Hollywood Sound Myths Busted - Mythbusters - S07 EP03 - Science Documentary

on this episode of Mythbusters Adam and  Jamie are taking Silver Screen sounds to task we want to see whether these things make  the same sounds in real life that they do in the movies bye-bye y are those audio cliches  fact or fake meanwhile Carrie Grant and Tory cast off for science this is below your own  sale with the fullsize boat they're testing the physics thought experiment is it possible  to blow your own Sam come on chaos Mayhem I see high jinkx ohy I feel like there might be  just a l

ittle element of danger here who are The MythBusters Adam Savage I'm done with science  for today and Jamie heinan way to go there buddy between them more than 30 years of special effects  experience joining them Grant Imahara that's why we can never have anything nice Tori bichi  I'll try not to let you guys down and carry Byron you know I went to college for this they  don't just tell the it'ss they put them to the test first up an audio myth that  Adams having nightmares over oh look at that

somebody's left me a present [Music] beautiful looks like I'm going to  have to take care of this [Music] myself [Music] bye-bye what was that that was our next story  really cuz it looked to me like you were trying to kill me no no no no it sounds like I'm trying  to kill you I don't get it well our next story is about whether the sounds you hear in the  movies are accurate to the real world sounds cool yep the sounds of Hollywood are being  put under the MythBusters microscope to give a story

suspense add dramatic Punch or even a  real one Movie Makers manipulate massage and enrich every single sound effect we hear but do  these audio cliches bear any resemblance to the real thing to find out Adam and Jamie have got  their ears to the sound all right so if memory serves the classic movie sound effects we'll  be working with are things like the punch the silencers and explosives and any others we run  into along the way all right and the testing seems to be pretty straightforward we p

unch  something we use a silencer we blow something up and we record those sounds and compare  them to what the movies generally represent as those sounds let's start with the punch  okay fear not Adam there'll be no sobering sequel instead Jam's reprising the violence  of the hams I always like to wear reindeer when I carry around my pigs yep Porky here  is stepping up to take one for the team again why am I using a pig I've slapped Adam and he was  fine but if I really hauled off and punched h

im he'd probably get  hurt and we can't have that so we've traditionally used pigs for this  kind of thing like in Cannonball chaos what and also forensic Pathologists regularly use  pigs is the closest available human analog and clearly Jamie and I are about to start punching  this pig but in order to compare the sound of our punches to your classic movie punch we're going  to record it with this a directional microphone pointed exactly at the point of impact we will hit  the pig record it on t

his mic and we will store it on this computer where we will compare it to this  the sound of a classic movie punch right Jamie I want you to imagine that you've come home and  this pig has emptied your bank account go at him oh nice did that hurt a little bit I hit  my fingers a little wrong considering his hand was unprotected Jamie gave it all he could but the sound wasn't exactly Silver  Screen superhero you want to piece of me we're going to get hurt if we keep doing  it like this to avoid h

urting themselves they have to pull their punches limiting the power  they can put into them and the audio recording reflects their less than Action Hero efforts  all right and for comparison here's the movie punch there's no there's no equivalency  at all which leaves the myth reeling but not yet knocked out yet another use  for duct tape next they're going to add a little action movie oomph to  try and get a more Hollywood style sound ow and with his makeshift boxing glove  Jamie will be able

to throw a full blooded right hook but despite pounding the pork  appreciably harder it's clear the audio still doesn't match up it's still nowhere near  no but they're not done yet Adam's dreaming up a right hook delivery system that's guaranteed  to pack an action movie [Music] [Applause] punch next up Carrie Granton Tor set sail for a  physics thought experiment all right so what's the next myth now this is all wrong somehow this  seems totally inappropriate to tell you about this myth I can

fix this come here follow me ah this  seems like a bad idea you know what happened the last time yep and I still can't sit in [Music]  okay now this is what I'm talking about so can you tell us what we're doing out here yeah what  are we testing the myth if we take Grant sailing he's going to throw up no but we're actually doing  a sailing myth so I figured why would we be in the blueprint room when we could be out [Music] here  all right well can we get on with it because this is a ticking Time

