ensures that each sample is swabbed for the same count." "Shopping-cart handle." "Mary had..." "Kitchen sponge." "Everything they swab has one thing in common had a little lamb." "Hotel room remote." "In a plethora of reports, they've all been deemed dirtier than a toilet seat." "Keyboard." "Light switch." "But can that really be true?" "Cellphone." "Hold on a second." "With the everyday eight collected, the guys call in Dr. Russell Vance, an expert in microbiology." "You guys ready?" "...Ready." "... Then let's begin." "Okay." "Number one, toilet seat." "A precisely pipetted amount of each broth is carefully transferred onto an agar petri dish." "Into the incubator they go." "They'll sit there overnight at 98.6 degrees." "And tomorrow, after a steamy night of bacteria breeding, there should be plenty of germy growths." "Let's go." "The colonies that are growing in there could be anything." "They could be yeast, mold, bacteria, whatever." "So what we're gonna do is we're gonna count and record the different types of colonies and also the overall abundance of them." "And based on that, we'll pick the dirtiest ones." "I see two." "That's it?" "Just two from the toilet seat?" "Just two." "This is already getting interesting." "The toilet seat is remarkably clean." "But that's not so true of the others... particularly the kitchen sponge." "Oh-ho-ho!" "Dude!" "That is nasty!" "Have fun counting that." "I'll see you next summer." "Yeah." "Well, we don't have that long, so Dr. Vance has a solution." "I think it's almost uncountable." "So, then how do you write that down?" "Well, I would say that's just off the charts." "The remaining six samples, from cellphone to light switch, are counted and logged." "Well..." "That's it." "All present and ac-count-ed for." "Which means it's time to sum up the results." "So, our everyday eight swabs have become eight petri dishes, which in turn have yielded eight results." "And those results are, in order from least filthy to most filthy..." "Can you editors help me out with a graphic here?" "That's better." "So, you can see, at number 8, with only 2 colonies, is the toilet seat." "And the colony-count increases only slightly until we reach number 4, the keyboard, with 65." "From there on, things start to get really dirty as the colonies go through the roof, with the light switch and the money before finally, topping the chart, we have the kitchen sponge, a sample so numerous" "we couldn't even count it." "So, does this mean that the kitchen sponge is the dirtiest thing in your house?" "Well, it actually all depends on what your definition of "dirty" is." "I mean, sure, there's a ton of colonies, but suppose those colonies are all totally harmless, whereas the two colonies we found on the toilet seat are really nasty?" "What we need to know now is what we're looking at on those petri dishes." "Luckily, we found a microbiologist to help us out." "Yep, it's over to Dr. Vance There you go." "... Fabulous." "...to find out exactly what kinds of ghastly germs lurk within our everyday eight." "Can a car skip a pond like a skimming stone?" "No, apparently not." "But, of course, the Mythbusters never leave any stone unturned." "All right, so the scene as portrayed in the movie is busted." "A car going that fast, hitting that ramp... there's no way it would skip to freedom." "But that's got me thinking..." "I wonder what it would take for a sports car like that to make it all the way across the water surface by skipping?" "Well, that's why we have our patented small scale here at "Mythbusters. "" "We'll take a 1/12 scale car, a 1/12 scale pond, we'll fiddle around with the parameters until it works, and then we'll take it full scale." "And those parameters include presence or absence of the ramp..." "What are we waiting for?" "Let's go!" "...speed." "Don't forget the speed." "And to find out exactly what it will take to skip a car, first, they'll need a scale vehicle." "So what I have here is a 1/12 scale Lamborghini." "It's an exact replica in every detail except for one... the weight." "They did not scale their weight correctly." "All right, so, right now, this weighs 4 pounds." "I need to get it to 2 pounds." "This is a pretty nice car." "It kind of pains me to do this." "Look at the detail on this thing." "It's a little auto shop of horrors as Tory strips his teeny turbo down to 2 pounds." "You're probably thinking to yourselves," ""Uh, it's not aerodynamic anymore. "" "Well, this