"Do not try any of the experiments you are about to see at home." "You heard him..." "don't do it." "On this high-velocity episode of "Mythbusters"..." "I'm all oiled up and ready to go." "...Adam and Jamie wreak highway havoc in spy-car escape." "You're not gonna catch me!" "Just how difficult is it to give your pursuer the slip..." "I got to say, that's pretty effective." "...with in-car weapons that always seem to work so well in the movies?" "There it goes!" "It's deployed!" "Then Tory, Grant, and Kari play hardball with the myth of momentum..." "We're gonna see that ball drop." "...as they aim to find out if an object shot backwards while traveling forwards..." "I feel like a gladiator ready to be slaughtered." "...would really drop straight to the ground." "That was a pretty good shot." "Who are the Mythbusters?" "Adam Savage..." "You need to bring some more power." "...and Jamie Hyneman." "Relax." "This won't hurt a bit." "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." "We've got to keep her afloat!" "Joining them..." "Tory Belleci Grant Imahara..." "Burn!" "...and Kari Byron." "Busting out of here, see." "They don't just tell the myths." "They put them to the test." "Check it out... you know we love our movie myths." "And specifically, we love our super-spy-movie myths." "This next one involves devices that a spy puts into their car to instantly stop someone from following them in a car-chase scenario." "Ah." "Like a smoke screen." "Exactly." "And I'm thinking we test all the classics... smoke screen, and I'm thinking releasing a bunch of tacks, and oil slick." "Fast cars, dangerous gadgets..." "I'm up for it." "I thought you would be." "The concept is almost as old as the automobile itself... arming a car with the right kind of gadgets to ensure a slick getaway." "Turn on the oil!" "The boys are revved up to test three of the all-time classics in a series of equally classic car chases." "Uh, this is Adam." "Could someone get me a car?" "This is Jamie." "Make it sporty." "Isn't that nice?" "That's cute." "Drive it on in." "Okay." "This is Spy Car One." "Right now it's a normal car, but when we're finished with it, it's gonna have all the little tricks and gadgets that any self-respecting spy car would have." "This ought to do." "So, it's straight down to business, and the key word right now is "deployment. "" "Welcome to Jamie's chop shop." "All movie fans know that most weapons are launched from the trunk, and a hole in the floor with a sliding trapdoor should fit the bill." "Jamie's simple release can be sprung from a cord to the cockpit." "It's not fancy..." "That ought to do it." "...but it works." "With the car customized, it's off to the test track to load it with weapons." "We're at the Alameda County" "Emergency Vehicle Operations Center, which is where the police practice chasing bad guys, which means it's perfect for us." "Of course, there's no chase without a chase car and an experienced daredevil to drive it." "...Morning, sir." " Morning." "...How are you?" "... I'm good." "How are you?" "Good." "Good day for a car chase?" "Every day's a good day for a car chase." "What is it that makes Brian uniquely qualified to perform this test with us?" "I ask you to cast your mind back to "Driving in the Rain,"" "where Brian hydroplaned over 100 miles per hour and did a 720-degree turn." "Look at the internal camera." "That impassive face on him is the face of confidence, and it is the face that will lead this test for us." "If we can evade him, we can evade anybody." "Escaping a driver who's more skilled than you means disabling his car." "So, what's the first trick in Adam's trunk?" "They may look friendly, but these are 1/4-inch pieces of hot-rolled steel bent at right angles and welded into a tetrahedral arrangement and then sharpened." "These are roadspikes..." "always have one point facing up." "I think they're gonna be highly effective when I drop them from the back of the evading spy car." "With over 100 of these lethal little tire shredders, he might be right." "But Jamie also has a "point. "" "Now, I have no doubt that these tacks are gonna stick in the tires, but will they deflate the tires quickly enough to keep our spy happy?" "I'm not so sure." "Well, first, a quick check on the rules of the chase." "So, Brian, what are the criteria for escaping?" "If Adam's able to get far enough ahead of us that he actually loops