Bomb okay well our next myth is  actually this year's playe on a conveyor belt it's called Blow Your Own sale Ah that's the one that  if you have a windless day if you take a giant fan and blow it into your sail you can actually  start sailing exactly but fans say it might not work right because of Newtonian physics all right  well I think we need to get to the bottom of this one or get sick trying speak for yourself land  lover it's a classic physics Fable be calmed in the doldrums our hero pu

lls out a fan whips up a  wind and hey Presto she's blowing her own sale but do Newton's Laws really mean this myth is dead  in the water why what happens if you take this physics thought experiment into the real world  okay it's not because I'm prone to getting seasick but shouldn't we go back to the shop and do some  small scale experiment what why I mean we're here now let's just put a fan on here and go for it  well the problem is it's not a windless day we won't know if we're sailing becaus

e of our fan or  because of a change in the wind all right he's got a good point all right why don't we go back to the  shop do some small scale tests get some miniature sailboats and some miniature fans and find out  exactly what happening before we go full scale yeah it's probably a good idea Grant is looking a  little green isn't he so to avoid Grant's nautical nausea it's back to terrafirma where the goal is  getting to grips with the underlying science of the story so this myth is essential

ly about  Newton's laws and specifically his first law which states that an object will remain in its  current state of motion unless acted upon by an external Force now in our case the object is  the boat current state of motion at rest the external Force the wind acts upon the boat and  causes it to move along now in the case of our sailor if this person were able to generate the  wind while sitting on the boat it's no longer an external Force they're internal in the same frame  of reference w

hen they blow on it theoretically the boat won't move and worryingly for the myth  it's not just Newton's first law making movement unlikely so there is another Newtonian principle  that is the third law of motion which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite  reaction so therefore if the fan is blowing wind into the sail it's also pushing the fan backwards  if this is true these two forces are going to cancel each other out and this boat's not going to  go anywhere it's just g

oing to stall so with two of Newton's Laws lining up to sink this seagoing  Saga the team prepares for a proof of concept test one that will put the scientific theory into  practice and while Carrie makes a raft on Wheels Tori stays high and dry on a fake blue sea because  although this myth is all about boats there's no need to get wet yet now obviously we could test it  on water but water poses a couple of problems one it takes a lot of force to get the boat to move  through the water 44 lbs t

o be exact Plus getting the boat to move straight in the water is going  to be another problem we have to overcome but I have a solution for both of those instead of using  the boat and water we're going to use this cart with wheels on this flat piece of acrylic that  way the cart will go straight and we're going to reduce the amount of friction it only takes 24  lb of force to move this car this is going to be [Music] perfect over the years the MythBusters  have tackled a heap of Hollywood tall

tals until now the myths have been based upon the 10 tendy  of Movie Makers to suspend reality with physics defying visual effects but this time Adam  and Jamie are hot on the AAL Trail and to find out if a big screen punch sounds anything  like the real thing Adam's upping the atti as I really don't want to hurt this anymore by  punching this poor Pig I'm going to make a fist punching analog not a machine it's going to  be pretty simple it's going to be a combination of this and a combination

of that here we go the  ballistics gel fist will provide an accurate sounding skin on-skin contact and The Leverage  of the bat will ensure Adam gets a good solid hit I it's ready but this is it  if Adam can't get the sound of a big screen knockdown this myth is down  and out you hate Pig are you ready I'm ready that was nice let's listen to The Naked  ear it was a marked improvement but let's get an objective comparison that was pretty  good all right let's listen to the movie sound there's no

comparison if the myth was  on the ropes before it's down for the count now but if the movie effect isn't a recording of  a real punch what exactly is it we need to talk to an expert I think we do where are we going  to find one with a resume that includes a heap of Tim Burton Blockbusters Steve knows exactly  how to pack a Hollywood punch why doesn't our best punch sound like this you have a punch that  sounds like punching a face the Hollywood one is not about that it's about drama it's about

selling  the story you might add a whoo of something like this a pipe or a dowel all right just a little  bit of that leading into to the punch is going to give you that sense of the Fist really moving  fast I noticed that you had the really good slap sound but you might want to have a little bit of  chest kind of like low end to it you can either just just a little bit of that can give you  that sense of kind of a skull underneath that face slab that you got yeah what else you might  want to he

ar the sound of a skull cracking wow walnuts I love it so those are the individual  elements that go to make up a Hollywood punch and by layering them you get a result that's rich  in texture and depth let's take our best punch at the pig all right now Steve said it needed some  low end let's take one of Steve's chest hits now he said it needed a whoosh let's take the one  of the swings he made of that little pipe and then finally let's add in some bone cracking  Walnut sounds and play them all

