"Remember, do not try anything you are about to see at home." "[Grunts]" "NARRATOR:" "On this high-impact episode of "Mythbusters" Adam and Jamie go where no boffin has ever been..." "I love this myth!" "NARRATOR:" "As they test whether a bullet fired and a bullet dropped simultaneously hit the ground at the same time." "[Laughs] That is science." "NARRATOR:" "Meanwhile, Kari, Tory, and Grant..." "I can't wait!" " NARRATOR:" "Punch, pummel..." " TORY:" "Ow!" "NARRATOR:" "And blast their way to another fantastic fable." "That might knock Buster's socks off!" "NARRATOR:" "Is it ever possible to literally knock someone's socks off?" "TORY:" "That was awesome!" "NARRATOR:" "Who are the Mythbusters?" " Adam Savage..." " Am I missing an eyebrow?" " NARRATOR:" "And Jamie Hyneman." " Hey, no guts, no glory." "NARRATOR:" "Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience." "Joining them..." "Grant Imahara..." "For science." "Aah!" "NARRATOR:" "...Tory Belleci..." " Can we do that again?" " NARRATOR:" "And Kari Byron." "One word for this... splat!" "NARRATOR:" "They don't just tell the myths." "They put them to the test." "[Gunshot]" "What you got there?" "ADAM:" "This is a good one." "Picture two bullets, each exactly the same distance from the ground, each released at the exact same second except one bullet is dropped to the ground, the other is fired from a gun." "The classic physics thought experiment states that both bullets will hit the ground at the same time." " Based on what theory?" " Based on the theory that the bullet that's fired from the gun has no wings on it, no lift." "Thus, gravity has the same effect on it as it does on the dropped bullet, and thus, they hit the ground simultaneously." "NARRATOR:" "It's an age-old physics fable that says a bullet dropped and a bullet fired simultaneously from the same height will hit the ground at the same time." "But it's so darn difficult to test that no one's tried... until now." "So, what's the plan?" "Well, I've been thinking about this one for so long." "While I have seen this experiment elucidated in textbooks the world over," "I don't think that anyone anywhere has ever tried it full size, full scale, with real bullets coming out of real guns." "That's what we should do." "It sounds like it could be kind of tricky, actually." "I think we should do some shop experiments before we start using any live rounds." "Fair enough." "Let's start." "NARRATOR:" "So, before going ballistic with the ballistics," "Adam comes up with a more simple way to put that textbook theory to the test." "Well, this test is gonna be comprised of two separate parts, and I am using a bullet of sorts." "You may recognize this steel ball bearing as some of our ammunition from "Steam Machine Gun."" "Part the first..." "I will be dropping this ball bearing from exactly table height, handily marked by this green line right here." "I'll be filming its drop on a high-speed camera and counting how long it takes to get to the ground." "Part the second..." "I'll be shooting this ball bearing from my little pinball shooter here, which I've marked out to be accurate every time I shoot it." "And I'm gonna fire it across the same grid and measure how long it takes to reach the floor on the same high-speed camera." "If this myth is true, those two times should be identical." "Okay." "Here we go." "This is the drop from table height." "In 3, 2, 1." "[Thud]" "Pretty simple." "NARRATOR:" "Couldn't be simpler." "But there's lot more to this test than meets the eye." "ADAM:" "Counting the frames of the high-speed shot, the marble took exactly 201 frames to get from my hand to the ground." "And because we were filming at 500 frames per second, each frame is two milliseconds, which means that the total travel was 402 milliseconds, or for those of you who love fractions... and come on... who doesn't?" ".." "4.02/10 of a second." "NARRATOR:" "So 0.402 is the benchmark." "Now, how will the fired ball stack up?" "High-speed ready?" "NARRATOR:" "Time for some pinball wizardry." "Here we go." "Pinball shooter in 3, 2, 1." "[Thud]" "NARRATOR:" "And the results are flipping fabulous." "JAMIE:" "What have you got?" "It's actually pretty cool." "When I drop the ball from table height, it takes 402 milliseconds to reach the ground." "When I shoot it from this pinball shooter, 410 milliseconds to reach the ground." "It's 8/10 of 1% difference." "That's pretty much identical." "NARRATOR:" "With less than 1% difference, that's a pretty powerful result, and a provisional thumbs-up for the myth." "But Jamie's not impressed." "Okay, but I thought