"Do not try any of the experiments you are about to see at home." "You heard him." "Don't do it." "On this shocking episode of "MythBusters,"" "there's the most explosively epic high speeds in "MythBusters" history..." "Wow!" "...As Adam and Jamie dig the dirt on a myth from World War I." "When we say we're gonna be digging holes, actually this thing's gonna be digging holes." "Can the shape of a battlefield trench..." "What did you do today?" "I spray painted some dirt." "...Really stop a shockwave and save a soldier's life?" "This is for real." "Three, two, one." "Bye-bye!" "I think there's gonna be a crater there." "Meanwhile, Kari, Grant, and Tory are clowning around." "I just feel silly." "I don't know why." "In a comedy car crash, can a barrage of balloons..." "Tory, it's fun time!" "...really aspire to be an alternative airbag, or will this myth go pop?" "Here we go, in three, two, one..." "Who are the MythBusters?" "Adam Savage..." "Right, Jamie, I'm ready for testing!" "...and Jamie Hyneman." "What can go wrong?" "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." "Together with Kari Byron..." "That is a headache!" "...Grant Imahara..." "Somebody order an explosion?" "...and Tory Belleci." "Let's chop this car up!" "They don't just tell the myths." "They put them to the test." "MythBusters 11x02" " Trench Torpedo Original air date October 14, 2012" "Aren't you gonna ask me about my costume?" "Nope." "I'm gonna tell you the story anyway." "It comes from the fansite and obviously it's from World War I." "Are you gonna make some kind of joke about me being a boy in World War I?" "No." "I promise I won't." "The myth is that in World War I," "Germans were very precise about the digging of their trenches." "Towards what end?" "They thought when a mortar landed in the trench, the 90-degree corners would prevent the blast pressure wave from traveling too far in the trench." "They really were specific about it being sharp corners." "They didn't want rounded corners that were worn away by people walking through." "Sharp, sharp corners." "That's the story." "All right." "Earth-moving equipment and explosives!" "Sounds like a perfect day." "World War I's trench warfare was wretched, but could a carefully constructed corner really have an impact on soldiers' survival?" "It's a myth that shakes down to shockwaves." "A clumsy corner will supposedly let a shockwave sail right past, while a perfect pitch will stop it dead." "But will this myth hit the wall?" "What's the plan?" "Well, I'm thinking absolutely this is a story that we want to start in small scale." "I'm thinking specifically using water ripples as our waves and watching them move through environments that match the shape of the trenches that we're thinking about." "That makes sense, and I tell you what... why don't we make it like one of those wave machines, you know?" "The desktop toy that has oil over tinted water?" "Fantastic." "That will slow down the reaction and hopefully we can see what's going on." "Exactly." "So, supersonic shockwaves we'll let rip later, as the guys first dive into this myth with water." "This whole story is about how different-shaped trenches affect the propagation of blast pressures through those trenches, and we want to investigate some of these shapes here in the shop before going full scale." "We've decided to build our trenches out of clear acrylic, and we're going to fill them full of oil and water to watch the wave propagation." "Isn't that cool?" "!" "We're gonna build one long straight one." "It's not pretty, but it'll do." "We're gonna build one that's, kind of, like a step." "Freaking sexy, man." "And then we're gonna build one loosey goosey one to see what effect the round edges have that's different than the sharp edges." "That's how you are meant to be." "Yes." "It's all falling into place." "With the three tiny trenches bonded together, the filling can commence..." "first with water, and then with baby oil." "This is all the baby oil San Francisco had today." "Somewhere in the world, there's a lot of rough babies." "The tricky trio of oil, water, and food dye..." "That looks cool, doesn't it?" "...Should ensure that any wave propagation pattern is crystal clear." "I like it when my waves smell like babies!" "But what's also clear is that an explosion in air it ain't." "Now before you get all up in arms about the fact that this myth is about blast-pressure waves and we're doing a bunch of scale experiments with plex boxes and