together and see what we get it's pretty good huh yep but it  doesn't change the result punch sound effects are Hollywood fiction and the myth is busted  there's another sound I've always wondered about when Jamie [ __ ] the pistol with the  silencer I'm wondering how realistic that sound is Carrie Grant and Tori are tackling a maritime  myth that contradicts the father of physics can you move your boat by blowing your own sail  to find out they're setting up a small scale proof of concept okay

the next step is the fan  so I got a whole bunch of little desk fans I'm going to see if any of them are going to work  for this experiment when I turn them on and put them on here should push the little car backwards  Carrie needs to find a fan okay you're not going to work with a power to weight ratio nope that  will make the raft move I think it's too heavy the desk fans are just too feeble so Carri goes  for broke with a model airplane propeller okay ready that ought to work meanwhile Grant

has  a small scale sail up his sleeve and after he rigs it to the raft the guys are all set to  clear up the fite controversy wow when you blow your own sail will you stall as the Newtonian  Advocates predict or sail off into the sunset all right now it's time to replicate the myth in  small scale we have our fan attached to our WRA which is going to be blowing into the sail that's  attached to the wrap now according to Newton's third law of motion these two forces should  cancel each other out

and this boat is going to stall so just like in the the wind source  is on the boat blow your own sail here we go all right that's great all right looks like  Newton's laws are canceling out cartoon laws yep and here's how if you do a test without  the sail using just the fan you can see there's enough thrust to move the boat backwards but  put a sail in the way and that backwards thrust is canceled out by the equal at opposite Force  pushing the boat forward the boat stalls and the myth is bust

ed or is it because our trepid Trio  aren't giving up so easily all right Sir Isaac Newton you're probably not watching the show cuz  let's face it you're not alive anymore but just because we can't break your laws doesn't mean  we're going to stop [Music] here okay next up is actually one of my favorite sounds in movies  is the sound of a automatic pistol who slide is being racked and it sounds like to my mind the  classic sound now is that really the way a gun sounds we actually do use real gu

ns now way  back when in early movies a lot of the sound people were coming out of radio play and so they  had a whole setup a table of ratchets and things like that they could have had guns but maybe  what you were hearing is some kind of Ratchet mechanism that they were doing really quickly  now with digital technology we can record all these guns we can keep them on a hard drive in a  library and access the exact real thing whenever we need it so let's make the all important  comparison recor

ding let me record this here that sounds pretty good and now here's the movie  version that's not bad none of the punches that we made sounded much like the classic movie  punch at all but when it comes to pistols as far as I can see there's no need to fake it when  you can use the real thing so that's one for Hollywood with vast digital libraries to access  designers like Steve do actually use the sound of real gun mechanisms big or small okay when  everybody to get on the ground this is a rubb

ery a [Music] rubbery what do we have next well as  you know the rattlesnake venomous rattlesnake and its iconic warning rattle are completely  endemic to the American Western and what I want to know noise is the sound we're accustomed  to hearing from the rattlesnake actually a real rattlesnake sound well this isn't a rattler this  is a Madagascar tree boa you are such a buzz kill she likes you yeah I like her anybody that's seen  a western knows the sound that a rattlesnake makes but is that a

ctually the sound or is that a movie  construct so we're going to have to get ourselves a real rattlesnake and see what the sound like so  Owen are we going to be able to get him to Rattle without freaking him out well this is Big Bob  and just try stopping him really yeah he likes to Rattle he he likes to talk this is Big Bob  and this is the classic movie sound effect of the [Music] rattlesnake what we want to  know is how much like that does Big Bob sound shall we record this guy  I think so

here we go let's go for it awesome there we go that sounded  pretty good but let's get an objective assessment all right let's start with the movie  rattlesnake [Music] go and and now here's Big Bob that is dead on look in the olden days  of radio and the early days of film it's very possible given that soundmen didn't want to  have rattlesnakes in the studio that they would use sounds for rattlesnakes like this or this  but now that everything's digital and portable every rattlesnake you hear i

s pretty much the  real thing that's the same sound absolutely clear that they used real rattlesnakes to  make rattlesnake sounds in films I think so confirmed while I've got Bob here there's  one other myth that I can dispel about rattlesnakes and that is that you can tell the  age of a rattlesnake by the number of rattles on his tail fact is you can't you can't  tell how old they are just by looking at them well shall we move on to some other Adventure  why not all right Bob catch you later ni