this story was about guns." "You really want to get to shooting guns?" "Well, yeah." "ADAM:" "[Chuckling] Okay." "NARRATOR:" "Meanwhile, Kari's got the next myth in the bag." "Check this out!" "What's with your dirty laundry?" "It's not mine." "It's theirs." "Remember, we asked the fans to send us their socks?" "Yeah, exactly." "The fans wanted to know what happens to their missing socks in the laundry." "Well, yes, that was the original idea." "But I think we're gonna have to make a last-minute change here." "All right." "So what's the change?" "Well, check this out." ""Dear 'Mythbusters,' here's some socks of mine." "But rather than the washing test, can you use them to test the phrase 'it knocked my socks off'?"" " I like it." " Yeah, take a look." "A lot of these letters say the same thing." "They want us to test that phrase." "Well, if the fans want us to test the "knock your socks off" idiom, who are we to deny them?" "Sounds good to me." "NARRATOR:" "This sock-it-to-'em saga comes from the world of boxing, when a particularly powerful pugilist was said to be so strong, he could knock someone clean out of their socks." "But is it really possible?" "Aah!" "All right." "Knocking your socks off." "This is a weird one, but I like it." "What's the plan?" "Well, since this idiom has its roots in boxing," "I think we definitely need to start with some sort of heavy-impact punch, and that pretty much rules any of us out." "Okay." "I got an idea." "Let's get the nitrogen cannon from the superhero special, but instead of firing a grappling hook, we reconfigure it to fire a fist, giving Buster the biggest uppercut of his life." "Well, you know what it sounds like to me?" "It's time for the main event." "[Bell dings]" "Go to your corners." "NARRATOR:" "In a long line of lethal inventions," "Grant says this is one of the most dangerous he's ever built." "But will it do the job on Buster?" "So, to deliver the kind of punch that might knock Buster's socks off," "I've taken this out of retirement." "It's our nitrogen cannon from the superhero special." "We fired a grappling hook to try and turn the Batmobile around a 90-degree corner." "TORY:" "We hit it!" "NARRATOR:" "And today, Grant is modifying the cannon to blast a killer punch to Buster's jaw, while Tory's turning out the all-important fist." "So, what I have here is a solid steel rod that's gonna go into the cannon." "On the end of it, I'm gonna attach a rubber fist." "So I'm gonna be using a high-density, high-impact-resistant rubber." "I'll be able to weld it to the punching rod, stick it into Grant's cannon, fire it up at Buster's jaw, and see if we can knock his socks off." "NARRATOR:" "But even before the fists start flying," "Kari's worried about collateral damage." "Last time we tested Grant's nitrogen cannon, we shot a hole through our wall and into our neighbor's space." "Might have to go have a chat with them." "So we thought, "Hey, maybe this time, a few safety measures."" "NARRATOR:" "And after a couple of mattresses are roosted in the roof, the scene is set for round one of this myth." "TORY:" "All right, pal." "This is your big chance." "Don't blow it." "NARRATOR:" "Previous research says that a heavyweight boxer can pack a punch of 4,000 newtons." "GRANT:" "Pressurizing." "NARRATOR:" "So to match that kind of power," "Grant primes up his pride and joy for the knock-your-socks-off rumble." "GRANT:" "Okay." "Knock him out of his socks?" "Mm." "I think that this is actually just powerful enough to make that old boxing adage true." "NARRATOR:" "But Grant ain't convinced." "I think that no matter how high we go with this cannon, no matter if we go through his head and punch a hole in the ceiling, none of that is gonna be capable of knocking his socks off." "I just think that there's too much body." "We're talking about a punch to the chin." "To get that to translate all the way down to his shoes and kick out and blow the socks off, no way." "NARRATOR:" "Let's not pull any more punches and get this show on the road." "Here we go." "3, 2, 1!" "Whoo!" " Whoo!" " [Chuckles]" "TORY:" "[Laughs]" "500 PSI was really intense." "Yeah!" "We took out the lights!" "Whoo!" "NARRATOR:" "That was some punch." "But it's clear that amidst the carnage," "Buster's socks stayed put, but only just." " TORY:" "Whoa." " Take a look at this." "The socks slightly got dragged off." "NARRATOR:" "Now, that's what I call taking it on the chin." "The punch not only sent Buster barreling backwards, it ripped off one of his shoes, partially dragging a sock with it." "But it's not enough to call the myth a