oil and water, please remember that an ocean wave..." "Whoa!" "...a sound wave and a blast-pressure wave are all effectively, mechanically the same thing." "They are a moving wave." "And since this whole story is about the idea that the shape of a trench can affect a wave, we consider these scale tests to be totally valid and analogous to what we expect to see when we go full scale." "The final ingredient for this accurate analogy is to create a consistent crest." "Now I've got to figure out a way to do this mechanically, but I think I've got an idea." "So Adam hits the workshop once more, and this time gets hammered." "And before you can say "surf's up,"" "he's got waves as smooth as silk, meaning the experiment can begin." "So, this is our impulse wave." "It is our stand in for a shockwave." "The motor is giving an exactly perfect pulse and delivering a wave that carries all the way to the end of our tank with a measurable amplitude..." "that is, a height." "Now what we're gonna do is put this rig at the same exact orientation in each of our tank trenches and see what effect their shape has on the amplitude of the wave at the end." "So are we ready to mark it down?" "Yeah." "Let's get our control done." "Lights!" "Isn't that cool?" "Here we go." "On cue, the machine ripples into action before Adam marks the waves' high and low points at the far end of the straight trench." "Our control was successful." "Our wave-impulse machine gave us a wave height from top to bottom at the end of the tank of three quarters of an inch." "Now we want to find out if we get the same results when we run this same test through a right-angle bend." "Oil and water wave test in a right-angle tank." "Three, two, one." "Huh..." "looks like a pretty clear result just right off the top of my head." "It's a lot larger on this end than it is on this one." "Yeah." "That is cool." "Our right-angle tank seems to be quite effective at reducing wave amplitude." "After the first corner, it was reduced by two-thirds, and after the second corner, it was reduced by three-quarters." "That's significant." "Yep, by the time the wave reaches the end of this tank, its size has been severely slashed, meaning that the sharp corners did shield their shockwave stand in." "Soft corners, here we come." "So, how will their curved corner compare?" "Go." "It looks a little bigger down here." "It does look a little bigger down there." "We might have something." "And on closer inspection, they do." "This test's wave height is a quarter of an inch... lower than the control, but higher than the sharp-turn tank." "So, what does that mean for the myth?" "So the myth is that in World War I," "Germans built their trenches on precise 90-degree angles on the assumption that it would limit the strength of shockwaves traveling thorough the trenches." "Our scale testing here in the shop with our small-scale trenches in all the shapes that we've tried seems to suggest that they might have been right." "This is one of my favorite scale experiments we've ever done." "What do you think?" "Well, this story is about blast pressure." " We need explosives." " Absolutely." "That is definitely the next step... digging some trenches and blowing some stuff up." " Yep." " I'm gonna get a costume on." "Okay." "Next up, it's time to call in the clowns." "All right, I've got a crazy myth for you." "It involves clowns and car crashes." "Two clowns are driving to a party." "The clown in the passenger side has a big bunch of balloons." "What happens?" "They go out of control and crash the car?" "Exactly." "Now, the driver clown is wearing a seatbelt, so when they careen into a wall, he's fine, but the passenger is not." "What, and the balloons save him?" "Exactly." "It's a myth that makes for one heck of a headline." "But can a bunch of party balloons really act as an improvised airbag, or will this road-speed wipeout go pop?" "All right, this is what we should do." "We should crash two cars." "We'll have them traveling at road speeds of around 35 miles an hour, and with the first car, we'll see what happens to an un-seatbelted passenger." "Great, and for the second one, we can put an average bunch of balloons in the passenger seat and see what that does to the G-loads." "Okay." "Let's start clowning around." "So, we are testing the myth that a bunch of balloons will save a clown's life in a car crash." "Now, we are gonna be crashing a bunch of vehicles, but before we stick a clown and balloons in there, we need