and gets behind us, then he's gotten away." "Also, if he makes a turn on the course someplace I don't catch and then we end up taking a different turn or different route, then I've lost him." "Okay, then." "The cones are lined up to mark out a long and winding road." "And they're ready to rumble." "Okay, this is "Spy Car Evasion Techniques... the Tacks. "" "Eat... my... dust." "Make no mistake... both drivers are hell-bent on surviving the chase." "Brian keeps a respectful distance of five or six car lengths." "Hey, he's picking up a little speed." "Eventually, right before a curve," "Adam decides to drop his load." "There we go." "Despite his considerable skill," "Brian's going too fast to avoid all the tacks." "Yeah, they stuck in." "I can hear them." "But at least for the moment, the chase car shows no signs of losing momentum." "We must have had about a half a dozen at least in there, and we're holding on just fine." "I wouldn't take corners too fast in it, but..." "Aah!" "Okay, we got you." "Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang." "So, what happens?" "Didn't..." "Oh!" "I got you!" "Well, you did, but then you didn't." "The tacks went into the tires, but we were on your tail for several minutes afterwards." "It didn't slow us down." "I thought that as soon as you hit the tacks, you'd be skidding off the road immediately." "I've got flat tires, but you still didn't get away." "No, I didn't get away." "Shoot." "I wouldn't have called that." "The tacks eventually worked, but they took their sweet time." "And I'll say one thing else... while I'm fagging around on this course, hell-bent for leather, it's really disconcerting to look into my rearview mirror and see Brian passively driving after me like it's not... he's like a lion playing with his food." "Jamie thinks he knows why the spikes kind of worked..." "And kind of didn't." "The problem with tacks is that they plug the hole that they create, and they don't let the air out quick enough." "Now, eventually, sure, your tire's gonna deflate, but as far as a pursuit goes, you could hang on for quite a while." "As a quick-escape option, the tacks didn't cut it." "So it's on to phase 2 of the myth... blinding the pursuer in a cloud of smoke." "Today, the role of smoke in our little spy-car episode is gonna be played by a military smoke grenade." "Now, we were offered the chance to use a minimum-smoke grenade, but we said, "Hell no!" "Give us 'maximum smoke..." "military style. "'" "What does that look like?" "I don't know." "Let's check it out." "Whoo!" "Providing the wind doesn't pick up, that should work nicely." "This rig is about as simple as it gets." "All you do is pull the pin, you've got smoke." "All I've done is strapped them to the back of the inside of the car," "I've hooked them up to cables that go into the cockpit of the car," "I pull on the cables..." "I'm gone in a puff of smoke." "Well, that's the theory." "Okay, smoke evasion." "You guys ready?" "That's affirmative, lawbreaker." "Do your worst." "Yah!" "Right from the get-go," "Jamie sets a cracking pace through the traffic cones." "Brian has no idea when to expect the smoke, but he doesn't have long to wait." "For the first few seconds, the deployment looks picture-perfect." "It's right about now that it all goes horribly wrong, as Jamie's convertible starts filling with smoke." "He misses the wall by a whisker, and the chase is called off before Jamie swallows more than his pride." "I think he has to get out." "Yeah, I think so, too." "You okay?" "Can we get some water over here for Jamie right away?" "This smoke has gone literally everywhere." "It's coming out of every nook and cranny of this car." "Whoa!" "Well, that right there was a real "Pink Panther" moment." "I mean, we build these things, and, ideally, we test them before we take them out on the road, but..." "I kind of regret not doing that." "That was absolutely horrible." "With the rushing air pushed over and around the windscreen, the car's interior became a low-pressure zone, sucking much of the smoke back up over the trunk." "That's a rig failure, not a technique failure." "We're gonna have to reset and try it again." "Adam's right." "It's unfair to condemn a myth due to faulty method." "We'll reassess and reload to hopefully make the convertible cockpit a smoke-free zone." "So, what are you so excited about?" "Well, it's our turn to try a new