winner." "GRANT:" "So according to the high-speed footage, the nitro punch accelerated the fist to a final speed of 22.2 meters per second, giving us an overall force of over 6,000 newtons, which is 50% more than your heavyweight prizefighter's best punch." "And even at superhuman punching strength, it still wasn't enough to knock Buster's socks off." "But you know what?" "The cannon's reputation is still intact." "Now, I'm not saying that this is busted." "All I'm saying is right now, it's not looking good for the myth." "But let's say it wasn't a boxer that knocked the person's socks off." "Maybe it was something bigger, with more power." "Sorry, Buster." "We're gonna have to wake you up." "We got more experimenting to do." "Get up, buddy!" "NARRATOR:" "Bullet baloney or physics fact, this test is so hard, no one's ever dared try it." "Does a bullet fired and a bullet dropped simultaneously from the same height, hit the ground at the same time?" "Before breaking out the real bullets," "Adam's letting loose with something a little more manageable." " [Paintball gun fires]" " A paintball gun." "Perfect." "ADAM:" "We've mounted this paintball gun so that not only is it perfectly level, but it's tuned back so the paintballs will actually hit the ground before they hit the end of the shop." "This should allow us to do some perfect comparisons between a fired projectile and a dropped projectile." "NARRATOR:" "Which brings the Mythbusters neatly to their next challenge." "If I fire a paintball gun from this gun and catch a shot of it on the high-speed camera at the other end of the shop hitting the ground, how do I know exactly when it left the gun?" "I'll tell you how." "I've got a switch hooked up right here to the trigger of this gun." "When I pull it, this battery powers an LED down there, hooked up to our high-speed camera." "All right." "Here we go." "NARRATOR:" "So without further ado, Adam does the fire test." "ADAM:" "Oh!" "NARRATOR:" "The high speed records the moment the light comes on, and the paintball hitting the ground..." "Look at how beautiful that is!" "NARRATOR:" "Making it possible to precisely time how long the journey from gun to ground takes, which, for this test, is exactly 555 milliseconds." "[Laughs] That is science." "NARRATOR:" "Now, Adam gets ready for part two of the experiment." "So I'm just about to hold this paintball up at exactly the level of the barrel..." "I'm gonna use a laser level to help me know it... film it on high speed, and time exactly how long it takes to get from my fingers to the ground." "I will then compare that time to the fired paintball." "Paintball drop test in 3, 2, 1." "[Thud]" "NARRATOR:" "This time, the difference between the fired and dropped paintball is 59 milliseconds." "A lot more than the 8-millisecond gap between the fired and dropped ball bearing which has the Mythbusters scratching their heads." "Well, this is a conundrum." "Our first two experiments seem to contradict each other." "However, I think the culprit lies in the paintballs themselves." "Watch this." "See those trajectories?" "Each one's different." "They're curving." "That tells me that the irregular surfaces of the paintballs... manufacturing vagaries... is causing these things to have aerodynamic artifacts that makes them inaccurate and thus, I think, renders the paintball test invalid." "I don't see anywhere to go with this except to start using real bullets and soon." "Whoo!" "NARRATOR:" "Kari, Tory, and Grant are trying to literally knock someone's socks off." "[Laughs]" "NARRATOR:" "A K.O. To the kisser put Buster down for the count and just about totaled the workshop." "We knocked Buster out!" "NARRATOR:" "So now the team is ramping up outdoors, with more power." "Look at the size of this thing." " Buster is gonna be hating it." " GRANT:" "Wow." "NARRATOR:" "More power means more force, and possibly a greater chance of knocking off Buster's socks." "This is a gravitational potential energy pendulum." "Normally, it's used for testing highway safety barriers." "But today it's gonna be our battering ram." "We're gonna use it to try and knock Buster's socks off." "NARRATOR:" "But before Buster gets put in the firing line..." "You could get off the brake now." "KARI:" "No brakes." "[Both grunting]" "NARRATOR:" "...the team wants to see how powerful the pendulum of destruction is." "Can't wait." "All right." "Here we go." "In 3, 2, 1." "[Laughter]" "Whoa!" "That might knock Buster's socks off!" "Come on!" "Let's see!" "NARRATOR:" "Although the pendulum's impact is actually slower than the flying fist, because its mass is