ce work so far in blow your own sale there are  no flaws in Newton's Laws the forward thrust captured by the sail has an equal and opposite  Force pushing backwards leaving the boat grounded but it's not over yet the team thinks that  tweaking the variables might get things moving so we're going to do all sorts of experiments  we're going to try different sailes we're going to try different wins and we're going to see if  we can actually blow your own sale yep with the fan sail and boat all in p

roportion everything  is canceled out so they're starting by making their small scale sale smaller now you're probably  asking yourself why are you guys testing a small sale but if you look to the graphic you'll  see what I think is going to happen I think that the wind is going to actually get around  the small sail and push the sailboat backwards now given even what we've seen so far it may seem  surprising to you that we think the boat is going to travel backwards now there's a lot of thrust 

coming off of this prop if the size of the sail is small compared to the source of the wind you  may get some of that thrust escaping around the edges of the sail giving us a net thrust pushing  the boat backwards please don't laugh at the size of my sail it's cute all right here we go three  two one hey look at that cancels itself out all right yeah you know what should we uh turn up  the speed sure yeah let's try it see what happens all backwards it seems if the sail contains  all of the fans

thrust the boat is marooned but tweak the sail size and fan speed and you  start moving however they're heading in the wrong direction to reverse that maybe they need  to go bigger for the next test we've stepped up the size of the sail but to do that we also had  to raise the fan so the Airstream hits right into the center of our sail hopefully this will  Propel the boat ready when you are okay here we go not going forward at all the forces are still  canceling each other out can you dial it u

p going 100% Who that's looking scary it's starting  to go starting to go faster moving forward [Applause] hey with faster wind speed you  can blow your own sale all right look I'm not a sailor and I'm not an aeronautical engineer  but this is what I think is happening so the fan provides a certain amount of thrust that blows  into the sail the sail in turn can only absorb so much of that thrust the rest of it gets  reflected back leaving us with a net thrust Vector causing the boat to go forwar

d yep the  reflection means the sum of the total thrust is in a forward Direction so you just need a lot  more winds a lot more what is the most wind we can produce what's the biggest fan we can use  jet engine yeah that would be awesome what a great proof of concept though concept proven  now to up the atti with more power jet engine power Carrie Grant and Tori have found that  with enough puff and a big enough sale it is possible to blow your own sale more power but  their little toy raft didn

't move very fast to nail this seagoing Saga in the small scale  the team feel the need for more speed so we are moving on to a jet cap model turbine engine this  thing can make a model plane fly at 250 mph it puts out 17.5 lb of thrust this is going to give  us the wind speeds that we need but first what I need to do is Mount this engine to our longboard  skateboard the reason why we're using a longboard skateboard is because this thing puts out so much  heat we got to keep our sail away from t

he source and speaking of heat so one of the problems with  upgrading our source of thrust to a jet engine is that the exhaust gases can be in excess of 600°  C now this is silk this is the ideal material we found for our small scale experiment the only  problem with silk is that when you expose it to Flame this happens so while Grant looks into  flame resistant sail materials Tori gets busy with the sailboard bill just like before they'll  be on land using Wheels rather than on water in a boat

it's kind of fitting that we're using this  jet engine cuz a long time ago I actually built a jet engine out of a vacuum cleaner motor uh it  didn't have much thrust I mean it practically had no thrust at all but it's kind of cool to actually  use a real jet engine for an experiment with the baby engine on board it's over to Grant okay so  this is flame resistant material this is a 6061 aluminum frame which has a melting temperature  above that of the jet exhaust this is the kind of sale you're

going to need if you're going  to use a jet engine to blow yourself along the jet powered sailboard is done now to give it  a run there are not many places you can fire off a mini jet engine but a creepy abandoned  Naval Base is one this thing looks dangerous yeah I think we need to ride it before we  test what do you think ride a jet powered skateboard yeah aren't you guys dying to do  it um not really but I would enjoy another decade of watching you fall off this thing in  slow motion it work

for the bicycle coming up this Christmas tor's jetpack skateboard they're  totally safe before Tori attempts this stunt I would like to just sa for the record before the  high speed of him falling in some horrific way I think this is a very bad idea so before we start  doing the experiment I want to test this engine so I've turned the engine around that way I can  write it I won't burn my butt unfortunately for Tori our health insurance actually covers  a full body cast kind of getting nervous I