to transform that into a clown car." "Let's go to work." "According to police reports, the clowns were driving a run-of-the-mill runaround like this." "I just feel silly." "I don't know why." "Albeit one that had been pimped for a party." "Yeah." "It's a blue circle." "And after Tory finishes his stripes and stars, this car is ready to take the plunge." "So, the clown car is done." "Now it's time for the fun part." "We're gonna take it up with the crane and drop it straight on its nose, as if it's crashing into a wall at 35 miles an hour, and find out what kind of forces we're gonna get." "The vertical drop..." "Whoa!" "Direct hit!" "...is a curious way to crash cars, but with no chance of a rogue runaway..." "Oh!" "...or a flattened fence..." "No, no, no, don't." "...it's the most reliable rig for a party-balloon pile up." "So, first up, we are gonna do a control test with the driver belted in and the passenger not belted in and see what kind of G-loads we get." "Now, remember, there won't be any balloons in that test." "In the second test, we're gonna do the exact same thing, but this time put a bunch of balloons in front of the passenger and see what difference that makes." "And do to just that, the guys first need a couple of clowns." "Who, once dressed to kill..." "I'm making him smile." "...Are put into their respective hot seats where just like the myth, the driver is buckled up, but his passenger is not." "How come the clown wouldn't wear a seatbelt?" "The final piece of the puzzle is to add the data sensors, and that means it's time to get scientific." "What I have here is an accelerometer." "Now, we'll have two of them." "One will be attached to the clown's head and to the chest." "Now, when the crash happens, voltage will be sent to the data logger, and that way, we'll be able to record the event." "Then we'll look at the data later and find out how many G's the clown endured." "A survivable G-load is anything under 100 G's." "That's our benchmark." "Now, to measure that, we have our PCB accelerometers and the help of our friend David from National Instruments." "And with that, everything's set for liftoff." "Send in the clowns." "We've got all of our sensors in place." "Now it's time to raise the car." "There we go." "We caught a big one." "We've calculated that if we raise the car 41 feet from the bumper to the ground, we can achieve a 35-mile-per-hour crash." "All right, this is clown car control test." "In three, two, one." "In "Trench Torpedo,"" "Adam and Jamie's small-scale test..." "It looks a little bigger down here." "...has shown that a sharp corner can stop a watery wave." "This is really, really cool." "But how about an explosive one?" "Well, that seemed to work pretty well." "Maybe there is something to the technique." "Yep, I think it's time to build some real trenches and use some real explosives." " Let's get digging." " Okay." "So, to dig the dirt on this myth full scale, the guys march to a memorable location." "We're in Ione, California, today, and I'm standing on the exact spot where we actually tested the "drain disaster" myth of all things." "Whoa!" "Today, however, we're gonna go back in time and dig a bunch of World War I trenches and subject them to some enemy fire." "It's gonna bring back a lot of memories for Jamie." "Like in their shop tests, the guys are gonna throw together three trenches." "Trench number one." "The straightaway, the rigid right angle, and the shoddy serpentine." "That looks cool." "And once they're all marked up, the digging can go down." "Where, thanks to some heavy machinery and a time-lapsed montage, their three 50-footers get sunk fast." "But that doesn't mean it's job done." "Not many people know this, but Jamie's family are color farmers." "They've been farming color like this on specially treated pieces of plywood out in the fields for years." "This is totally not true." "Not even a little bit." "In fact, we are color-coding our trenches so that both from a sequence and narrative standpoint, you can clearly see which trench we're doing at a given time, but also experimentally, they'll help you separate them in your mind." "The color coding does help tailor-make each tunnel..." "It's coming along nicely." "...but the boards are also there to shore up the sides." "Why are we shoring up the sides?" "Well, really specifically, it's so that we get perfectly straight edges and precise corners for our blast wave to move through." "That's how we're going to assess the