is how I'm gonna take care of that problem." "I'm gonna use some tape to cover up all the holes." "And that way, it'll remain aerodynamic and light." "So with a streamlined supercar, how's the small scale gonna go down?" "So, I had this car jacked up." "All you need to do is hit the gas and then stick this car underneath the wheel, which will fire it out just like a baseball pitching machine." "It'll go down the track, into the trough, and skip across the water." "At least, that's the plan." "I haven't really tested this yet." "As a final touch, Tory adds a bike speedometer to track the speed of the car when it's pushed into the wheel." "First things first, we're gonna set it up just like in the movie with a slight ramp and a scale car going at a scale 50 miles an hour." "Here we go." "In 3, 2, 1!" "Wow." "That was exciting." "Maybe not, but off the ramp at 50 miles per hour, the car noses into the water, just like the full-scale." "All right, so my theory is that we need to ditch the ramp and have the car come into the water at a lower angle." "So for this next test, we're gonna do it at myth speed." "50 miles an hour... or a scale speed of 14 miles an hour." "And we won't have the ramp." "So we'll see if it works any better." "3, 2, 1." "Whoo." "That was cool." "Indeed it was." "That was a small-scale car skip." "Now, without the ramp, going at 50 miles an hour, the car skipped." "Eventually, it sank, but it did skip." "So it's obvious that the ramp is a hindrance." "The shallower the angle of attack, the better it is." "And I think if we get the car going fast enough, we're gonna get that little Lamborghini to skip the whole way." "Well, for kicks and giggles, should we try and go faster?" "...Like 100 miles an hour?" "... Yeah." "Yeah!" "Hit it." "20." "28." "Oh-ho-ho!" "Holy crap!" "Tory's right." "At 100 miles per hour, the model car skips and would skip again, except it runs out of trough." "Check out this high-speed." "At 28 miles an hour, which is 100 miles an hour for a real car, the car is skipping across the water, which means speed is gonna be a huge factor when we go to do this full scale." "But this is just small scale." "This is a toy we're using right now." "When we go to full scale, using a car weighing 2,600 pounds, who knows what's gonna happen." "Dirt." "It's everywhere." "You can't run, and you can't hide." "But is there more frightening filth lurking on everyday items than on your toilet seat?" "Adam and Jamie are finding out, and the results are in." "For those of you playing at home, it is finally time to count down the everyday eight." "Now, this is the table based solely on colony count." "And as you can see, kitchen sponge, off the charts, is the filthiest thing we found." "Toilet seat... the cleanest." "But check out what happens to this list when we account not only for the number of bacterial colonies, but also for how nasty they might be." "Toilet seat moves up a couple of notches, specifically because while it only had two colonies, those colonies were actually pretty nasty." "The other big movers, hotel remote control moved down because it had some colonies, but they weren't actually bacteria." "And the cellphone moved up because what was on it was pretty nasty." "But, staying strong at number 1, kitchen sponge, which had acine..." "This stuff, which is apparently pretty bad if you have a weakened immune system." "James Franklin Hyneman, what do you think?" "Nice work." "But I don't think we can call it yet." "I mean, it's only a single, solitary swab." "We need a larger sample size." "All right." "Well, what say we choose the top five... toilet seat as a control, plus the four top contenders, and do a really nice large sample size with those." "...Our filthy five." "... Works for me." "So, to expand their sample size, they're off to U.C. Berkeley, where a class of microbiologists are about to start Mythbusting 101." "Hello." "Hello." "We need your help." "We've selected several surfaces that we're calling the filthy five." "Now, these are surfaces that people come into contact with on a daily basis, and the question we need to answer is, how dirty are they?" "That's where you come in." "Now, in order to get a nice, big, fat sample size, we need 50 of you to collect us samples from the following..." "Toilet seat, a light switch, a kitchen sponge, money, and a computer keyboard." "Can you guys help us?" "Yes!" "Awesome." "And with a hunger for the filthy five