Building the Ultimate Aerodynamic Bike - Mythbusters - S07 EP12 - Science Documentary

on this episode of Mythbusters we've on  the Adam and Jamie go green for science I'm actually getting kind of excited about  this and kick their engineering expertise into Full Throttle when I was a kid I would  have killed one of these were you ever a kid no as they pit bike against car for the  Ultimate Eco challenge we're just getting started too going to be awesome meanwhile wow  Carrie torian Grant come here often raid the Arsenal for an explosive filmic Fable John  Mal you don't get any he

re and unleash the first RPG in MythBusters history to find  out if a bullet can beat a rocket propelled grenade ma who are The MythBusters Adam Savage  working on these machines is great for my and Jamie heinan are you done screwing  around between them more than 30 years of special effects experience together with Carrie  Byron Tory bichi you ready to get your head cut off and Grant him a Hara save yourselves they  don't just tell the mys they put them to the test [Music] Jamie you're a fan of

motorcycles  right ever since I was 16 really they've had motorcycles that long here we go okay there is a  trend apparently going on where people including fans of Mythbusters are trading in their  cars and driving motorcycles instead because they believe that's the more environmentally  friendly choice and what's their logic their logic is simply that because motorcycles are  generally more fuel efficient than cars they burn less gas and thus they must be better for  the environment sounds se

nsible but there are people that say not only is that not true they  claim that motorcycles pollute far worse than cars well that sounds like something we need  to investigate I totally agree there's no doubt both cars and bikes produce gases that can be  harmful to the environment and supposedly being smaller and using less fuel means that bikes  produce less so is there fuel to this fire are motorcycles A Greener machine Than Cars  well clearly this involves getting a bunch of different cars a

nd motorcycles testing them  and comparing the results right right but which ones I mean there's tens of thousands of makes  and models of each what do we choose well why don't we get some of the most popular models  of the last three decades a representative sample right some cars and bikes from the '  80s the '90s and the naugh the naughties are 2000 till 2010 hand that sounds like a perfect  way to do this well let's get our hands dirty okay who where are we this will be our base of  operatio

ns let's walk you through the [Applause] particulars these are our test cars we've got  a car from the 80s a car from the '90s and a car from the naughties we've also got some  motorcycles we' got one from the 80s one from the '90s one from the naugh we've chosen them  based on their pop ity within their respective decades and obviously for this test all those cars  and bikes are going to do some driving there is literally nothing fancy about the route we'll be  driving today no tricky Maneuvers

no extreme road conditions it is simply a 30-minute Drive spread  out over 20 M and split 75% freeway driving and 25% City driving so how are we going to measure  our emissions well that's where these guys come in they're from the Clean Air techn techology  division of global mrv and they've brought with them something called the pems or portable  emissions measuring system and basically you know when you take your car in to get it smogged  well that's what the PMS does except it's more accurat

e in its real world because you put it in  the vehicle you stick a probe in the exhaust you hook it up to the engine and you drive the car  or the motorcycle around for a while and voila instant data instant data that is all important  for this test the PMS will track every kind of emission including the greenhouse gas carbon  dioxide the smog causing carbon monoxide and the nasty oxides of nitrogen the numbers we get  should be precise enough to allow us to call whether the motorcycles or the c

ars are better  for the environment and with six Vehicles it's a lot of driving I'm ready all right let's  do this all right here we go but thanks to the wonders of nonlinear editing okay this is  Mike versus car the 30-minute test for the 80s 80s pollution test in 3 '90s 2 and naughties  one go can take place simultaneously and we're off a left turn takes us into the neighborhood  where we can do some City Driving Jamie's keeping up nicely everyone's going roughly the same  speed test is going

perfectly everything is going perfectly and Adam's running commentary  gives us a very special Insight ooh I just burped and taste a little bit of my lunch  enchiladas as the guys gather their data I must say I never quite understood the dogs in  sweaters thing I mean they're cute as blazes but I like petting my dog I don't like petting a sweater  I'm really glad we had this time alone then we can talk after a a few minutes of City Driving the  freeway portion of the testing begins I am driving

