"Do Try This At Home" episode discussion
Posted by Mr_Viper@reddit | mythbusters | View on Reddit | 3 comments
Anyone else find this last episode incredibly unsatisfying and dull? Each myth seemed to have either a "No Shit" answer (splashing a ton of water on fire will put it out, and dry ice bombs are dangerous) or a "Who Cares" answer (some ingredients I may or may not have at home could potentially create a boring carbon snake or goopy mess). It really felt like I was watching a science show for third graders. This in addition to all the other legitimate complaints about this season are really turning me off to the show.
WBLO@reddit
The full-scale metronome experiment on the air hockey table was flawed from the start because the surface the metronomes were on didn't behave anything like the surface-on-rollers they were on during the smaller tests.
The air hockey table setup was fundamentally different, and I don't even remember being able to tell if the board was even floating above the surface; I think the weight of the whole thing would keep it from moving.
Regardless of if it floated or not, an air cushion behaves differently than the physical coupling of the board on top of the pipes, it was just a waste of time and the "all the metronomes are calibrated differently" thing wasn't the real culprit.
Of course the whole episode was a waste of time so it hardly seems worth pointing out, except it seemed like an unusually sloppy mistake for the show.
MyNameDontAsk@reddit
I'm not so sure. I viewed this to be more of a momentum problem in the fact that we want the metronomes to be in sync and to create the greatest momentum. Friction and mass will increase the time it takes for them to aline. I that that for this case the air cushion and rollers would act the same way.
There are probably some variables I'm over looking. To solve this problem it would have been nice if they had done a small scale on the air cushion. Just to verify that the air cushion still worked. The real thing I wished they would have talked about, they did touch on, is if the metronomes are 90 degrees out of phase that they will never aline.
Popular-Ask-7961@reddit
The air cushion added a different vector for the forge to disburse. With the cylinders you have an X,Y movement on a cushion of air it can move in any direction therefore negating the "corrective" influence of the strongest collective force.