facts, our mob of microbiologists quickly get the swab done." "Mary had a little lamb." "Its fleece was white as snow." "Then, once again, the samples are transferred to the petri agar, incubated, counted, and finally DNA tested." "Want more?" "Log on to discovery. com/mythbusters." "Go!" "So far, in the "Cannonball Run" caper, we've seen a spectacular flip, but there's been no skip." "But after small-scale success, this myth is far from "sunk. "" "In the small-scale tests, we did learn a couple of important things." "Yeah, first thing is that the ramp has got to go." "We need to glide onto the water surface as seamlessly as possible." "So the ramp is out." "And also, speed is a very important factor here." "The faster the car is going, the better chances it has of getting across the pond." "Now, how fast are we talking?" "...Are we talking rocket fast?" "... No." "It's actually surprising how little speed we need." "All we would have to do is get another sports car, take it to the max, and it should make it across the water." "But just in case, why don't I add some nitrous just for the extra little kick?" "Perfect." "Wait." "Yes." "I think I see some radio controlling in my future." "It's like you're a mind reader." "Yep, Grant's the controlling type, and luckily, the team has found just the thing for test two." "So, we pretty much know what went wrong with the first car." "Believe it or not, we got a second car of the same vintage, and this one is as good as gold." "In fact, it is gold." "But before we can take it back to madras for a second try, we've got to do a little radio-control magic." "Now, after its trip across the water," "I managed to salvage the control system..." "And here it is." "Now all I have to do is install this in the second car, and we'll be ready to go." "Since I've already done this once, it should be pretty easy." "Once again, it's a simple setup of servo, cylinders, and wiring." "Which one is it?" "The brown wire, the other brown wire, or the other other brown wire?" "And while Grant's installing his system," "Jessi is giving the horsepower a boost." "Okay." "So what we have here is a normal engine." "Air comes in, mixes with fuel, and then is dispersed down into the cylinders." "Now, we need this little engine to go as fast as we can possibly make it go." "So we're gonna be adding nitrous." "Now, what nitrous does is it's added into the mixture, helping cool it down, giving it a more dense charge." "It adds more o xygen, all of this making the rate of combustion happen a whole lot faster, which, in turn, makes this little car go as fast as we want it to go." "You know what would make this car more awesome?" "Flames." "'Cause everybody knows that cars with flames are more awesome." "See?" "I told you." "While flames undoubtedly add style," "Jessi's NOS system will add much-needed speed." "All right, being the fact that this is an older car, it's not gonna want to get up to the speeds that we really want it to." "So adding this nitrous is definitely gonna help us get across that water." "Especially by looking at all of our past tests, we need as much speed as we can get." "So this is just gonna be one of those added benefits." "So basically, all I got to do is hook up the nitrous, tap into the fuel line to wire it, and it's ready to go." "It's very, very simple." "Okay, so the car is looking great." "The radio system's in." "Jessi's added the sheet metal on the bottom to reduce the drag, and the NOS system to increase the speed, and Tory has finished the nose cone." "Now all we have to do is go back to Oregon and see once and for all if we can get a car to skip." "What could possibly go wrong?" "This ain't built for comfort, that's for sure." "But, man, it sure looks good." "They've souped up their supercar to give it the best chance of a skip." "But there's still one more modification to make." "The first thing I have to do is get rid of this ramp." "I'm gonna get my big digger and knock this thing out of here." "Counterintuitively, ramping up this test means getting rid of the ramp." "Who said TV's not glamorous?" "Pfft!" "This little wire right here?" "This is the "go, baby, go" wire." "Now, my only concern is that this system gives out over a 100 horsepower boost to the engine." "That's basically doubling this little guy's horsepower." "So my concerns lie in the fact of possibly blowing up before it actually hits the water." "But I have faith that it's actually gonna make it