for scientific testing on the freeway in Northern  California I'm followed by Jamie and following [Music] up this mlock it's not even half crazy it's  like full crazy full crazy and there is one preoccupation that plagues Adam as he  drives you'll notice at this point in the drive I haven't picked my nose yet that's  on purpose I still have not picked my nose on camera I hope you appreciate my self-restraint  oh is that a nose pick did you catch your nose pick on camera that was more like a swip

e but  technically the tip of my finger did enter my nose H oh another one oh my God it's happened  while Adam's been keeping himself entertained a traditionally stoic Jamie has been putting the  bikes through their Paces eventually after 30 minutes in each vehicle the testing comes  to a close and Adam finishes how he began we've been driving on the freeway testing  our emissions in motorcycles and the car [Music] today thank you thank you very much  after a full day of driving we've done three

runs with six vehicles and collected 24  separate points of data home sweet home there we go so that's it yeah it's time to  head back to the shop and see what it [Music] means next up the guys are seeing red with an  explosive myth you're going to love this why because after 180 or so episodes we finally  found an excuse to use a rocket launcher yes what are we testing this one comes from the  movie Red retired and extremely dangerous okay here's the scene there's a standoff our hero  has a re

volver and our villain has a rocket propelled grenade they both fire and the bullet  and the RPG meet in midair the bullet triggers the RPG causing a huge explosion killing the  villain and the hero walks away and skape so that's two rocket propelled grenade myths  for the price of one will a bullet trigger the Warhead and when it explodes would it really  be bye-bye Rocketeer with only the best Bad Gal Going Up in Flames so where to start all right  two myths one scene now the first one is can

you set off a from an RPG using a bullet well to  begin with I think we need to match both the gun and the rocket launcher from the movie then  we point them at each other and fire simple right okay besides being a logistical nightmare  you can't shoot a rocket launcher in California but I know a place we can luckily the team have  friends in high explosive place so they head to the MythBusters rocketeering HQ to test the myth  of our RPG handgun face off we've come to one of our favorite places

New Mexico Tech sort of feels  like a second home why do we love this place so much well they have 40 square miles of testing  facility where they have gun ranges and bomb sites how can you get any better than that well by  throwing an license to fire these so for this myth we have three questions we need to ask one how  does an RPG work which end does a rocket go in two what happens when an RPG and a bullet meet midair  and three when they do meet and the explosion goes off who survives and qu

estion one how does it work  calls for a little RPG 101 with John Merkel John we've fired a lot of guns on the show but never in  RPG could you fill me in on the basic components okay this is the launcher it's pretty simple it's  basically a bunch of metal tubes welded together and this is the rocket so when it fires it kicks  the RPG out of the tube and partway to the Target the rocket motor lights and makes it accelerate  and what actually causes the fuse to arm setback g-forces when it comes

out of the tube it goes  from 0 to 140 m/s in about 6 milliseconds so it's experiencing a lot of G's is this as dangerous  as it looks right now no cuz it's not armed you have to fire it out of the launcher to arm it  that's when it gets really dangerous but like any explosive if you do something stupid with  it it can be very dangerous so can we fire it unfortunately no that's my job but I will let you  pick my target okay good cuz we've got the perfect Target for you this is ridiculous anybody

wants  to talk to me I'll be in my trailer eventually Tori is coaxed out of his trailer because it's  time for the Practical demo of exactly how the RPG works all right do you guys realize this  is the first time in the history of Mythbusters that we've ever shot an RPG all right this is RPG  versus trailer just to see what it does in 5 4 3 2 1 it's gone the trailer is completely gone that  was so fast that was so much more energetic than I thought that didn't look look anything like  you see i

n the movies no it's like bang bang let's check the racket yeah right outside they  find a trail of RPG Devastation or should that be an RPG devastated trailer wow that is  a scary amount of destructive force right there well now we know how an RPG Works yep they  couldn't have asked for a better demonstration that was an incredible amount of  Devastation that trailer didn't stand a chance and the only thing is  it doesn't look like it does in the movies the movie you see like like a white  plum