so much greater, it's able to deliver over 20 times the force of the nitro cannon." "That's one hell of a punch." "Look at that!" "I mean, this was enough to lift this van and shift it back about four or five feet." "NARRATOR:" "Which, in a cracked nutshell, is not good news for Buster." "So far, testing whether a slug fired and a slug dropped simultaneously hit the ground at the same time..." "A little too powerful." "NARRATOR:" "Has been a mixed bag for Adam and Jamie." "Perfect." "NARRATOR:" "In two small-scale tests, the myth was falling towards confirmed in one..." "ADAM:" "That's pretty much identical." "NARRATOR:" "...but busted in the other." "So, what now?" "We got to go full scale with bullets, but, dude, how difficult is that gonna be?" "I mean, for starters, I don't know how far a bullet fired level from a gun even goes." "Well, why don't we try a .45-caliber pistol?" "I mean, that has a large, slow-moving round." "And head out to the range and see where it hits the ground." " Exactly." " Perfect." "Let's do it." "NARRATOR:" "And the shooting range is the perfect place to get the lowdown on launching bullets." "We're looking for a couple of different things here." "The first is that we need to have all the bullets coming out of the gun consistently so we know we're collecting accurate data." "That's perfect." "The second one is we're wanting to find out how they're dropping, how far away from the gun they travel before they hit the ground." "NARRATOR:" "And before the boys blaze away, they're rigging the gun rigid and level, exactly 36 inches off the ground." "Nice." "I think we're ready." "The reason we've gone level is that I'm only interested in gravity's effect on the bullet once it leaves the gun." "If I aim the gun higher, that bullet will go farther, but it's going farther because of its trajectory." "If I shoot it level, then it starts dropping." "Gravity starts having an effect the moment it leaves the barrel." "And that's what I'm interested in... how fast does it drop, how far does it go." "Gun is hot." "NARRATOR:" "Right now, the guys have no idea where the bullet will land." "So Adam and Jamie test to see how far the bullet falls" " over 100..." " [Gunshots] ...200 and 300 feet." "ADAM:" "That one was half an inch above the other one." " Let's go take a look." " Okay." "ADAM:" "What we've got so far in terms of data is actually pretty frickin' cool." "This orange line represents the bullet at 100 feet." "The laser sight was aimed just about an inch higher than that, which is just what we'd expect to see... a very little amount of drop-off." "200 feet, a little more drop-off." "300 feet, that blue line, a lot more drop-off." "NARRATOR:" "Armed with that info," "Adam and Jamie can now zero in on the drop zone, which they've calculated to be between 350 and 370 feet away." "ADAM:" "This right here is a runway." "It's a runway for our little bullets to land on." "I expect to be able to see where they land by the marks they make on this white paper." "And hopefully where they land is a reasonably discrete space." "Firing in 3, 2, 1." "[Gunshot]" "ADAM:" "Oh." "That looks like we might have hit it." "NARRATOR:" "And after letting loose one more time..." "[Gunshot] ...Adam and Jamie discover the bullets are biting the dust roughly 360 feet from the gun." "I think we've got what we came for." "We've been able to predict fairly consistently where the bullets are hitting the ground." "But the problem is, we're outside, we could get a breeze that might kind of skew the results." "And also... and this is the most important thing... the ground here is really uneven." "So to go forward from here, we need a perfectly flat surface to work off of." "ADAM:" "Well, all we need now is 400 feet of flat floor." "JAMIE:" "I think I might be able to handle that." "ADAM:" "[Chuckles]" "3..." "NARRATOR:" "Kari, Tory, and Grant are busting Buster's chops trying to knock him out of his socks." "Yeah!" "We took out the lights!" "Whoo!" "NARRATOR:" "Now they're winding the carnage up a notch at a car clobbering crash-test station." "TORY:" "These guys know how to wreck stuff." "They smashed our moose." "They smashed our trailer." "And they smashed our fruit stand." "GRANT:" "Whoo!" "Now they're gonna smash Buster." "NARRATOR:" "So while the team dresses Buster in a pair of everyday shoes and socks..." "And by the way, thanks to Andrew Paris of Houston, Texas, for letting us use his socks." "NARRATOR:" "And knocked out of Andrew's socks or not, it's clear that Buster's in for a torrid time." "[Chuckles]" "KARI:" "This is "Knock Your Socks