Cremora Explosion (courtesy of Mythbusters). Almost any fine, flammable material will make a nice fireball if ignited while dispersed. (for example: grain elevator explosions.) Mythbusters, as usual, take it to another level. Bonus: How to make your own. [more inside]
posted by empath on Sep 8, 2009 - 35 comments

KaBOOM! This past Friday, the MythBusters exploded 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate (25% of the same material used in the Oklahoma City bombing,) at a rock quarry in Yolo County, CA for an upcoming episode. But the explosion was apparently a wee bit bigger than they expected. It shattered windows in nearby Esparto and was large enough to be picked up as a "small event" ground tremor by National Geographical Survey sensors. Which myth were they busting, you ask? [more inside]
posted by zarq on Mar 26, 2009 - 73 comments

Has man really set foot on the moon? There have certainly been a lot of claims that the whole Apollo missions were one giant hoax. Adam and Jamie at Mythbusters examine the claims of the Hoax Believers one by one. Did they use a wire rig or slow down the film to simulate the 1/6 moon gravity? What would it look like in real 1/6 G? Would a footprint in the lunar regolith have maintained it's shape even if there was no moisture to keep the material together? Why was the flag waving so much if there was no wind on the moon? Why are the shadows on the moon not parallel if they are coming from a single light source? Why can we see the astronauts when they are in shadows if there isn't a second light source? To finish it all off they shoot a laser at the moon to see if the reflector they supposedly left there is actually there.
posted by Sir Mildred Pierce on Dec 18, 2008 - 105 comments

SLYT: Professor Savage shows how the density of various gases will affect your voice in different ways... the fun way (by inhaling them). [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Oct 15, 2008 - 51 comments

Mythbusters has been gagged about doing a new episode on the ease of hacking the new rfid enabled credit cards.
posted by DJWeezy on Aug 30, 2008 - 121 comments

Adam Savage's talk at The Last HOPE: Fascination with the Dodo Bird
parts:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C
(YouTubeFilter with a great audience Q&A session) [more inside]
posted by Chuckles on Aug 29, 2008 - 37 comments

Mythbusters and the Mona Lisa in Overdrive. In a demonstration at Nvidia's NVISION show, Jamie and Adam provide a graphic demonstration of the power of multicore processors vs. a single CPU.
posted by Dave Faris on Aug 28, 2008 - 44 comments

Mythbusters explores Do Pretty Girls Fart?
posted by spec80 on Jan 1, 2008 - 100 comments

Mythbusters Saves! "Recalling an episode of a reality TV show he recently watched, the driver waited for the cab to fill with water before lowering a window and swimming out, Mora said." (Mythbusters has been in the blue before, saving those lives through reality television). Hi, Adam!
posted by thanotopsis on Dec 31, 2007 - 93 comments

Wednesday's Mythbusters episode had a known-quack "doctor" with a phony Ph. D? This guy says so about the beat-the-polygraph test's test-giver.
posted by floam on Dec 7, 2007 - 72 comments

Paging asavage, congratulations are in order. Thanks to quick thinking and an episode of Mythbusters, 14-year-old Julian Shaw saves a man from death by train. "[As the train roared past] the noise pierced your ears and there was a suction that pulled us in… I'd seen that on MythBusters, so I stayed right back and pulled Mark back towards me."
posted by micketymoc on Nov 8, 2007 - 60 comments

Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach. "The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies (PDFs) show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths." [Via Firedoglake, more at MindHacks.]
posted by homunculus on Sep 5, 2007 - 53 comments

9 Superpowers made real. [Via Digg.]
posted by homunculus on Jul 20, 2007 - 33 comments

Last week, a woman at DC's Reagan Airport was detained because of water in her son's sippy cup. In an unusual step, the TSA has posted their own Mythbusters site where they show the security footage and the official incident report. Here is BoingBoing's take on the video. And a security/security technology blogger posts about the larger lesson that people readily side against the TSA "because there's no accountability or transparency in the DHS."
posted by spec80 on Jun 18, 2007 - 253 comments

Every Mythbuster myth in nifty graph form on one page. Quick and easy reference to each myth busted, confirmed, or plausible.
posted by GatorDavid on Jan 24, 2007 - 39 comments

Mythbusters bloopers. NSFW if your employer would object to you seeing a bare-assed Adam Savage.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Nov 8, 2006 - 40 comments

TV's Mythbusters, (and as such Metafilter's 'very own' asavage), hopes to use the global reach of Youtube to send a yawn around the world. "If only one per cent of the global population took part in the Yawn Around The World experiment then 65 million people would have yawned across the globe" Savage was quoted as saying. The equivalent amount of air exhaled would "be able raise the Titanic or even inflate all the bicycle tyres in Beijing." Fascinating stuff! Watch the (hopefully) yawn inducing footage here.
posted by Effigy2000 on Sep 25, 2006 - 34 comments

Archimedes Death Ray: Idea Feasibility Testing. Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire. The story has been much debated and oft dismissed as myth. TV's MythBusters were not able to replicate the feat and “busted” the myth. MIT students rock!
posted by mrkredo on Oct 11, 2005 - 52 comments

Myth Dispelled: Shoe Size, Penis Size Not Linked. I guess there's no need in buying my shoes two sizes too large any longer (pardon the pun). Damn you scientists!
posted by pallid on Sep 30, 2002 - 22 comments