soul of this story." "Of course, there's one part of one trench where strictly straight sides are not the order of the day." "This one..." "the imprecise corner trench... we are leaving uncovered with the wood on the curvy parts to get the biggest difference that we possibly can." "Also, for visual symmetry, we're gonna paint it blue to match the walls." "Here we go." "Wow!" "Whoo-hoo!" "Yeah!" "Adam's tickled pink by the blue, but what's more important is that with that, it's time to bring on the boom." "Our trenches are dug." "They're shored up." "Heck, they're even color coded." "Now, it's time for the explosives." "Our benchmark control test will be this trench... the 50-foot-long straight." "It should give us a fantastic idea of what happens to a blast wave as it travels through exactly this configuration." "And when we've got that data, we're gonna do the same test in this one, which is the classic German sharp-edged right-angle trench." "And we'll compare the two." "And finally, we'll be sending an explosive blast wave through our soft-cornered serpentine trench, and if there's anything to this story whatsoever, what we expect to see is a higher blast pressure where I'm standing than in the corresponding spot" "in our hard-cornered trench." "All right, let's bring on the explosions!" "It's enough to make a clown frown, but can party balloons really save your life in a 35-mile-an-hour fender bender?" "To find out, the MythBusters control car is about to crash land." "All right, are you ready to drop the clown car?" "In three, two, one..." "Whoo!" "I don't think those clowns survived." "To the naked eye, the 35-mile-an-hour head-on looks horrific." "But survival is all about the G-load, where anything over 100 means there's been a clown catastrophe." "Now, the driver with seatbelt experienced 150 G's." "That's well over our benchmark for fatality." "But even more interesting, the passenger that didn't have a seatbelt on or an airbag experienced 630 on the chest and 340 on the head." "That is devastating." "It's gonna be really interesting to see if the balloons will have any impact on the numbers." "So, cue clown car 2." "Another day, another clown car." "Like the control test, the driver clown is buckled up while the passenger isn't." "You think this wig absorbed any of the energy?" "But unlike the control test..." "Tory, it's fun time!" "...Drop 2 will have the mythical balloon barrier." "All right, now it's time to put the balloons in the car." "Now, the theory here is these balloons are gonna act as an airbag." "Now, the goal of any airbag is to slow the passenger's forward motion as evenly as possible in just a fraction of a second." "I'm not sure these balloons are going to function that way, but it's sure gonna be fun to find out." "All right, this is clown car drop with balloons." "Are you ready?" "Okay, in three, two, one." "Negative one!" "Now, that is what I call a party." "I don't think they survived it, though." "Once again, the crash was a smash as the passenger pushed past the balloon barrier and wiped out on the windshield." "All right, Dave, the big question on everyone's mind... did the balloons save the clown's life?" "Well, in the first drop with no balloons, the passenger saw 340 G's at the head, 630 G's at the chest." "And the drop with the balloons, the passenger saw 350 G's to the head, and 620 at the chest." "So, the results are pretty much the same." "The balloons didn't do anything for him." "Almost no difference at all." "Thanks for your help." "Come on, I'll show you my balloon animals." "Whoo-hoo!" "So, it turns out an average bunch of party balloons is not enough to save your life in a car crash, but it's not such an outlandish idea." "An airbag is an inflatable, and so is a balloon." "Maybe there is a balloon out there or a configuration of balloons that we could make that would save your life in a car wreck." "In other words, the myth may be down, but burst it ain't." "Coming right up in "Trench Torpedo,"" "the high-speed shots that put the awe in awesome." "Wow." "Welcome back." "All episode long, we've been testing a myth from World War I that a sharp-cornered trench is better in warfare than a soft, rounded-corner trench because it inhibits blast waves from traveling through the trenches sent by exploding mortar shells." "We are now at the full-scale phase of this test, and we have a bunch of beautiful trenches out here in gold country in northern California." "We have some explosives in our