e this is like bang bang and it was over now after looking at the high speed of the  trailer we noticed one thing after the trailer exploded we saw hot molten copper continue  on and actually burn holes into the steel armor behind it the reason being is because  an RPG isn't like a typical grenade that has an explosive charge that throws shrapnel it  actually has a inverted copper cone that is surrounded by a shape charge and when that hits  the target the charge goes off and it actually pushes

that copper out into a hot molten slug  of copper that burns through steel so not only is the RPG explosion nothing like the movie it  also throws forward a molten copper surprise which doesn't bode well for the hero now we need  to see what happens when a bullet meets an RPG the hard part is going to be getting those  two to match up let's get to work that was incredible the bibsters have been behind the  wheel and in the saddle to find out which which is greener the car or the bike and finally

  the data is in so after some Swift Consulting equating and calculating the guys have the  emissions verdict after running the numbers and looking at the outputs of pollutant gases  from all the vehicles and getting some expert analysis from Professor Kent Johnson of the  University of California Riverside we came up with some surprising results first up in the  MythBusters motorcycle versus car data crunch is fuel efficiency across all of the vehicles the  results were consistent motorcycles u

se less fuel than cars which makes sense motorcycles  are lighter than cars and thus they require less energy to push themselves forward and you'd  think that using less fuel would make them better for the environment but you'd be wrong from an  emission standpoint let's take a look at the most populous of the gases that these vehicles put out  carbon dioxide it's nasty it's a greenhouse gas so it contributes to global warming and it makes  up 90% of the emissions of an internal combustion engin

e and because it's direct byproduct of  burning fuel motorcycles which burn less fuel consistently produce less carbon dioxide than cars  but the other pollutant gases we measured tell a totally different story hydrocarbons for example  cause smog cancer asthma empyema and a host of other nasties and motorcycles produce far more  than cars oxides of nitrogen responsible for smog lung ailments and acid rain motorcycles produced  up to 3200 more than cars and carbon monoxide is an air pollutant an

d poisonous for animals to  breathe well motorcycles produce up to 8,000% more than cars in summary while we found that  motorcycles were more fuel efficient than cars and put out a lot less carbon dioxide the amount  of polluting gases they put out was vastly worse this myth is about someone that traded their  car for a motorcycle because they believed it was better for the environment and they were were  wrong at best it's a wash motorcycles are just as bad for the environment as cars at worse

they're  far worse yep the data doesn't lie the cars are cleaner but bikes and MythBusters go way back  and they're not done yet by combining haniman Ingenuity with Savage Savvy they're taking this  myth to the max now that is a cool looking design can they put bikes back on track by creating the  ultimate clean Green Machine starting to look sexy ktg are taking on an [Music] RPG and it's  got nothing to do with role play in this movie myth the villain is taken out by their own  rocket propelle

d grenade all because of a well-timed bullet now so far we've seen what  happens when an RPG hits a trailer and it turns out it's not looking so good for the myth  because once an RPG detonates it fires a stream of molten copper through and Beyond the target  but you know what this is MythBusters we can't give up here what we want to look at next is  what happens when a bullet meets an RPG can it even trigger indeed but getting a tiny bullet to  hit the Warhead on the head is tricky luckily by j

oining forces with nmt they've come up with  a solution all right Leonard you built this system tell me a little bit about it well this  was actually designed Tory from friends of ours up in Huntsville Alabama Arctic and they call  it rocket on a rope so it's kind of like soap on a rope but a little bit more dangerous yeah a  lot more power more powerful and more deadly and here's why now obviously this isn't a real RPG  this is an inert one cuz we're not crazy right here is our launcher it's a

steel tube the RPG  will go into that right here is where our firing pin will be once that starts pressure will build  up inside this pipe and it'll push our Rock rocket on the sled down these lines towards our gun that  quick change and acceleration arms the Warhead and it travels down this line which is tensioned at  3,000 lb so it can handle the rocket and keep it on a level and straight path when that a stainer  motor kicks in that's when we really start cooking now at some point along the l