Off" experiment," "Buster in shoes and socks versus battering ram." "In 3, 2, 1." "[Laughter]" "His shoes didn't come off at all." "Let's see if they loosened at all." "That's a pretty massive hit." "Dang!" "That look like it hurt!" "NARRATOR:" "Yep, that's a definite ouch." "Buster just got walloped with 17,000 pounds of body-breaking force." "But did his footwear fly?" "Mm, not this time." "TORY:" "Look at that." "They're not even loose." "I'll bet his joints are looser than his shoes." "We just dropped a pendulum that weighs almost a ton straight into Buster's chest and knocked him back 40 feet." "But we were still unable to knock off his shoes or his socks." "But we're not done yet." "See, and on the last test, these shoes stayed on." "But what if he's just got his socks?" "Maybe the shoes are holding the socks on." "NARRATOR:" "So with Buster's feet supporting his own weight, the pendulum is once again lifted to full height, for full knock-your-socks-off power." "GRANT:" "Okay, here we go." "This is Buster with socks only versus the pendulum." "In 3, 2, 1." "ALL:" "Oh!" " GRANT:" "Yeah!" " Yeah!" "TORY:" "His head came off. [Laughs]" "But look..." "One of his socks is knocked almost completely off." "Yeah." "But it's still technically on." "Yeah, he didn't get knocked out of 'em, necessarily." "You guys are so hard to satisfy!" "NARRATOR:" "Hmm, maybe Kari should take a look at the high speed before she gets carried away." "Here comes the pendulum." " TORY:" "Solid hit." " KARI:" "Yes." "Whoo!" "TORY:" "His feet go straight back, but his socks haven't come off yet." "TORY:" "[Chuckles]" " GRANT:" "Still on." " KARI:" "Oh, there it is." "TORY:" "It's dragging along the ground." "It's not knocking him out of his socks." " Okay, so that doesn't count." " No." "NARRATOR:" "Confirming this myth is turning out to be as tough as Buster's stay-put socks." "TORY:" "Yeah, but we can't bust this now." "I don't think we've tried hard enough to knock him out of his socks." "No, I think we need a new technique, something a little bit more." "NARRATOR:" "Or in other words, this ain't over till it's over." "Good work, buddy." "NARRATOR:" "And the Mythbusters are going in search of more power." "Socks." "Sometimes they just seem to have a mind of their own." "But can they ever be knocked off your feet?" "Okay, so far, Buster's lost a shoe but no socks." "Yeah, the impact doesn't seem to be working out." "It seems like you're gonna need a massive amount of force to get those socks off." "I think you're right, and I think I have just the thing." "What?" "Explosives." "Surprised?" "You didn't see that one coming." " Seriously?" " Yeah." "There have been cases of people getting their clothes blown off from an explosion, yet they survived the blast." "So socks are clothes." "I say we test this one." "Okay, well, let's go to the quarry and take, say, like..." "I don't know..." " 500 pounds of explosives?" " I like 500." "Get some mannequin legs, put some socks on 'em, and put them at different distances from the center of the blast." "NARRATOR:" "Round three..." ""Knock Your Socks Off" with an explosive shock wave." "And you couldn't have picked a nicer day for it." "[Horn honks]" "KARI:" "Wow!" "TORY:" "Oh, my gosh." "This is awesome." "NARRATOR:" "The mannequin legs are going to be screwed on to these stands then positioned on a circular grid at various distances from the explosion." "This is the blast center." "This is where we're gonna be setting off a 500-pound explosion." "Hopefully, that blast will give us enough power to knock off the socks." "Now, we're gonna put our first set of legs 15 feet away from the blast, then 25 feet, 35 feet," "45 feet, and finally, 55 feet away." "This way, we have a variety of distances from the blast." "Because the closer you are to the blast, probably the more likely that your socks are gonna get knocked off." "But let's face it..." "If you're standing too close to the blast," "I'm sure you're gonna lose more than just your socks." "NARRATOR:" "Which is why the team are now adding "...and living to tell the tale"" "to the knock-your-socks-off myth." "GRANT:" "So in addition to knocking your socks off, a big part of this myth is survivability." "And we measure the force of an explosion in pounds per square inch, or PSI." "Just to give you an idea of what we're talking about, at 2.5 PSI, you're likely to rupture your eardrums." "Now, we've calculated with 500 pounds of explosives, at a range of 20 feet, you're gonna experience over 100 PSI, which means a very high likelihood of death." "NARRATOR:" "To measure exactly where