arsenal..." "Nice." "Yet another use for duct tape." "...and any minute now, we're gonna start blowing some stuff up for science." "Indeed, but for test one, there will be a torpedo, but there won't be a trench." "Right here in this very spot, shortly we'll be setting off 25 pounds of TNT as our open air, unobstructed control test." "We've got sensors placed at 10-foot increments because shortly after that, we'll be setting off explosions in the trenches and collecting and comparing similar data." "In other words, the open air blast should give the guys a bonus benchmark." "Are you ready?" "Are you the keymaster?" "I am the keymaster!" "Are you gozer?" "I'm gozer, baby." "All right." "Here we go." "Above ground blast in three, two, one." "Whoa!" "I could feel that." "That was like a refreshing breeze that lasted a very short period of time." "It sure was a refreshing flare up, and the good news is that the high speed's the bomb." "Look at that." "Wow, that might be one of the prettiest ones we've ever gotten on camera." "But the better news is they got the data." "20 feet from the blast and pressure was 39 pounds per square inch." "30 feet, it was 12, and by 50 feet, it had dropped to just 5." " Straight trench." " Yep." "But how will those numbers differ once the guys get down and dirty?" "The myth of the clown car crash..." "Now that is what I call a party." "...is so far looking like balloon baloney." "But all is not lost." "All right, so that didn't work." "The clown pushed right through the balloons." "True, but there are other types of balloons than the ones that we tested." "Well, it sounds like we should do some small-scale tests." "Maybe we should take a weight, drop it on different types of balloons and see which balloon decelerates the weight the best." "I like it." "So far, we haven't had any success at all with using balloons as airbags." "They just don't cut it." "So what we need to do now is look at balloons and find out which one absorbs the most energy, and to do that, I'm going to build a balloon-crushing rig." "And to rustle up said rig," "Grant first wrestles up some giant metal rings..." "Hula hoop anyone?" "Ow." "...Which are then welded together into a tube..." "It's science!" "...Before being plastered with plastic." "Done." "Then just two things remain." "A wooden drop disc with a dead-on diameter." "Good." "And an explanation of how on earth it works." "So the balloon basher is finally finished." "I've got my polycarbonate cylinder with the steel-reinforcing frame." "I've added this plunger right here with the 50-pound weight." "Now, the idea is that we drop this onto each type of balloon." "Using the same weight and the same volume of balloons each time, we can compare and find out which type of balloon absorbs the most energy." "With the rig at the ready, the testing can tumble starting with the control." "Here we go." "This is control test with no balloons in three, two, one." "Okay." "Okay, control is 100 G's." "Next, it's time to bring on the balloons... 8 Beginning with the type from their earlier test." "15 air-filled latex balloons." "In three, two, one." "Immediately, it's clear that the regular latex balloons barely curtailed the crusher at all as the accelerometer data almost matches the control." "Now we're gonna move on and see which is better... different materials and different shapes like this." "With no balloon left behind, next up it's..." "Balloon animal!" "To ensure a correct comparison..." "Look at that one." "That's not a freak of nature at all." "...the guys fill the cylinder to precisely the same depth." "I'm making a pterodactyl." "But will their curious creations..." "Oh, that's a good one." "Yeah." "It's an octopus." "...lower the G-load at all?" "Balloon animals in three, two, one." "That worked pretty good." "That worked better than I thought it would." "This is really cool." "Look, it goes from 100 to 6." "We got 6 G's from the balloon animals?" "Yeah." "With the G-load slashed so significantly, balloon animals may yet be top dog." "But next it's..." "Little balloons." "All right, small latex party balloons." "They're so adorable." "Three, two, one." "They might be little, but, man, they do a good job!" "Tory's right." "These miniature marvels did such a good job that they cut the G's to just 2.8." "But can that be bettered with the next party pitch?" "Big balloon." "The advantage of these bad boys is that they're made of a thicker latex, which could lower the