ine the RPG will  actually hit a trip wire that will activate our gun now I know this doesn't look like the gun in  the movie but it does exactly the same thing and the bullet which is the same caliber as in the  movie will come firing out of here right into the tip of the RPG and then we'll finally find  out what happens when bullet meets RPG with their ingenious rocket Ono rope rig primed and the gun  loaded it's time to hunker in the bunker okay RPG versus bullet go for launch all right here

we go  in five four 3 2 1 wa [Music] do you think maybe the bullet disabled it I don't know high speed  let's the high spe check the high speed it all happened in the blink of an eye but it does  seem like there was a trip up with the trip [Music] wire so is that a negative on the bullet  no gun fire this is one of the most challenging myths to T we knew this was going to be hard  yeah yeah but for our rocket Ono rope the misfire wasn't the only problem to our first test we were  not able to hit

the RPG with the bullet and there was a couple of reasons for that one the lines  were not tied enough so as the rocket came down the line it was bouncing around by the time it got  to the bullet it was actually out of line with the barrel of the gun not only that the bullet didn't  even fire the trigger was not sensitive enough so we made some adjustments we we put more tension on  the line that way that'll keep that rocket stable and we have a more sensitive trigger so that way  by the time t

he rocket gets to the barrel the gun will fire and then finally we'll find out will an  RPG get set off by a bullet with the rig adjusted and a new Warhead loaded it's back underground  for round two I think it's time for another shot all right here we go five 4 3 2 1 wow definitely  exploded I don't know if it was because of the bullet hard to tell let's look at the high  speed oh this is crazy crazy with a Capital C and it looks like they've gotten  Bullet versus RPG success there a trip wire

bullet get set up an RPG dude  that's amazing all right so that part of the myth is confirmed amazing and  confirmed and all down to an incredible rig we are so impressed this was such  a feat of engineering New Mexico Tech actually created a rig where the tip of an  RPG could hit the tip of a bullet that's like two pencil erasers coming at each other at 1,000  mph and the myth is starting to look pretty good here now to nail down who actually lives  and who dies in this myth we've got to do a f

ew things we've got to find out how fast  the bullet travels how fast the RPG travels and then we can figure out where in the 80  ft between the good guy and the bad guy they would meet so that means we need to get some  bullets we need to get some RPGs we can go shooting so for the oxides of nitrogen the  hydrocar carbons and the carbon monoxide the bikes put out more pollution than the cars but  somehow I don't feel like you're done with this story no I'm not and here's why ultimately the  amo

unt of pollution that comes out of a bike has to be related to the amount of fuel that goes into  it and while it's true that bikes are lighter and smaller than cars and so they use less fuel they'd  use even less if they were more aerodynamic right the fact is that bikes are totally aerodynamically  inefficient that upright Rider presents a huge block to the wind they're not designed like  car cars to slip through the air exactly and so what I'm wondering is if we made a bike super  streamlined

could we reduce its fuel usage to such a degree that it would actually beat the fuel  pollution standards of cars you want to build a super streamlined bike and put it to the test  I do I love it let's do it the plan is to create an aerodynamically efficient bike and for that  the MythBusters fire up the old gry cells for one heck of a brainstorm so making one of those  super aerodynamically efficient how do we do it well it's got to be some kind of a shell mhm and  it's got to be lightweight a

nd pretty much I got to cover the whole thing in this concept Cyclone  something like a teardrop with a bike in the middle a whole load of ideas are thrown up in the  air I was thinking more like a tuna where the tip can be a little bit more pointed it's kind of like  an igloo what if this thing was like a big sphere and just like lightning one idea strikes them as  the best way to go I'm actually getting kind of excited about this because motorcycles are these  these wonderfully kind of Macho t

hings and I see this kind of idea of a comet or a fireball kind of  a thing is being really pretty sexy the center of the sphere obviously has to be the center of the  pivot then the thing does not change shape right whether you're turning or not which I I love  as the storm clears the guys have worked out all the elements these are steel like ribs yeah  secure it and then you cut out an access port size door these would be covered by heat shrink and  have not just a design but a plan too now th