type of myth... the physics thought experiment." "Great... something to get the ol' gray matter working." "So, here's how this one goes." "Let's say you're driving along in a car at "x" miles an hour." "You throw something out the back in the opposite direction at the same speed." "Does it just fall straight down?" "Basically what you're saying... does the forward momentum and the backward momentum cancel each other out completely?" "Exactly." "Or is there some other factor, like air resistance, that makes it impossible?" "And I wonder, if it works at 6 miles an hour, will it also work at 60?" "That is what we're gonna find out." "It makes sense that an object subjected to equal and opposite forces, forwards and backwards, would drop like a stone." "But unless we can prove it in real life, this simple equation's no more than an untested myth." "So, how are we gonna test this one?" "How about a pickup truck with a treadmill on the back?" "Pickup truck drives forward at 10 miles an hour, treadmill goes back at 10 miles an hour, and then one of us jumps on it." "By "one of us," you mean Tory?" "What?" "So this is to see if I just fall straight down or get flung off the back?" "That's the idea." "Yeah." "Great idea." "Best if they bust out the gym equipment before Tory changes his mind." "That seems safe enough." "Normally, treadmills are pretty straightforward." "You set the speed and go." "That is, of course, if you haven't been drinking." "As Adam bravely proved, the treadmill is not to be trifled with." "And now it's Tory's turn." "My question is, if he jumps onto a moving treadmill, will it slow down and actually throw him off at a slower speed?" "To test this, we're gonna put a 180-pound load onto the treadmill, see if it slows down." "If it does, then we'll turn it up until it throws it off at the target speed." "According to the manual, the maximum speed of the treadmill is 10 miles per hour." "That's fast enough to get the stripes strobing." "That looks a little crazy to me." "It looks a lot crazy." "That looks so dangerous," "I would not want to try to jump on that." "And, at least for the moment, he doesn't." "Ah." "That was kind of a problem." "In fact, it was just what Grant predicted." "The bag slowed the belt down to a relative crawl." "It actually recovers fairly quickly." "Okay." "And it gets back up to..." "5.45 miles per hour." "All right." "Now the tricky part is doing it without falling." "I suggest you tuck and roll." "So, to balance the myth, the truck should also move forwards at 51/2 miles per hour." "All that remains is to attach one to the other." "You're really gonna run on this thing, huh?" "Oh, not so much run..." "more just fly off the back." "Four bolts later, this traveling treadmill is primed for a field trip." "They're bound for the Concord Naval Weapons Station, where the roads are long and level." "That's not going anywhere." "No, that's good." "It should be real safe..." "real safe." "That would be the least of our safety concerns, I think." "Tory straps on the famous red suit." "Kari still can't understand why his kneepads are trembling." "You got dragged by a horse, and it didn't seem like a bad idea." "You got buried alive..." "didn't seem like a bad idea." "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" "Stop!" "Stop!" "You got in a ring with a bull." "It didn't seem like a bad idea." "He was looking right at me." "This is a bad idea?" "I feel like a gladiator ready to be slaughtered." "We'll chalk that one up as a "yes. "" "Okay, so, here's the setup." "For our control test, our truck is going to be stationary." "Tory's going to drop onto the treadmill and then project off the end of the truck in a gentle arc." "Okay, so, this is our control test." "You ready?" "I'm ready as I'm ever gonna be." "Okay." "Famous last words, as a telephone call disrupts the filming." "Ahh!" "Who is it?" "Yeah, look, uh, the insurance company said, uh..." "This is Brian." "He's our director." "You should know better." "Yeah, I know." "What's going on?" "With uncanny timing, the office has called up to tell them that Tory cannot take the fall." "Okay, so, this is unusual." "We're just about to go for it, and our producer gets a phone call from the insurers." "Apparently, this is way too dangerous for Tory to attempt..." "this uncontrollable fall." "So, I think we're gonna have to go for the next-best thing, which is..." "I