don't know why so if anything UNT should happen  he'll be covered what could possibly go wrong I got a jet engine strapped to the skateboard all  right firget up medic standing by somebody down [Music] 91 on his jet powered skateboard is Tori about to take a trip to the  future or a trip back to the ER [Music] oh my god it worked every kid's going to want  one of these for Christmas that was a good test I mean what that tells me is that the jet engine  which mind you is only this big provides e

nough thrust to carry Tori who weighs 175 lb on top  of the skateboard now if we replace Tori with the sail I think we're going to have plenty of  thrust for our experiment now proving the concept of this myth wasn't enough for us I mean we had a  small scale and we proved that wind could push our sail but the point of this is you need to  escape the doldrums so to do that you need adequate speed and I think this jet engine is  going to give us adequate speed all right this is Extreme blow your

own sale do it oh I love  this [Applause] to come on baby come on come on got that worked perfectly the  jet engine was powerful enough to overcome the cancelling forces  and we got our sailboat to move forward we did it we blew our own sale nice so  initially when we started out testing this myth it with a very small boat on top of a table  and this this is what we do we step things up each time and we've gone to a jet powered  skateboard with a fireproof sail and I've got to say this is great

because what this says is  that each time it's been possible to blow your own sale now we just got to go up to the big  thing the real thing boat next step's going to be fun full scale baby and back at the shop  they've taken deliver y of just the thing a boat with a built-in fan so we are going  to take this myth full scale and this is the boat we are going to use it is a shallow  water spider swap boat and this thing comes with a fan which is attached to a 40 horsepower  engine that's capable

of putting out 200 lb of thrust we're going to take this fan flip it around  put up a mask put up a sail and see if we can blow our own Sail it was dragging me it was actually  pulling me off my feet I think this is going to do it with Grant measuring wind speeds of 63  M hour this puppy is clearly powerful enough which means it's time to take delivery of the  sail and get busy with the rigging okay now that we have the sail it's time to erect the Mast  now we're making it out of aluminum becaus

e it's lightweight and has a really high tensil strength  but we're making a removable base completely out of steel we want to clamp onto the boat instead  of drilling or welding cuz it's a borrowed boat and it's gorgeous Against All Odds our team of  land lovers has built and rigged its own Square sale from scratch faster go faster wo ready to  blow your sail yeah I don't have enough wind to find out if it'll go when the fan blows it's  time to take this test down to the waterline we found ours

el a lake that's complet completely  isolated so we have no current and no wind this should be the perfect place to experiment and  the perfect place for a pre-test Joy Ride with the throttle full on the team thrashes around  getting their bearings and getting a feel for the swamp boat's fan powerered thrust it  handles beautifully love it but will it sail the next Classic Hollywood sound effect  to get the Mythbusters treatment is the gun silencer and down at the South San Francisco  Police Dep

artment shooting range the boys mean business Q Meers sound senior audio scientist Dr  Roger schwanky with several previous appearances on the show he gets the much sought after  title of honorary mythbuster thr the poot baby and today he's brought along his laboratory  grade recording and anal this equipment we want to see whether these things actually make the  same sounds in real life that they do in the movies or do they make any sound at all how do  these silencers work well they're kind of

like Mufflers on cars they've got a series of baffles  in them that sort of slow down and redirect the gases that are passing through and absorb a lot  of the energy and the sound it's kind of like opening a champagne bottle if you pop that cork  really quickly you get quite a pop if you do it really slowly and gently all you get is a hiss  that's how silencers silence but outside a movie theater what exactly are they used for look we  would be remiss if we didn't explain that this is not an As

sassin's tool actually military and  law enforcement loves suppressors for four main reasons the extra weight out at the front of the  gun actually reduces both muzzle lift and The Recoil of the gun making it easier to aim and stay  on target uh it does actually reduce the sound and the concussion the blast of the bullet and it  also reduces the muzzle flash to zero all of which makes this a safer and easier weapon to use right  let's get down to testing first up Adam and Jamie take aim at a bas

eline first we are going to fire  an unmodified pistol at the Target in three two 1 then we're going to put a silencer on that gun  and shoot again at the Target and compare the silenced round sound to the original gun  sound and to the movie sound effect of a silencer I'm holding a silenced  pistol it's just as cool as you think it is now for the suppressor  is the movie version anything like reality thank you do silences work  as well in real life as they do on film that's nice that was pretty

