Mythbusters
“Mythbusters” has been one of my favorite television shows since its debut in 2003. The romanticized viewpoint of the scientific world leads everyone to believe that scientists spend their days wearing pristine white lab coats, sitting in state-of-the-art laboratories, making triumphant discoveries, further advancing the world, then going home to debate Star Trek vs Star Trek: The Next Generation with their chat room buddies. To outsiders, this is an illusion we don’t want tarnished by bothersome details such as “facts,” or “reality.” The Mythbusters bend this illusion just ever so slightly and allow us, the viewing audience, to see the scientific method in action.
The primary myth of tonight’s episode concerned aerodynamics. Conceivably, a car’s gas mileage differs depending on whether or not the car is clean. I had the privilege of watching tonight’s episode with my father, an actual scientist. He is an aerospace engineer for Boeing. As a child, I delighted in telling people my father was a rocket scientist, but now I resent him constantly for heralding his abundant scientific knowledge to his liberal arts major son. For example, tonight, as the program went to commercial, I was involuntarily given a supplemental lesson on induced drag versus form drag, culminating in him running my kitchen faucet to visually display the intricacies of drag in fluids, the principal of aerodynamics central to tonight’s episode. This was immediately followed by my father throwing a rag at my head, telling me to wash the dishes more often.
The topical myth itself was simple: does a dirty car run as efficiently as a clean one? Adam Savage began by rigging a special gauge to a nondescript sedan. The rig measured fuel usage to the ounce, using a solenoid switch and what I can only understand as applied phlebotinum. But to get a uniformly dirty car, do the Mythbusters simply slather shovelfuls of mud onto the frame? Of course not. Jamie Hyneman uses the full resources of Discovery Channel’s budget and rigs a pressurized sprayer to coat the car in a specialized blend of dirt and water. After all, there’s the normal way of doing things, and there’s the Mythbusters way: strapping an engine to it (or blowing it up).
The primary, small-scale results seem to bust the myth; the aerodynamic clean car is far more efficient than the dirty version. However, never ones to back down from a challenge, Jamie and Adam ramped up the experiment to full scale by slathering the car with 750 pounds of clay, then carving out some odd 300 dimples, creating a golf ball-like surface. If its good enough for sporting goods, its good enough for my morning commute. The implied consensus of the televised scientists was on point with my father; indentations work on golf balls because of their small size, on a car, their effect would be overshadowed by the sheer size. At least, that’s the majority of what my dad prattled on about; when he gets all sciencey, I get apathetic like a hipster in a coffee shop. However, when the final experiment comes to fruition, the Mythbusters stand dumbfounded as they discover the dimpled car does indeed travel slightly more efficiently than the standard version.
For my father, the professional, this was unacceptable. If he were thirty years younger, he would be griping about it on the internet. Instead, he only had me to sound off to. Luckily, he decided to cancel his frustrated soliloquy about why the tests were wrong, why the results were wrong, and why the science was wrong. He simply let out a dismissing grunt and flippantly waved his hand at the TV. Monosyllabically, he said it all. Understandably, the hour-long program glosses over certain facts and details. The delicate balancing act of science and entertainment leaves many questions unanswered and many facts unrevealed. It’s not perfect science, it’s popular science.
Simply put, Mythbusters is not a show for scientists. This was made obvious during tonight’s secondary myth: whether beer and liquor combined result in worse hangovers than beer alone. Throughout the night a botched adage was mentioned repeatedly “Stick with beer, you’re in the clear. Beer and liquor, never been sicker.” Any college student worth their Thirsty Thursdays amount of super-absorbent sawdust knows the adage actually goes “Liquor then beer, you’re in the clear. Beer before liquor, never been sicker.” Perhaps I’m splitting hairs, or perhaps I’m a Schadenfreude loving jerk, and wish to see Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara subjected to another round of hungover torture at the hands of pregnant sadist Kari Byron.
Encouraging the men to drink what they think was enough to ensure a hangover, Grant imbibed a modest six beers while Tory one-upped every frat boy in the nation by downing an impressive fourteen cans of beer in one night. This is where the magic begins. On several occasions, the Mythbusters crew has had to get totally plastered in the name of science, and every time, great television ensues. Drunken antics are always great entertainment, dating back to days of yore when the village idiot got drunk on mead and ruined the jousting tournament by wandering shirtless onto the field. Or maybe that was just some random drunk guy at last September’s Renaissance Fair.
The drunken escapades of Tory and Grant include a stumbling version of the running man dance, a ten-foot failed dive onto a mattress, and a terrible impression of the Most Interesting Man in the World. At one point, a football helmet became an omnipresent prop coinciding with the appearance of a large hole in a nearby piece of drywall. These two cannot be unrelated, but alas, the true nature of the glorious incident was left on the cutting room floor.
In order to conclusively quantify the terribleness of a hangover, Kari assembled a series of tests to measure sensory sensitivity, motion sickness, concentration, dehydration, and pain. Suffering sympathy pains from the neé inebriated duo, I cringed at the thought of being subjected to bright lights and loud noises whilst hungover. Similarly cruel was the test to recall in order a sequence of random images, a task I couldn’t complete sober. The motion sickness test comprised of sitting in a chair which rotates on an axis, staring at a fixed object. In a sober control test, Grant was able to reach thirty minutes in the chair before queasiness set in. While hungover, Grant made it to the explanation of the test’s rules. “When you vomit, the test will be over,” to which Grant promptly re-experiences his dinner.
The results of the experiment were inconclusive. Grant’s premature regurgitation after a night of beer was an apparent isolated incident. When spirits were added to the mix, he woke up the next day free from queasiness. Tory, on the other hand, consistently stumbled during the testing phase regardless of alcoholic input. Yet always the performer, even after an impressive night consisting of four beers and nine shots, he interlaced stereotypical regretful quips, knowing full well audiences were hanging on his every action. “I’m never drinking again,” he mutters while looking straight at the camera and winking.
In summation, the Mythbusters have a tendency to pique the scientific interest of the common man. It’s for those of us who slogged through high school science class, proclaiming we would never fill out a lab report again. Actual scientists, however, see a group of pyromaniac nutjobs who reduce the credibility of their fields. Yet, for all their apparent faults, the Mythbusters embody the essence of science itself: a search for knowledge, truth, and a better understanding of the world around us. What isn’t truly obvious needs to be sought out. Not everyone has a personal scientist to throw dishrags at them.