at is a cool looking design I've never seen anything  like that before if we did this and we did this in the tubular steel it's a really nice divide and  conquer design I love it let's do it okay after a tremendous amount of back and forth we have  a plan and that that is it with a little bit of bent tube steel some heat shrink plastic and a  couple of dozen hours I think we'll have our bike fairing I'm followed by Jamie and following a  police [Music] car it seems that cars have the edge on bik

es when it comes to being green we  found that motorcycles were more fuel efficient than cars and put out a lot less carbon dioxide  the amount of polluting gases they put put out was vastly worse so now the guys are creating  a super streamlined motorcycle to increase its fuel efficiency and minimize its emissions now  a lot of bikes normally have fairings on them which are plastic callings that cover the front  portion of the bike to reduce wind resistance in our case we're going to get consid

erably  more involved however and we're going to build a fairing that covers the entire bike  it's passenger included a little more crouchy than that this device will cocoon the cyclist  inside making it more aerodynamic Greener and Eco competition for the car this is our strip  down bike and very soon a bunch of Steel like this is going to make the frame for our Fairing  and the frame is going to be comprised of two parts one is large overarching Circle which Jamie  is going to ring roll and a

bunch of horizontal ellipses which I'm going to hand Bend with a  conduit Bender getting the steel frame perfect is crucial as the design literally hangs H off of  it I love bending metal soon what starts out is a series of bent steel rods is welded together  to become 1/ half of the fairy wow that is a pretty thing it is isn't it I don't care what  it's for it's just plain lovely yeah let's make a whole bunch of them a little more measuring  welding and bending and they've got what looks like a

giant hamster ball that is freaking sexy  man more surface area but it's smoother oh yeah totally with the sphere complete they cut out  the part where the bike will [Music] go I like it when I was a kid I would have killed for one  of these were you ever a kid no and since the bike fits snugly it's time for the comet to  get its tail [Laughter] how about that that is freaking awesome it's starting to look  sexy it's kind of different you [Music] know you know what I realized it is it's one  of

the um space pods from 2001 oh yeah I was I was trying to place it dude that is insane  it looks awesome it's perfect I of think we could have made it any narrower tighter really  there's almost nothing wasted in this shape it's a perfect teardrop a perfect teardrop but there's  just one more thing to complete their aerodynamic design so this Frame that we've spent all this  time building isn't what makes this bike more aerodynamic it's actually the skin we put  on top of this Frame that will d

o all of that work and this is our skin it is a roughly  clear plastic that shrinks when you heat it so we're going to put it all over this Frame then  we're going to heat it with a blowtorch until it's drum tight and that ought to make this the  aerodynamic fuel efficient bike of our dreams an aerodynamic bike of their dreams and all by  reducing a little thing called drag now we know that the motorcycle is less aerodynamic than a  car and that is because of drag the best way to visualize drag

is to take a look at this clip you  see the ink floating behind the vehicle that is a low pressure bubble of air that the vehicle has to  drag around because it's not properly aerodynamic our thinking is that the smooth front and sharp  tail of our fairing will allow the motorcycle to slice through the air spending less of its  energy driving and saving fuel if we able to save enough fuel the emissions might finally  dip below that of the cars that's looking great isn't it yeah it is it's coolin

g down right now  that's when it shrinks huh yeah and in no time at all the fairing is [Laughter] skin that is  really really pretty that just looks freaking awesome that was worth the wait the fairing  is finally complete and just as the guys anticipated the bike looks like a teardrop  crossed with a comet it's like giving birth but in Reverse lowering the back catch now okay  what do you think it's not at all uncomfortable once you're in here that's great not at all  uncomfortable but its real

test will be on the road it may seem unlikely but the team has proved  that a bullet can trigger an RPG now they need to know where in the air they would meet you do  some science oh you know I am down at the gun range first they need to find out the speed  of the speeding bullet so what we are trying to find out is where between the two dueling  Shooters the bullet and the RPG meet now we've set up a scale 80 ft long just like two 40ft  truck containers like the scene in the movie so what we'r