load." "Waahh!" "Ow!" "All right, giant party balloons." "Here we go, in three, two, one." "Oh, my God." "Come look at this one." "Look at the oversize one." "We've got 2." "I think we have a winner!" "I know, isn't that crazy?" "That's awesome!" "So, now what we need to do is take this to full scale, fill up a car, drop it, and see if it saves a clown's life." "Yeah, now it's a party." "Whoo-hoo!" "Ow." "Please don't try anything you're about to see at home." "We're what you call experts." "In three, two, one." "Whoa!" "Adam and Jamie's open-air blast is beautifully done and dusted, which means now, it's time to dig deeper." "We are tied in here." "First up is the control trench." "Here we are." "50 feet of green straightaway that's about to get rocked." "All right." "Straight trench in three, two, one..." "Wow!" " Things are falling." " Yeah." "Many things are falling from the sky." "That was spectacular." "Spectacular and spine-chilling." "Oh, man." "Their straight and true trench has been well and truly trashed." "Well, our first trench test was..." "I think the word I'm going to use is gangbusters!" "The level of destruction is really shockingly higher than I would have expected." "The fireball itself reached almost 35 feet down this trench." "It is... it's horrifying." "It's just horrifying." "Both the hijinks and the high speed suggest that the blast was harsh, but what do the PCB sensors say?" "Well, our pressure sensor data from the trench test is very, very interesting." "Editors, will you help me out?" "Draw two lines." "Fantastic." "Label one "trench" and one "above ground."" "Now put down the sensor data that we got." "See that?" "See that?" "The trench seems to have an amplifying effect on the shockwave." "It's significantly higher in the trench than above ground." "Now, does the shape of the trench affect that amplification?" "Well, that's the question, isn't it?" "In "Party Balloon Pileup,"" "the guys now know the best-case balloon." "I think we have winner!" "So cue more car-crash carnage." "We're gonna run the test the exact same way." "We have our two clowns... one in the passenger seat without a seatbelt, one in the driver seat with the seatbelt." "Both of them will have accelerometers attached to them." "We're gonna take the car up with the crane, drop it from 41 feet so it's traveling at 35 miles an hour, let it crash into the ground, and see if the balloons make a difference." "Remember, with regular latex balloons, the clowns peaked at 620 G's... six times over the lethal limit." "But for this test, the guys aren't just opting for their optimal thick balloons." "I like to pump some helium every now and again." "Yeah." "They're also packing them in as tightly as possible." "This is like how we used to pack for family trips." "Take her up." "So, we're about to drop the clown with the balloons." "Now, remember, our benchmark is 100 G's." "We need to see the balloons decrease the G-load below that." "If he goes over 100 G's, the clown is dead and so is this myth." "All right, this is clown car drop with our best latex balloon." "Here we go in three, two, one." "Yeah." "Oh!" "Oh, my gosh!" "I think it might have worked, man!" "I think that clown may have survived." "What a beautiful sight." "I saw that clown car descending towards the earth, and then I saw the high speed." "Now, in the high speed, you actually see the car start to compact." "The balloons separate just enough for a clown face to peek through and a clown nose to dust the windshield and then start to go back into the car, as if the balloons are bouncing him back." "All right, Byron, how'd we do?" "Did either guy get under 100 G's?" "Now, you remember he sustained over 600 G's with just the party balloons, but this time only 130." "Wow!" "That is a huge reduction in the G-load, but still, 130 G's to your body... there is no way you're gonna survive that." "Yeah, unfortunately, we're gonna have to call this one busted." "Totally busted." "I thought for a second there it had a glimmer of hope." "Nope." "Still dead." "So it turns out even with our best balloon, the oversized latex balloon, we were not able to save the clown's life, so this myth is busted, but we're not gonna stop there." "This is "MythBusters."" "It's time to ramp it up, so we're gonna go back to the shop and see if we can come up with some kind of configuration of balloons that could save the clown's life." "In their earlier shop tests..." "They might be little, but, man, they do a good job!" "...the