don't know..." "like, sandbags or something." "So, while Tory stands down, the supply truck is ransacked for raw materials." "Okay, what do we got?" "They're looking to build a substitute fall guy, so coveralls and a blow-up doll fit the bill." "How's that?" "Is it getting into the legs at all?" "Oh, it is." "It's getting heavy." "And there's a real bonus to having a sand-filled stand-in." "They can fill it to just a fraction of Tory's weight." "So they can run their tests at 10 miles per hour, not the planned 5." "Not bad for a stand-in Tory." "It's only fitting that the man who missed out gets to discharge his stunt double." "All right, here we go... 10 miles an hour." "In 3... 2... 1." "Ohh!" "I am so glad that that wasn't you, man." "That was an arc." "I wouldn't say a gentle arc." "Nor would we." "And it's probably time to admit that the safety team had a fair point." "During our control test, stand-in Tory was thrown 6 feet away from the treadmill from a height of 31/2 feet." "What this means is, he didn't fall straight down." "But that's not a surprise." "Now it's time to move on." "Okay, this is the main test." "I'm going to drive the pickup at 10 miles an hour while Tory throws his "sand-in" onto the treadmill right in front of the high-speed cameras." "If the sack of sand comes even close to falling straight to the ground, we'll finally know that this myth is on track." "It's a rare case where the team gets excited by a lack of spectacle." "Still, best check the high-speed." "So, watch that point right there." "Oh, nice timing on the drop." "Ohh!" "It pretty much dropped straight down!" "I mean, compared to our control test, it would have been out there." "Here... psht!" "..." "straight down." "That is really cool." "So there might be some merit to this myth." "Absolutely." "The morning's testing was a total success, and they learned something along the way." "First of all, we learned that Tory is more important than we thought." "We can't just chuck him off the back of a truck." "Secondly, we learned something from our 10-mile-an-hour test." "We had the treadmill going at 10 miles an hour on a stationary truck." "We dropped our "sand-in" Tory, and he fell in a little arc." "Then we drove exactly 10 miles an hour, dropped our sand-in Tory in the same position, and he went straight down." "But this is "Mythbusters," and we just can't stop there." "I didn't like inhaling all that smoke, so I've done a couple of things." "The first is that I've put the smoke bombs out away from the car, and the second is, Adam's gonna drive." "So the scene is set for a smarter and healthier smoke screen." "All right, Jamie, are you ready?" "We're ready." "Okay." "Eat my smoke!" "Adam leads Brian on a merry chase..." "You know, this is pretty fun." "...till the time comes to pull the pin on those twin grenades." "Oh, there we go." "I got to say, that's pretty effective." "The smoke comes thick and fast as the chase car slows to a crawl..." "Oh." "...and Adam actually starts to catch up." "With the red car now in Brian's rearview mirror," "Adam's officially shaken his tail." "Whoo!" "I think that's a win!" "Good job." "That was awesome!" "At one point, I looked over, and Jamie and Brian were all the way across the course." "At that point, I figured I had it." "With one crucial adjustment, the smoke screen worked big-time." "Now to move on to a test that should push Brian's skills to the limit." "We know this is good for the taste buds and bad for the waistline." "The question is, is it good for the escapee and bad for the pursuer?" "I think it will be." "As Adam implied, we are doing our best to save the planet." "The lubricant of choice is vegetable oil." "Okay, guys, I'm all oiled up and ready to go." "Are you ready?" "We're ready." "Yes." "This should be slick." "Knowing what's coming won't help Brian avoid a potential disaster." "The course is too narrow to skirt around the slick, and he doesn't know where or when" "Jamie plans to give him the slip." "And then we see oil pour out of his back, and Brian tries to avoid it, but actually, because Jamie does it on a turn, it sort of crosses the whole road, and we can't avoid it." "The chase car has clearly lost traction." "It slips and it slides as Brian struggles to point the nose forward and stay on the track." "Definitely made it slick." "Yes, definitely." "He's lost valuable time as the car careens sideways, and