  cool that seemed a lot quieter than I thought it would and  Jam's 9mm pistol is equally surprising it's an impressive Improvement  but for analysis let's hear from our expert acoustician first DCB a measure of the intensity  of the sound pressure so we go from 161 and then suppressed we go down to 128 that's a big change  that goes from dangerous to your hearing to safe but it's not just the power the texture and  time signature of the sound is also altered there's a very sharp loud impulse th

en when  you put the suppressor on the initial sound is spread out more in time wow can we hear him  here's the unsuppressed okay now let's hear suppressed yeah that tells the story  and it's a story worth hearing again a story with a surprise ending I swear I went into  this one thinking this would be completely busted I'm kind of blown away but what about the all  important movie version how does that stack up can we hear the Hollywood Sound yeah sure dude that is  far out far out indeed but a

lthough it's not quite identical the real life suppressor does reduce  the volume volum of The Gunshot to Hollywood levels and that's enough to impress Adam a lot  one of the most common questions we get is are we surprised by the results that we come up with  on the show today monstrously surprised I arrived at work this morning expecting that we would  completely bust the myth that you could possibly suppress the sound of a bullet anywhere close to  what the movies would lead you to believe an

d I leave today being a convert to the idea this  thing is totally plausible the only reason I'm not calling it confirmed is because instead of  a sound like they do in the movies I'm shooting my cameraman's knees out here uh it's more  like a sound but that is picking nits as far as I'm concerned this is astonishing do silencers  actually suppress the sound of a bullet as much as they seem to in the movies and specifically make  that sound well actually they come pretty darn close don't they th

ey do I we got to call this one  plausible yep I'm amazed nice shooting text you [Music] too okay so here's the plan we've  got our fulls size fan booat and our fulls sizee sail we'll get out on the water and try  it first in its regular configuration with the fan facing backwards and we'll turn it on and  hopefully go forward then we're going to flip the fan around raise the sail all right we're  in and see if you can actually blow your on sale there she blows so first up with a fan  pointing b

ackwards Carrie and Grant will do a StraightLine speed test that way when they get  the sail up and face the fan forwards they'll have a reference for their performance how do  you feel about calling this the queen Ary she may have a name but the queen Ary is not  off to the best of starts I think we're in a bit of a predicament here the weight of the  sail is making it very tricky to maneuver you guys are going zero miles an hour but despite  tor's encouragement looks like these islands are boa

t magnets Granton carry do finally get  into position first test up is the fan in the right configuration the sail down I'm going to  get in the chase booat have them drive towards me and I'm going to check their speed with  the radar gun they're so jealous of my boat they don't want to race they don't want me to  open up my motor look at the O pink fan good one okay you ready all right this is a first test  fan facing backwards sail down speed test here we go now if you asked me when we were in

the shop  when we first turned on the swamp boat and Grant took out the anomet and got 60 MPH standing behind  the fan I would have said that blow your own own sailboat was going to Boom blast across the water  but now that we've done a test with the Mast on even with the sail down it really slowed down the  boat I think we're going to get some movement but it's it's going to be slight how fast were  we 20 M an hour that was a good test let's flip the fan around and put the sail up and see  how

fast we go when we blow our own [Music] sale Carrie Grant and Tori are preparing to flip the  fan and raise the sail for a physics defying finale they're about to find out with a real  boat on real water if it's possible to really blow your own sail but plain sailing it's not I  feel like there might be just a little element of danger here hope that holds I mean the swamp  boat is not meant to have the fan backwards and it's it's definitely not meant to have this giant  lumbering Sail on it as

your line of sight I think we might actually have a little danger of tipping  just I just really don't want to get wet today all right you guys ready to raise the sail raise the  Maino trim the jib job I'm trimming as fast as I can now in order for this myth to be confirmed  what we're looking for is forward movement due to the fan blowing into the sail not drifting  not just poking along we're actually talking about directed forward Movement we get that  we're looking at confirmed okay I think

that looks parallel so what we're also interested in  is the comparison of the speed of the fan blowing into the sail versus The Fan pointed backwards  all right you guys ready will we get Improvement probably not the Target that we're looking at  is 20 mph um if we get even a quarter of that that 5 mph I would be very very impressed happy  sailing now one might ask how I feel piloting our feet of Naval engineering here combining two  things essentially that should not go together my answer is t