guys tested one balloon type at a time." "But now, it's anything goes." "Get to work." "As the MythBusters go head-to-head in a quest to find the ultimate life-saving balloon barrier." "First up is Kari..." "Too much." "Too much." "...Who's making what can only be described as a wiener whoopee cushion." "That might work." "This giant, massive weenie balloon should take care of a couple issues with the balloon airbag." "One, they won't separate, so the clown can't push right through them when he actually gets in the crash, and two, they're all a little under-inflated, so that you can't pop them when he hits them." "Besides, my clown sensei once said," ""one balloon weak." "Many balloons strong."" "Meanwhile, Grant is also going for the "more means less" approach." "You know what this is?" "That's right." "It's giant bubble wrap." "Finally, there's Tory, who's combining balloons for a real knockout." "I think we've got a winner here." "Yes, sir." "All right, now what I'm going to do for my balloon airbag is take the giant latex balloons and the mylar balloon." "What I'm gonna do is incorporate the two." "I'm gonna stuff the mylar with the latex balloons because one thing I want to do is keep the balloons together inside the mylar and hopefully that'll save his life." "Okay, who's first?" "I say ladies first." "You want the weenie whopper whoopee to go first?" "Yeah, let's do it." "Okay." "Just like last time," "Kari loads her design to the four-foot marker and then takes the plunge." "Okay, here we go in three, two, one." "Oh, come on." "That was so delicate." "Looked pretty good." "But unlike last time, they're not going to disclose the loads until each design has been dropped." "Next up, Tory's four-heart coronary design." "You know what I think?" "I think it's gonna go..." "All right, this is stuffed balloons." "Here we go in three, two, one." "That looked really good." "Yeah." "Last, but not least, it's Grant's turn to go down." "You guys ready for the magic?" "Yeah, showtime." "In three, two, one." "Oh, we got a couple of pops, but hey..." "Maybe more than a couple." "All right." "Let's see what we got." "Like the two before it," "Grant's rig looked rigorous, but who will come out on top?" "Okay, remember we're looking for a number under two G's, which is what our big balloons got." "My contraption was 3.8." "Close, but no cigar." "That's a pretty good score though." "Not really." "You got 2.8." "Oh, closer." "And Grant, you got 1.7!" "Hey, that's great!" "Now to go full scale." "Oh, we got some work to do." "So, this is our winning scenario." "It reduced the impact energy to 1.7 G's." "Now what we need to do is make 15 or 20 of them and stuff them into every part of the car and see if it saves the clown." "On the other side of the break..." "Probably better if you don't watch." "...there's clown chaos and "Trench Torpedo" hits paydirt." "Bye-bye!" "So far in our "Party Balloon Pileup" myth, nothing has been able to save the clown passenger's life, but we are in the business of extreme." "That's why we have this." "This is something I like to call balloon bubble wrap." "It got the lowest G-load of anything we tried in our drop tests." "It's festive and protective." "But will it be protective enough in a 35-mile-an-hour head on?" "Probably better if you don't watch." "To find out, the guys stuffed the car so it's literally fit to burst." "You guys are packed in there like sardines." "That ought to do it." "Now, with this last and final test, we're trying to get below 100 G's on our clown." "That is our benchmark for survivability." "We've addressed all the problems that we've experienced with all the other balloons." "We have small balloons on sheets of plastic." "That way, the clown can't push through the middle of balloons and if one little balloon breaks, it's not gonna create a big cavity where the clown can actually fall into the windshield." "It's a souped-up solution that's do or die for the myth." "If this doesn't work, nothing will." "All right." "Here we go." "This is bubble wrap, in three, two, one." "It did not look good." "Let's go check the data for the "Party Balloon Pileup."" "All right, so how did the clowns do with the balloon bubble wrap?" "Okay, so the passenger's head peaked at 220 G's and his body at 230 G's." "Wow, so the clowns actually experienced a bigger G-load than the previous test." "So, party balloons are not a substitute for airbags or seatbelts." "Stop clowning around." "Want to know why