that lethal pressure kicks in," "Grant is assembling some supersensitive equipment." "GRANT:" "This is a burst disk made by our friends at Oseco." "It's a very thin metal membrane that's calibrated to rupture at 100 PSI." "Now, if this is still intact at the end of the experiment, and we've blown the socks off, then there's a real chance of confirming this myth." "NARRATOR:" "Meanwhile, Kari and Tory dole out the dummies." "KARI:" "We've specifically designed these legs to give us every opportunity for a successful sock-blast removal." "And we've got one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, as if you were running or walking." "That way if a sock is gonna come off in either of these positions, myth is confirmed." "NARRATOR:" "And just to mark this explosive occasion, the official "Mythbusters" sneaker." "KARI:" "They're blast-zone shoes." "I like 'em." "And one of our fans hand-knit an entire box of socks for us." "NARRATOR:" "Thanks big-time," "Patience Boyd of Somerville, Massachusetts." "At each foot station, some feet will have your socks and shoes." "TORY:" "How's that fit, ma'am?" "NARRATOR:" "At others, just socks." "KARI: "S." 15." "That means sock only at 15 feet." "That way, when these get blown to smithereens, we might be able to track where they came from." "NARRATOR:" "But before they push the plunger, the team needs two more vital ingredients." "Cool." "NARRATOR:" "First, the fire department..." "GRANT:" "You know what they say..." "Safe exploding is good exploding." "NARRATOR:" "...and the explosives..." "Here comes our ANFO." "NARRATOR:" "Courtesy of retired FBI agent Frank Doyle." "TORY:" "So, it looks like you guys have a package for us." "I brought you a really nice package." " KARI:" "ANFO, right?" " Yep." "GRANT:" "Oh, that ought to do it." "That ought to knock some socks off." "NARRATOR:" "You better believe it." "And if any socks are going to get knocked off soon, this is the stuff to do it." "This is 500 pounds of ANFO." "Just to give you an idea, it took 800 pounds of ANFO to completely vaporize a cement truck." "The explosives are in place, the legs are in place, the burst disks are connected." "It's time for us to run away and let Frank and the bomb squad do their final preparations." "And then it's boom time." "NARRATOR:" "Once upon a time in the Wild West, a fired bullet could just about settle any bust-up." "All right." "NARRATOR:" "But is it true that a bullet dropped and a bullet fired simultaneously will hit the ground at the same time?" "[Paintball gun fires]" "[Laughs] That is science." "NARRATOR:" "Out at the range..." "All right." "Good to go." "NARRATOR:" "Adam and Jamie found that a bullet from their .45 automatic flew 360 feet before it bit the dust." "I love this myth!" "NARRATOR:" "Now all they need is a location to suit one of the most sophisticated experiments the Mythbusters have ever attempted." "[Ship horn blares]" "NARRATOR:" "And down by the shores of old San Francisco Bay, they've got one." "Ah, look at that." "It's magnificent." "JAMIE:" "I love these old military buildings." "NARRATOR:" "The historic 480-foot- long big-event behemoth" "Fort Mason Center." "JAMIE:" "Fort Mason Center's perfect for us for several reasons." "At over 480 feet long, there's plenty of room for a fired bullet to come to rest." "And because it's enclosed, there's no wind to worry about affecting our bullet." "And then lastly, it's perfectly level." "NARRATOR:" "So with the gun rest in place at one end of the room," "Adam's first job is to make sure it's exactly 36 inches off the floor and firing level." "I'm gonna fire a bullet to that target 20 feet away." "Within that 20 feet, the bullet's not gonna drop at all." "So as long as the bullet hole in that target is the exact same height off the ground as the barrel," "I know I've got a perfectly level bullet." "JAMIE:" "Seating the gun rest." "Firing in 3, 2, 1." "[Gunshot]" "ADAM:" "Dude, I'd say that is absolutely perfect." "Right on our laser line." "That gun's firing level." "Works for me." "NARRATOR:" "With the fired-bullet rig sorted for now," "Jamie rolls out the other half of the experiment." "JAMIE:" "This is my bullet drop rig, and the key component is this electromagnet right here, because it'll hold on to my bullet and then on cue, it'll drop the bullet." "Okay, we've got all the sensors we need and all the equipment we need to time the exact amount of time it takes a bullet both to be dropped from 36 inches and to be fired from 36 inches off the ground." "And we could simply compare those two times like we did with the paintball." "But