all the way." "Mostly." "Thanks to the nitrous, it'll be traveling at twice the speed of the last test." "And if the car is traveling fast enough, each time it hits the surface, forcing water downward, the opposing force of the water pushing up on the car should propel it forward." "At least, that's the theory." "Nitrous bottle is now open." "System engaged." "Nothing's gonna happen until you push your "go" button." "...All right." "... All right." "No turning back now." "Grant nervously makes his last-minute checks, and then it's go time." "All right, time to turn on the car." "The vehicle is in drive." "Yay!" "Okay." "Ahh." "Dude, has it hit you yet?" "We are about to skip a car across a pond!" "This is crazy, man!" "This is totally, totally crazy." "We're like Thelma and Louise!" "We are?" "I just say dumb things when I'm excited." "Okay." "In 3, 2, 1." "Hit it." "Okay, brakes off." "And... here we go." "It's make or break time." "Grant builds up the speed, then presses the "go, baby, go" button." "Here goes the nitrous." "The car surges forward, and then when it reaches the edge of the lake, physics take over." "...Yeah!" "... Yeah!" "We skipped a car across a lake!" "Yeah!" "The Mythbusters understandably can't contain their excitement." "That was a full-scale car skip." "The high speed shows the supercar skipped twice across the 100-foot lake and then continued to drive on the far bank." "That is, until Grant remembers to apply the brakes." "Yes!" "It's crazy." "I was piloting in the car." "We hit the water." "I saw a big splash." "Like, okay, we hit the water." "And then the water went down, and the car was still driving on the other side!" "We did it!" "We skipped!" "And this little guy!" "I'm so proud of it!" "I am so proud of it..." "we doubled its horsepower." "More than doubled its horsepower." "And it's still running." "Look!" "I'm so happy." "We did it!" "We set out to skip a car, and we actually did it!" "I mean, the small scale said it would work, but we didn't believe it." "But we brought it out here, and it did it!" "It did exactly what the small scale did!" "Seeing is believing." "I can't get over this." "We actually skipped a car across a pond." "It's so awesome that they're both still running." "I can't believe it worked!" "I know." "We got our car to flip and skip." "All right, last one to the shop!" "I know a shortcut!" "Go, go, go, go, go!" "Whoo-hoo!" "Eat our dust!" "You guys, that was pretty awesome." "I have never seen anything like that before." "I mean, we totally replicated the result and we got a car that weighs over a ton to bounce across the surface of a pond." "I know." "And how cool was that high speed?" "Absolutely." "But you know, the most amazing thing is how little it actually took to do it." "I mean, that was a 15-year-old car going a little bit more than highway speed." "No rockets, no special tires, no ramp, and no underwater platform." "And it skipped across the lake." "Just like the small scale said it would." "I agree." "However, I'm with Grant..." "I just cannot believe how easy it was to do." "In fact, it's so easy," "I think we really need to stop and say do not try this at home." "Yes." "But let's keep in mind, the movie is still busted." "Of course!" "Going 50 miles an hour with a ramp, and you're going for a swim." "Yeah, but you get rid of that ramp, you put the pedal to the metal, and you just might make it home safe and dry." "Yep." "You know what I think?" "I think we need to look at that high speed shot one more time." "Absolutely." "'Cause with results like these, we're, uh, skipping over ourselves to show you them again." "But spectacular high-speeds aside, let's not forget that there's another dirty story awaiting conclusion." "And after a swath of swabs, and a deluge of DNA tests, that conclusion is at last cooked." "Ladies and gentlemen, it is finally time for the filthy five countdown." "In order from cleanest to dirtiest, and starting at number five, we have the light switch." "Number four, our control, the toilet seat." "Number three... the keyboard." "Number two... money." "And the number-one dirtiest thing of everything that we tested, he's back on top after a year of hard training..." "Jamie, come on in and name number one." "The kitchen sponge." "Where does that leave us?" "Well, given the myth that there are everyday things in your house that are far filthier than your toilet seat," "I'd say it's totally confirmed." "Confirmed it is."