we did what we did and didn't do what we didn't? and find out." "In three..." "Adam and Jamie's straight trench torpedo has just gone off with a bang, and as well as a sensational high speed, it's blown up some surprising results." "Surprising because when compared to the open-air control, it's clear that the straight trench amplifies the blast pressure." "The question now is whether a corner can cause those numbers to drop down." "And first up, it's the pinnacle of German engineering... the sharp-sided trench." "This is the trench that this story is all about... the one with the sharp corners and right angles." "And based on everything we've seen so far, by the time the blast wave gets to the end of this trench, past all these corners, it ought to be fairly small." "Going down." "To put Jamie's prediction and this myth to the test, the guys position the explosive package..." "Absolutely beauteous." "...and then deploy for detonation." "Are you ready for this?" "Are you gozer this time?" "I am, keymaster." " All right." " Call it out." "Right angle sharp-cornered trench." "Yep." "In three, two, one." "Wow!" "I don't know." "I think there's gonna be a crater there." "I think there might be." "Let's go look at it." "It's goodbye yellow-brick road as the blast tears through their trench." "But at ground zero, to say the guys are happy is an understatement." "Wow." "Dude, check that out." "I think this tells pretty much the whole story 'cause that's intact." "Everything up to that point is not." "As you can see, this is the safe end of the trench." "The further you go that way, the worse it gets." "Now, most of the energy seemed to travel down the trench and appears to have gotten absorbed by these corners based on how badly damaged they are." "By the time you got here, there's not so much energy left." "At 20 feet, the PSI was 60." "At 30 feet, it was 19, and at 50 feet, it was just 7." "A colossal contraction from their tunnel trench." "But the myth says that only precise corners can shelter a shockwave, and to find out just that, it's time to end with another breathtaking bang." "We're about to send another blast through another trench, and I'm standing right where the rubber meets the road for this entire story." "This is where we will compare precision engineering versus your normal wear and tear of a soft-cornered trench." "I think... my intuition tells me that the sharp corners are better and that we'll see a higher blast pressure at the end of this very trench." "But only one way to find out." "For the final time, the guys set up the PCB sensors..." "It's looking a little toasty." "...position the projectile..." "There you go." "...and retreat to safety." "Here we go!" "This is 25 pounds of explosives in a serpentine, soft-cornered trench." "This is for real." "This is for the money." "Three, two, one." "Bye-bye!" "Never get used to that." "Gosh." "The serpentine salvo was a blast." "And for Jamie, it's the high-class high-speed that seems to tell the story." "Editors, let's pull up the high-speed footage of the square-cornered and round-cornered trench on split screen." "Okay, now if we look at the fireballs in these two different trenches, we can see that in the square-cornered trench, the fireball stops moving just after the first corner." "However, in the round-cornered trench, the fireball passes the first corner and the second corner before it stops moving." "Now, visually, that tells me that you're gonna be in more trouble at the end of the round-cornered trench." "And that's something that the damage at rock bottom seems to agree with." "More destruction." "Hello!" "But what does the data dictate?" "Well, I think we got some good data." "I think we did." "Let's get back to the shop and crunch it." "Okay." "What do the numbers say?" "I'm glad you asked." "I have prepared this to explain them." "What, did you make a cake?" "No!" "These are our four explosions, and these numbers represent the blast pressures we got in those explosions." "Okay." "This is interesting." "Yeah, I can see that the straight trench almost looks like it is amplifying the pressures because they're almost 10 times as high as the above-ground control test." "Absolutely." "And check out the difference between the right-angle trench and the serpentine trench." "It's clear that the numbers in the serpentine trench are higher than the ones in the right-angle trench." "I think these numbers tell us that this myth is plausible." "So it is." "Plausible!"