Jamie decides to quit while he's ahead." "At speed, the rig worked perfectly." "Unfortunately, it didn't cause us to totally spin out and lose control of our car." "Jamie did get far ahead, but Brian was able to stay on the road." "So, where does that leave us overall?" "Well, let's tally them up." "...Tacks." "... Busted." "Smoke screen." "Confirmed." "Oil slick." "Somewhere in the middle." "I agree..." "somewhere in the middle." "All right, let's get out of here, and, uh, slowly, please." "That's three classic evasion techniques done and dusted." "Whoa!" "Hey!" "But they're having way too much fun to stop here." "Kari, Grant, and Tory are trying to confirm the myth that a deadweight drops straight to the ground if its forward momentum is exactly the same as its backwards propulsion." "So far, a mobile treadmill seems to have proved the point." "True, but you know the fans are never gonna be happy if we stop right there." "We have to test this at higher speeds." "All right, why don't we ramp it up?" "We'll build an air cannon, fire a soccer ball at 60 miles an hour." "We'll do it again inside of a moving vehicle going 60 miles an hour, see if the energies cancel each other out and we get a vertical drop." "Love it." "Let's do it." "Grant gets the task of building the cannon, and he's not one for half measures." "This is our next step in testing this myth." "It's the barrel of the largest air cannon I have ever built." "Okay, here we go." "9 psi" "In 3... 2... 1." "Whoo!" "Yep, that looked like 60 miles an hour to me." "And a check of the high-speed confirms the call." "The good news is that we have our number." "We now know that 9 psi equals 60 miles an hour out of the barrel." "...Perfect." "... Great." "That's our target speed." "...All right." "... We're there." "Well, almost." "It's now back to Concord to see if they've got the balance just right." "All right." "Time to give this experiment a shot of steroids." "Logistically, this is going to be a very difficult experiment." "Everything has to come together for it to actually yield the results we want." "I mean, the small scale was brilliant." "If we can get anywhere close to that, I would be happy." "But Tory's already anticipating trouble down the road." "My feeling is, Grant's gonna prematurely hit that button and the soccer ball is not actually gonna make it in the high-speed shot." "We'll see what happens." "All right, you guys ready?" "Cannon is armed, and truck is in place." "We're ready on your "go," Tory." "Hit it." "20... 30... 40... 50..." "Come on." "Get to 60." "Come on." "Okay." "And... fire." "Hey!" "That was a pretty good shot." "Let's look at the high-speed." "Given how hard this is to get right, it's a mighty first effort." "But the ball did bounce backwards." "It's not perfect." "It's not the same results as the other one." "That's what I'm saying." "This should drop straight down, not fly backwards." "It's agreed that either the car was too slow or the cannon too fast." "The afternoon rolls on as a series of runs..." "The ball did not drop straight down." "...never quite seem to hit the mark." "Looking good!" "And... he fired it too soon." "But the ball still bounced backwards." "25 attempts later, they haven't come close to seeing the soccer ball drop like a stone." "Some even bounced forwards, and it could be the cannon, the car, or the myth that's at fault." "We could be out here all day and not get a result." "This might be the time to rethink their approach." "After all, no one said science was meant to be easy." "Pop quiz." "What do you see here on the table?" "You may see a random collection of plumbing parts." "I see the next evolution in spy-evasion technology." "Ow!" "If you think Adam's being deliberately obscure, get a load of Jamie." "You know what they say... "The best defense is a good offense. "" "Well, I figure I'm gonna make something that I can take right to the pursuer's car, deliver it point-blank, and take him out." "Ensuring their secrets remain just that, a huge curtain divides the workshop." "While Adam assembles what looks and sounds like a prototype space-shuttle toilet Jamie gets low-down nasty." "Yeah, baby." "That thing starts to dig in, we got some trouble on our hands." "It's clear from the outset this mystery rig will be heavy-duty, as gear teeth are cut into chromoly steel with a plasma torch." "Whatever he's building, it's a safe