that's not good enough for us, for we have a bigger vision." "We want to see that dropped bullet hit the ground in the spot the fired bullet will be skipping off." "That's what we're about to set up." "NARRATOR:" "That's right, folks." "This time, both halves of the experiment are going to happen at the same time." "So before rolling the drop rig 360 feet down the room, the boys just want to make sure their little synchronizing system is going to work..." "JAMIE:" "Simultaneous firing and bullet-drop test." "In 3, 2, 1." "[Gunshots]" "Let's see how it looked on high speed." "NARRATOR:" "Where the Mythbusters quickly discover they have a problem." "Let's look back at the timing about when the light goes off." "While the gun and the timing LED go off together, the dropped bullet decides to delay its journey south." "ADAM:" "It sits on that electromagnet for a while." "JAMIE:" "Yeah." "Do you think there's any residual magnetism or something like that?" "ADAM:" "If you look at this high-speed shot of the bullet on the electromagnet, you'll notice it hangs out for 65 milliseconds." "That tells me there's a lot of residual magnetism in the electromagnet itself, even though it's turned off, and it's no good as a mechanism for our drop." "We've got to rebuild a mechanism and we've got to rebuild it fast." "NARRATOR:" "Out at the quarry, the knock-your-socks-off squad have wisely taken themselves to higher ground and way out of the blast zone." "Our blast zone is set up way, way, way over there." "But we've decided to come really, really far back to make sure all Mythbusters, big and tiny, are perfectly safe." "All right." "This is "Knock Your Socks Off" using a 500-pound explosion." "Everybody look alive." "Here we go." "In 3, 2, 1." " TORY:" "Whoa!" "Yeah!" " GRANT:" "Whoa!" " TORY:" "Yeah!" " GRANT:" "That was cool." "TORY:" "That was awesome!" "KARI:" "Wow!" "NARRATOR:" "Remember, to confirm this myth, the team needs to find a sockless foot in a critical zone of human survivability." "KARI:" "Whoa!" "TORY:" "Look at the size of that crater!" "Oh, wait." "Here's a sock!" "[Groans]" "Oh, my God." "There's a foot inside!" "It's still in there." " That's disgusting." " I don't think this counts." "TORY:" "No, that's definitely not blowing your socks off." "NARRATOR:" "But a closer look at the blast zone reveals some explosive results." "Check it out... no socks!" "What distances?" "What are they?" "25 foot, and this is 15 feet." "NARRATOR:" "Well, they've finally managed to knock some socks off." "But would a human be walking away?" "Yeah, you're probably not gonna survive this if your socks came off." "Here's the pressure disk." "Let's see what it says." "GRANT:" "Okay, 25 feet." " KARI:" "That's blown." " TORY:" "That's blown." "NARRATOR:" "And a double check of the disks confirms that up to 35 feet away, this bang would have sent a mere mortal to kingdom come." "So that's not survivable." "That doesn't count." "But at the minimum survivable radius of 45 feet..." "Yep, they're still on." "We've got 45, we've got 55, and the socks are still on." "So we have no survivability at the front, but we lost a few socks." "And then as you get to the zone of survivability, we still have our socks on." "I think that gives us both of our criteria" " for calling this one busted." " Yeah, this is totally busted." "If your socks do get blown off, you're pretty much dead." "Yeah, you wouldn't be walking away from that." "[Chuckles] This was cool, though." "KARI:" "You might say it was a blast." " TORY:" "Ha ha!" " GRANT:" "Oh!" "ADAM:" "Here we go!" "NARRATOR:" ""Mythbusters" and world firsts go together like ham and eggs." "ADAM:" "Yee-haw!" "Wow!" "NARRATOR:" "There's the pykrete boat..." "I'm king of the world!" "NARRATOR:" "...breaking glass..." " ADAM:" "Oh!" " Whoo!" "NARRATOR:" "...and the lead balloon." "ADAM:" "If someone says it's impossible, we just take it as a challenge!" "NARRATOR:" "Now the Mythbusters are testing a real doozy." "ADAM:" "Everything's hot, ready to go." "NARRATOR:" "Bullet shot versus bullet dropped." "But a malingering magnet is holding up the show." "As soon as it's released, it's just staying there." "NARRATOR:" "But do you think Adam's going to let something like that stand in his way?" "Awesome!" "That works." "NARRATOR:" "Oh, no." "ADAM:" "So the electromagnet has gone." "It's on the scrap heap." "We've got a new little solenoid in there which will... whoop!" ".." "Get out of the way and let the bullet drop." "All we've got to do is try it once, get our timings right, confirm them, and we should be ready to do this