e going to do is shoot the gun and  the RPG measure how fast each of them are going then we'll be able to calculate exactly what  point the two meet and the explosion happens and just how far away that explosion is from  the shooter and The Rocketeer so here's how the experiments going to work we're going  to use the same gun they had in the movie A Smith and Wesson 460 has a muzzle velocity  of 2200 ft per second we're going to fire it through this piece of foil which will start the  timer the

bullet will hit this plate firing the switch and stopping the timing sequence we're  going to do it at 40 and 80 ft and through that we should be able to see where along the path  the bullet and the RPG meet keep going stop so first up tor's packing the heat dud this thing's  so big it it's like it looks like a cartoon gun to find out the speed of the bullet at 40 ft  all right this is speed of the bullet from 40 ft good shot let's go see what you got all right  see how fast that went pretty fas

t 22 milliseconds to be precise it turns out from 40 ft away  it takes 22 milliseconds to hit the Target now we're going to move back to 80 ft and see  how long it takes to hit the target next it's Grant's turn to turn on the Firepower but I'm  not going to do this one standing up I'm going to do this one on arrest because not only am  I not John malovich but I'm not retired and I'm only moderately dangerous okay this is  time of the bullet from 80 ft are you ready ready got it see you're not mi

ldly dangerous  you're a bad man all all right let's see how fast it took what do we got 42 milliseconds  perfect that adds up all right after a hard day shooting the guys have the bullet speed  now to the second part of the equation the rocket propelled grenade it's good day to be a  mythbuster got that right so we know how fast the bullet flies now it's time for us to find  out how fast the RPG goes we're going to take our rpg7 launcher set it up in the test stand put  our scales behind it and

plot the data points and from that we'll be able to find out where the  bullet and the RPG are likely to meet and all that means is setting up the gauges just as before  but the wind has other ideas you know whenever I'm in 60 mph wind I like to put up a big sale W  last time we went on a MythBusters road trip we were in waste steep snow and 60 mph wind we  thought that's our extreme weather for the year this time 60 mph winds and blazing Sunshine our  family vacations are crazy finally the win

d dies down the rocket is primed and it's firing time  okay here we are all right now we can find out where the bullet and the rocket meet okay this  is RPG speed test in five four 3 2 [Music] 1 you see FL yeah you can't see  it traveling you definitely need the high speed let's go do some  calculations cool let's do some math but before they get to the math  the power of the RPG has the team distracted wow it totally penetrated it went  all the way through that is crazy that's like three in arm

or plate let's find out how fast  it went all right all right well let's let's use multiple data points because there's two  stages we reach 20 ft in 43 milliseconds 40 ft in 83.6 milliseconds 60 ft at 125 milliseconds  and 80 ft at 161.5 milliseconds okay so if we flip this around we see the bullet and the  RPG meet at 64 ft so that's 64 ft from the bullet Fir and 16 ft from the RPG firer  all right so why don't we set up the RPG at that point between the two Shooters  and see which one of them

survives if anybody it's a given that if something's  aerodynamic it'll slice through the air better but does making a bike more streamlined  also mean it'll become greener than its four-wheel counterparts we've ConEd Out The alamer Runway and  it is going to be our closed course for motorcycle testing today I'm 40 we're going to use it to  replicate the exact same conditions of freeway and City Driving we had for the first round of  vehicle testing Jamie's going to start out on the motorcycle

and do seven laps all the way  down to the end of the runway and back which gives us 15 Mi of freeway driving just like we  want this is both the start line and the Finish Line after a bunch of laps then I've marked  out a little city course of some stopandgo traffic and that Jamie has to do 25 laps of give  us the 7 1/2 mil of City Driving we need and that should give us a set of comparable numbers no  city cour is complete without signage and we've got signage hman crossing the course is fully