bet this would get you suspended from metal shop." "That ought to do it." "After hours of diligent, diabolical labor," "Jamie's finally up for some show-and-tell." "I made this relatively simple-looking little thing out of chromoly steel, and it's flat enough to mount underneath my car, out of sight and out of mind." "But it's gonna be mounted in a gun, and I'm gonna drive up to the pursuer's car, fire this from under my car, right over the ground, to under their car, at which point, it changes, and it goes..." "like that." "If it works on the day, that's a bona-fide car crippler." "Yeah." "Adam, meantime, has taken his show on the road." "In a radical twist, it looks like he's trying to slow himself down." "That's promising, right there." "The idea is to shut down the chase car with a parachute blindfold launched from that strange plumbing project." "He'll cut the rig loose when it's caught enough air, the main chute deployed by a much smaller one, called a drogue." "I'm gonna try throwing this out as I drive and see if that launches this parachute for me." "Adam takes off, and short of cutting loose the big chute, the test seems to work." "Ohh!" "Ow!" "Okay." "Ow!" "The parachute launched and immediately ripped this off the trunk and sent it into my head." "But I like the drogue chute." "It seems like a nice, quick deploy." "While Adam untangles, Jamie just adds to his arsenal." "How this one fits in is anyone's guess." "It's still smoking." "But his real party piece is the Auto Stop 3000, installed in a tube welded under the chassis." "When I pull this trigger, the pressurized air that's in this tank goes through the valve, out the bottom of the car, and out the barrel." "And so the air from the car has shot this whole assembly out the bottom of this car, aimed for the bottom of the neighboring car." "That would be a successful test." "Adam's also been busy, uh, customizing his rear end." "Then, just to rattle Jamie's cage..." "Yeah, bring in all the puppies and all the lead." "On that disturbing note, it's time to return to a favorite "Mythbusters" test track... this abandoned suburb at Fort Ord." "Are you ready for this?" "I'm ready." "I'm gonna go first, 'cause I don't think you can handle my technique!" "Knock yourself out." "Okay, here's my plan." "Right about here, I'm going to push the launch switch, activating the cannon, setting the drogue chute out behind my car." "At this point, Brian and Jamie are likely to wonder what the hell's going on, and they're likely to back off a little bit." "It'll take the drogue chute a little while to fully inflate the parachute." "Right about here, in fact." "At that point, Brian and Jamie are likely to be wondering what the hell I'm doing slowing myself down with a parachute." "And this is where I activate the final part of my plan, which is to cut the cord that holds the parachute to my car." "They will either, "A," get entangled in the parachute or, "B," figure that because the parachute stopped, I've stopped and they will stop." "Meanwhile..." "I will have pulled into my secret hiding place out of sight of the road, sending them down the wrong road, looking for me in the wrong place." "I think it's a pretty sound plan." "I think it'll work." "Let's remember that Jamie hasn't a clue that the plan is to blind him with billows of nylon." "Nothing to see here, folks." "Are you guys ready?" "We're all set." "Okay." "Eat... my... dust." "Adam takes off like a shell from a shotgun." "Once again, Brian's steering the chase car." "These streets have never seen speeds like these." "You're not gonna catch me!" "I got a secret weapon right here on the dash." "Ha haa!" "And the chute is let loose right on the mark." "There it goes!" "It's deployed!" "Parachute's out!" "Oh, and it's away!" "Nice try, but no cigar." "I hope that wasn't all he had." "Well, it was all he had." "The parachute worked, but not well enough." "Aah!" "They caught me!" "Adam's been totally tailed to his secret lair." "Well, shoot!" "Well, your device deployed fine." "It deployed beautifully." "I was hoping it would either make you stay too far back or you'd get entangled in it." "If it had caught us just right, it might have worked, but it didn't." "Grrr!" "Adam admits that it could have gone better." "It might work under certain circumstances, but to be a viable spy-car-evasion technique, it really has to work every time." "So I think we've