test." "NARRATOR:" "So the new simultaneous-release system is ready for a test-fire." "All right." "Simultaneous release." "In 3, 2, 1." "[Gunshot]" "All right." "Let's see how it did on high speed." "NARRATOR:" "But once again, there's a timing problem." "ADAM:" "The solenoid's way too slow." "Yep." "ADAM:" "It's not letting go." "JAMIE:" "The most difficult thing about this whole experiment is getting the fired bullet and the dropped bullet to become airborne at exactly the same time." "And we can't tolerate even a few milliseconds of variation in this mix to make the result that we want to see happen." "It's hard." "NARRATOR:" "Now, there's an understatement." "So cue the brainstorm." "We're not even seeing the pin start to move." "It gave us the problem that we currently have, which is that it's late." "NARRATOR:" "Having spent the past four hours trying to sort out the solenoid..." "ADAM:" "Look, let's do this twice." "[Gunshot]" "NARRATOR:" "The boys are now staring failure square in the face." "And all it is is about figuring out some way to mechanically push between these two." "NARRATOR:" "Until Jamie snatches victory from the jaws of defeat." "If you have a hinge that you pull in the middle." "It needs to be some sort of a little bitty catch that is on its edge." "I could make a clip like that." "NARRATOR:" "He adds a small metal clip to the trigger to delay the gun the miniscule milliseconds needed to match the solenoid." "ADAM:" "Everything's hot." "Let's do it." "[Gunshots]" "NARRATOR:" "And after a few test-fires and a bit of fine-tuning..." "it works." "ADAM:" "Bullet leaves the gun." "Oh, that's good." "It's good." "It's 1/3 of a millisecond difference." " JAMIE:" "Wow." " That's freaking perfect." " Let's go do this full scale!" " Okay." "NARRATOR:" "Which means rolling up the room 360 feet to stake out a drop zone." "Right about there." "That's where they were landing out in the shooting range, so this is where I expect them to land here." "JAMIE:" "Okay." "NARRATOR:" "Adam lays down a runway of white paper so the high-speed camera will clearly see and measure both bullets at the same time, in the same place, and in the same shot." "All we need now in the drop zone is Jamie's drop rig so the boys can take a shot at physics history." "ADAM:" "All right." "You ready to do this for real?" "I think we'll hit it on the first shot." " Really?" " Oh, yeah." "[Laughs]" "You never make predictions." "That's awesome." "JAMIE:" "Bullet dropped versus fired." "In 3, 2, 1." "[Gunshots]" "NARRATOR:" "But from 360 feet away, the boys can't see exactly where the fired bullet landed." "Let's go see where it hit." "NARRATOR:" "So Adam takes a one-wheeled "wide" down the room" " to check out the drop zone." " [Laughs]" "Wow." "NARRATOR:" "And the results are simply ripping." "Can't get much closer than that." "Oh, I can't wait to see the high speed." "So, dude, this bullet carved a streak right under the drop zone." "I think this might be... the shot we've been looking for!" "NARRATOR:" "In real time, it's impossible to tell what happened until Adam analyses the high speed and crunches the numbers." "3,677 minus 3,915 equals 238, divided by 6..." "[Chuckles]" "Dude, the difference is 39.6 milliseconds." "JAMIE:" "Which means it's less than the human eye can make out." "NARRATOR:" "So after days of brain-teasing tests, the Mythbusters can claim a world first for themselves and a victory for physics." "ADAM:" "Let me put 39.6 milliseconds into some perspective for you." "When you go to the movies and watch a projected celluloid film on the screen..." "You know that that film is made up of individual images, right?" "What you might not have known is that it takes 24 of those per second to make up the film that you're watching." "So each one is on screen for exactly 1/24 of a second." "But you don't notice that because it's faster than your eye can register." "Well, that 1/24 of a second is actually longer than 39.6 milliseconds." "That's how close those two bullets were." "Two bullets..." "one dropped, one fired." "Amazingly, they ended up in the same place at the same time." "Dude, this myth was every bit as much fun to test as I was hoping it would be, and I got to say, even though the physics textbooks had it right," "I love the fact that we did it full size with real, unmodified bullets." "I bet no one has ever tried that before." "I think you're right." "And whether it was ball bearings or bullets dropped or fired, they all hit the ground at the same time." "Yep." "Gravity, man." "It's not just a good idea." "It's the law." "Confirmed." "Confirmed."