  set we are ready to test all we're waiting is for Jamie to arrive on his shiny new motorcycle  and here he comes now on a steel horse he rides you know he's W and dead or alive yep first is  the Baseline for the bike without its fairing but before Jamie gets on his bike why did he  choose it for the beat the car test the name of the game here was to find a motorcycle that is  as environmentally friendly as anything currently available on the market that means it needs to  be of relatively smal

l displacement fuel injected have a catalytic converter and any other pollution  controls available on motorcycles as of this date so that's why we've selected this bike it's a  250 PCC late model single cylinder motorcycle that meets all of those qualifications and once  again the PM will sniff out all its emissions for this Baseline test are you ready I'm ready  all right remember seven big lops 25 small ones I'll be counting them down here we go late  model low displacement bike test in three

2 1 go oops one more time in three two one go and now we wait first off Jamie goes round  in circles at 50 mph for 15 miles of freeway driving now it's time for some City Driving  then he's in the loop for the city conditions complete with a stop sign at a 25 mph speed  Li finally after looping both Loops for 30 minutes in the saddle now it's a Finish Line  it's time to get a readout on the Control Data the results are in we have our Baseline  for our modern bike the good news is that it's the

most fuel efficient bike we've tested by  far and gave the cars the best run for their money we've yet achieved the bad news its  dangerous emissions are still surprisingly High will our aerodynamic fairing increase the  fuel efficiency and will the increase in that fuel efficiency dilute the dangerous gases  I don't know but it's time to bring out the bubble the bubble bike is ready for testing  same track same speed let's see how it Stacks up their pimped out ride should reduce  the drag on th

e bike and make it far more fuel efficient and thereby minimize its  harmful emissions now it's time to put my money where my mouth is and see whether this  thing does what it was designed to do which is to improve the aerodynamic efficiency of  this motorcycle and hence reduce its impact on the planet hopefully it'll do that  and I won't crash or something in the process the Prototype [Laughter]  approaches are you ready for this I am all set all right on the green  flag bubble bike in three 2

one go restart bubble bike test in three two one go that's the second time you pop the clutch on  the starting line after an Identical start it's an identical course starting with a pedal to  the metal blast of freeway driving lap one is away you know those old films of like people  trying to take off of cliffs and flying machines and they crashed when they land that's exactly  what that thing looks like I'm getting to like this then it's science fiction in motion as Jamie  puts the bubble throu

gh it City Driving bases it's getting kind of hot in here all right Jamie this  is your last lap last lap and with that Jam's bubbly ride comes to an [Music] end nice work man  you are done how' that feel this thing is crazy but I kind of like it I'll tell you it looks like  a weird kind of primordial airplane every time it takes off down the the lane it's gorgeous this  thing really made me nervous at first because you can really feel the wind a little gust and it  it kind of pushes you sideway

s but after a while I started to dig it because it doesn't involve  the kind of buffeting that you normally have on a motorcycle you know you're going down the  road like this and this thing is just smooth as butter occasionally you kind of Glide a little  this way or that way there's a strong wind but uh it seems to work quite well the only only  question here is whether it takes less power to push it through the air and that from inside here  I can't really tell we'll have to let the computer

tell us indeed finally it's down to the emissions  data to either confirm or burst this ecobubble I wish we had a second bike then we could ride  the two of them off into the sunset you know sure why not like the sign says it's crunch time  let's have a look at the numbers all right let's take a look in see how we did in the fuel economy  category well the fairing bike did pretty well it got 70.9 MP gallon it's the best across the  board now I would expect because of the increase in fuel efficie

ncy to see a corresponding drop in  carbon dioxide emissions let's call up the carbon dioxide chart and see how we did and there you go  105 G that's a fraction of everything else on the chart that is fantastic now I'd like to see how  we did in all of the other emissions let's call up the last chart oh not so good it is solidly in  the middle and the cars are still winning hands down yep where does that leave us well you know  It's tricky because if you look at CO2 alone the bikes win by a larg

e margin but if you look at  all the other pollutants then the cars are far better for the environment I think it's got to be  busted and here's why over time cars have made a remarkable Improvement very steadily and the bikes  well the bikes have gotten better but not near as much yep I agree at this point in time it is not  better for the environment to trade your car for a bike in the deserts of New Mexico  it's time to test the survivability of this but before they bring in the dummies there