got to..." "Relegate the parachute to the dustbin of failed ideas." "Now it's all up to Jamie to press his advantage and take out this head-to-head challenge." "And if his plan comes off," "Adam's in for the ride of his life." "Okay, either this myth is busted or our methodology's flawed." "I'm pretty sure it's the latter." "Okay, well, there's more than one way to fling a ball." "Let's look into some other propulsion systems and figure out which one's the most reliable." "All right, we could get a ball-pitching machine." "They actually make them for soccer balls." "And as far as I know, they're pretty accurate." "I've got an idea for another machine where it actually punches the ball without imparting any spin." "That may help." "Okay." "Let's get started and have a showdown." "It sounds like a plan... three machines, including the air cannon, competing to see which is the most consistent shooter." "The soccer-ball launcher is designed to reliably fire ball after ball at the same speed, and it's working just fine." "Ohh!" "I think you got your aim." "And there's work to be done on the factory floor." "For machine number 2," "Grant needs to modify a "Mythbusters" favorite." "The last time you saw it, it had a plate affixed to the end and it was smashing frozen heads." "And I must say it was a smashing success." "But now it's going to become a soccer-ball-kicking robot." "Just you wait." "10 out of 10 for lateral thinking." "And you know that when Grant gets his hands on a robot..." "It will "kick balls. "" "Okay." "Okay, all of our kicking contraptions should be complete, which is perfect, because it's time for the "Mythbusters" World Cup, also known as calibration tests." "We have our official goal right here." "Back here, we have the contenders." "First off, we have the ball chucker." "You're already familiar with the air cannon." "And, finally, we have our robot-kicker." "Consistency was a huge problem when we did our last test, so that's what we're testing now... which one of these contraptions will be the most consistent at 60 miles an hour." "In 3... 2... 1." "Wow." "That was a good kick." "How fast did it go?" "58 miles an hour." "...Nice!" "... Boom!" "We're in the ballpark." "Kicking robot was great." "It was consistent within 3 miles per hour." "Now moving on to the ball chucker, which... well, it was actually made to chuck balls, so, hopefully, this will be consistent." "All right." "We're ready to go." "Tory's already fine-tuned the speed of the tires, and from the very first ball, it looks like he's right in the zone." "God!" "59." "It's an impressive display from the favorite, but there's still one to go." "All right, why don't we do this... let's test the air cannon one more time." "I mean, who knows?" "Maybe it's more consistent than the other machine." "All right." "Going up to 9 psi" "So, it come down to these last five shots." "Fire away!" "The shootout is finished, and the result is a shock to everyone." "You know what..." "out of all the machines, this one looks like it's the most consistent." "Yeah, I think we all know who the winner was, but just for fun, I calculated the standard deviation." "You and I have really different ideas on fun." "He said "fun. "" "Go ahead." "Okay, this one's 1.22." "This one is 2.3." "And the winner and still champion... air cannon with 0.84." "Oh, my gosh." "After all that, we have to go back to the air cannon." "Yes." "The ball speed's as close as we're going to get, but let's not forget that's just half the equation." "If the speed going forward is also in doubt, we'd be fools not to fix it." "And Kari's no fool." "So, the solution to our speedometer problem is this." "It's a tachometer." "Now what we're going to do is we're gonna brace it with all sorts of clamps that I've scavenged from the camera department." "So it's right here against the wheel." "We have some reflective tape." "It's going to make the laser able to pick up every revolution, and from there, we can do the math, find out exactly how fast our car is going." "This is it." "We have eliminated all the variables." "We have the cannon shooting at 60 miles an hour, the car driving at 60 miles an hour... just to show that this ball will drop straight down." "This is it." "It's "go" time." "Go!" "Look, this is a classic physics thought experiment." "I mean, you've got something moving." "You fire something off of that moving vehicle