hat really there's no piloting  involved we turn this thing on it either goes forward or it doesn't move at all or and it's  a very real possibility the shallow bottom boat with its top heavy s goes bottom up okay we're in  we have no idea what can go wrong I mean the mask could blow off the boat could flip over they might  get sucked into the fan and chopped up into little pieces hey good sain good luck was that about  being sucked into the fan chopped into little pieces they're off Tori and th

e support vehicle  toes them out to open [Music] water with plenty of space no major winds or currents it's the  perfect location for a spot of scientific sailing all right you ready to do this ready okay here we  go this is blow your own sail with the full-size boat I got to tell you the funniest part about  this whole experiment is when we first turned on that van and the boat just started to spin  and dip down in One Direction Grant and I both were super wideeye cuz we thought we were going 

over they're wildly out of control there's no forward movement just a whole lot of spinning  and crashing very so when we first started and I gunned it we started turning in a circle I was  like this is it that's it we're going in the water but I I turned it down and we tried it again and  actually what I found was yeah it's moving forward if you keep vectoring the fan if you keep that  thrust at the sail you can actually get it to go forward you have to stay on it you can't just  set it and for

get it you have to keep working it working it but eventually you do get to go  forward there she blow look at it they're going forward we blew her own it's working by ramping  It Up mythbuster Style the team has seemingly contradicted nutonian physics it's working they're  blowing their own sale now this was nuts we only got 3 m an hour but we actually got Movement we  got forward movement and we were able to steer by pointing the wind into different parts of the  sale I have to say this is a su

ccessful day 3 m an hour no doubt they'd go a lot faster with  the fan facing backwards and no sail but that's not the point the myth asks can you  power a sailboat with your own fan and you can now I don't know exactly what's going  on because apparently we're flying in the face of Newton's loss but here's what I think  is happening we have a significant amount of thrust coming out of this fan it's hitting the  sail the sail can only push so much the rest of that thrust gets reflected back givi

ng us a  net thrust pushing Us in the forward Direction and forward in both directions because to prove  that real wind wasn't a factor Grant and carry sail both ways dude that was awesome I cannot  believe it we blew our own sale this one is totally confirmed totally confirmed I mean this  thing went forward with the win from our own fan confirmed all right here we go let's go [Music] ride you may remember in the opening sequence  Adam and Jamie set off a Hollywood style explosive Fireball bye-

bye but despite having  plenty the guys didn't blow up the car just for fun it was part of the test to find  out whether the ubiquitous explosive sound effect you hear in the movies is  anything like the real thing so first up let's show you the ingredients of  a typical Silver Screen Big Bang two gallons of gasoline ringed in some Deb  cord and stuck in the front seat that's how Hollywood makes its spectacular Fireball  explosions but what do they really sound like bye-bye it's quite a differen

ce huh much like the punch the  movie version has a lot more texture and depth quite simply  it's more dramatic than the real thing how did the waveforms compare they're  clearly very different the gas explosion we just did had a very sudden onset and the energy  is concentrated in a very narrow range of low frequencies whereas the classic movie explosion  has a much slower onset and the energy is over a much wider range of frequencies and it lasts for a  much much longer time it's a very differ

ent sound which sounds like a busted myth but the guys  aren't done yet they're not getting bogged down with just one big boom if the sound of a gasoline  fueled Fireball doesn't match the movies maybe a real high explosive will cue our old friend C4  now we're going to blow this car up for real Z's and check out how that sounds we're also going  to commensurately check how it looks cuz you know that's just like an ancillary benefit  all right here we go 2.2 lbs of C4 in 3 2 1 Kaboom that was a

good solid thud kind of makes  you feel all warm and fuzzy inside don't it it does a good solid thud but once again it's  clearly a completely different sound to the sound effect I'm looking at the top the  movie explosion and I'm seeing this big wide bandwidth of sound and I see the C4 and I  see nothing like that I see one sharp impulse little bit of surrounding noise but nowhere near  the depth and the range of the movie explosion I'm going to go out of the limp and see I think  that one's bu

sted yep the contrast between the real explosions and the film sound effect is as  clear as a bell and that leaves this final movie myth about as busted as the car let's get out  of here before our shoes get all dirty [Music] [Music] [Music]