's  just one problem oh I lost my head okay John So based on our data if an RPG shooter and a gun  shooter are 80 ft apart the RPG and the bullet will meet at 16 ft in front of the RPG shooter  what do you think about this the biggest problem with that is that the RPG won't be armed at  16 ft it takes a lot farther to get out the RPG is just going to keep right on going like  a really big bullet yep then that's all down to the two stages of the RPG's firing system the  first stage of ignition th

rows the grenade out of the launcher at around 384 ft per second this  sudden acceleration triggers stage two activating the rocket propulsion and arming the Warhead so  unlike the movie The Rocket must be at least 60 ft from its Target to arm so it looks like the  myth is pretty much busted outright but what if it were a fluke how could we still look at this  explosion we can do this by actually moving the target farther away from the RPG launcher  to a range where it will actually be armed and

positioning our dummies in the appropriate  positions for the two individuals all right can I fire the RPG we'll see yes right all is not lost  for the final parameter of survivability they'll tweak the setup to simulate a faulty RPG this time  the RPG will fire from 60 ft Behind The standin Rocketeer I think we might have to increase  our budget on mannequins this is pretty ugly woman come here often and just like the movie  16 ft in front of her is where the now armed Warhead will trigger but

instead of a bullet now  this piece of acrylic is representing our bullet now we know once the RPG is armed it doesn't take  much to set it off and finally 64 ft from that is where a gun toen dummy will be position oh wait  a minute you're John malovich you don't get any here and for The lethality of the blast well each  dummy will have two gauges all right what I have here is a large piece of pork belly this is going  to act like our human flesh it's good I like that it's a nice hat firstly th

e Gory low Tech version  Oh God it smells so bad it's got muscle it's got flesh it's got fat the shrapnel goes through this  and through the mannequin we know that's a kill and second the excitingly named high-tech version  to measure the blast wave of the explosion we're using this it's a bikini gauge you know when  you said bikini gauge I had something totally different in mind now the way it works is that  we have foil spread over holes that represent different tolerances for the over pressur

e when  the foil bursts that will indicate our number now if this right here bursts that's 20 to 25 psi  that means that our Shooters died from just a pressure wave with everything set perfect let's  countdown to launch with a prediction nothing ever happens like it does in the movies I mean  our woman is only 16 fet away from the explosion site and 64 feet is really not that far away  when you see the destructive force of an RPG I think everybody's dying now there's only one way  to find out th

ey're bunkering down for the RPG survivability okay this is survivability test RPG  shooter versus bullet shooter in five four 3 2 1 wow that was intense intense is right  unsurprisingly the RPG detonates and throws forward a shower of molten copper and debris but  did the dummies survive it I don't believe this she's still alive in the movie she was totally  decimated yeah and that goes along with what we've been seeing with these RPGs I mean they're  not like regular grenades it's very directi

onal but look at that our bikini gauges are still  intact which means she would have survived that blast wave unlike the movie The Villain made  it through but more surprisingly so did the good guy oh my God that is incredible he did not get  touched I mean he didn't get hit by one single bit and look our bikini gauge didn't get ruptured  yeah he may have survived but just by luck there was a stream of molten copper coming straight at  him if he were one foot over he'd be totally swiss cheese es

pecially since in the movie The Warhead  would not have been armed on contact with the bullet but on contact with the gun toen good guy  yeah this is the exact opposite of what it was in the movie he would likely have been killed  and she would likely have survived it's busted totally busted Hollywood not being scientifically  accurate again huh look I'll admit it I was fooled by Hollywood but here's why normally when we  see an RPG hit something it's a big Flash and then that thing explodes but

in this case the  RPG exploded in midair there was nothing to create any shrapnel and the bullet it didn't  have very much mass so there's nothing to stop that energy in its tracks as a result all the  energy went forward exactly as it was designed to well that didn't suck no it  didn't another day work for the Mythbusters [Music] sh [Music]