at the same speed, and, ideally, it should cancel out." "But this is the real world." "Ah." "And the real world remains a frustratingly difficult place to do science." "The cannon was fired a little too soon." "This is all a bit finicky." "I think we're gonna have to try it a lot until we get it perfect." "More tests only lead to more disappointment." "Once again, Grant's timing is just off the mark." "But Kari at least sees a light at the end of the runway." "I have a feeling that we are very close to a perfect demonstration." "We're gonna see that ball drop." "With the forward and backward momentum matched as close as they're going to get it, the pressure's on Grant for a perfect release." "I don't know about you guys, but that looked pretty good to me." "Let's check the high-speed." "It really looked good to the naked eye." "But the judge in this case is the high-speed." "Oh, my God!" "It's like a cartoon!" "It's just in the air." "It stops and it just falls." "Look at that." "It's fantastic." "I mean, look..." "it doesn't move at all." "It's going straight down." "...Whoo!" "... Amazing!" "We did it!" "We did it!" "...Yeah!" "... Yeah!" "...Vector edition!" "Yay!" "... Whoo!" "Yeah!" "We canceled out velocity!" "After three days of suffering, that single shot brings the myth to an end." "I can't be happier." "We actually got the speed of the car to match the speed of the soccer ball, and we got a perfect straight-down drop." "Ladies and gentlemen, the laws of physics are still hard at work." "Adam's attempt to escape Jamie's spy car came sadly adrift." "Parachute's out!" "Oh, and it's away!" "Things might have gone better with a backup device, and Jamie will not make the same mistake." "First up are my tailgater terminators, which are gonna deploy out of the back of my car like so." "Notice that I've placed them in a narrow area that the chase car pretty much has to go through, and that means that they have to drive over these things." "Frankly, if they do, I think they're done." "But if they're still moving," "I go to plan "B," which is the side shooter." "Now, this puppy will be shooting out from underneath my car to underneath their car, where it opens up and also will prohibit them from moving forward... not to mention the fact that I have a smoke bomb" "that is gonna be set off at the same time just for... well, fun." "Probably just as well" "Adam doesn't know what's about to hit him." "...Hey, guys?" "... Yeah?" "See if you can keep up, okay?" "Ha!" "Roger that, secret agent code name Walrus." "Go!" "Just a few seconds in," "Jamie launches the first of his deadly barrages." "He's playing the game." "I said "puppies. " He's throwing puppies out." "Brian heedlessly plows through the pelting of puppies and regains lost ground." "But to pull off his serious double deployment," "Jamie needs to slow way, way down." "Brian has no choice but to take on the spikes only to find he's been set up for the sucker punch." "And then Jamie's just looking at us." "We hear this "boom!"" "...Whoa!" "... And he takes off." "Bye!" "And, incredibly, Adam and Brian lurch off right behind him, hauling enough shrapnel to sink a battleship." "We are on you!" "The car's leaking gas, and the noise is not healthy." "But they ride Jamie's tail for a five-minute lap of the desolate streets till their prey makes a bolt for his burrow." "We found him!" "You guys are leaking a little bit." "I don't know." "What do you think?" "Did I get away or didn't I?" "Technically, you didn't get away, 'cause we saw you turn in here from the road, so we caught you." "If you had went any farther, we wouldn't have." "This thing wasn't running much longer." "One of the spikes is still stuck in the car, and Jamie can't fathom how this one turned pear-shaped." "I can't believe they were able to keep going." "I mean, I thought those spikes were a deathtrap for that car." "So, how are we gonna wrap this up?" "Well, between the five things that we tested," "I think we've definitely proved that stopping a car that's chasing you instantly in its tracks is actually really hard." "Well, your parachute might have worked under perfect circumstances, but as it was, it was pretty much a bust." "And your spikes, while ultimately, I think, effective in the long haul, were far from instantaneous." "Something tells me you guys are already cooking up other ideas." "Yeah." "I smell a revisit." "So do I."