List of MythBusters special episodes

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The cast of the television series MythBusters perform experiments to verify or debunk urban legends, old wives' tales, and the like. This is a list of the various myths tested on the show as well as the results of the experiments (the myth is Busted, Plausible, or Confirmed).

Special episodes listed here were aired separately to the normal season episodes and special episodes. Also included are "mini myths", videos available from the Discovery Channel website.

Contents 1 Episode overview 2 Specials 2.1 Episode SP11 – "MythBusters Young Scientists Special" 3 Mini Myths 3.1 "Egg-uinox" 3.2 "Breakstep Bridge" 3.3 "Mini Shark Myths" 4 Outtakes 4.1 "Facts About Flatulence" 4.2 "MythBusters Teeth Challenge" 5 BBC Two re-edited half hour shows 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Episode overview

Series #	Season #	Title	Original airdate
SP11	Special 1	"Young Scientist Special"	April 26, 2008 (2008-04-26)
Myths tested: Discovery Channel's young scientist contenders help the Mythbusters tackle environmental myths: Are electric cars truly slow? Do increased CO2 levels cause accelerated ice melting? (Former Mythbuster Scottie Chapman returns to assist the testing) Are cows truly the single greatest air polluter?

[edit] Specials

[edit] Episode SP11 – "MythBusters Young Scientists Special"

• Original airdate: April 26, 2008 on Science Channel

This episode aired first on Science Channel, as opposed to the show's regular home of Discovery Channel. A team of winners in Discovery's "Young Scientist Challenge" competitions tested environmental myths with the team. Former MythBuster Scottie Chapman returned to assist with a myth.

Myth statement	Status	Notes
Greenhouse gases increase the amount of heat absorbed by air.	Confirmed	Airtight containers with carbon dioxide or methane added got one degree centigrade hotter than regular when heated by a hot lamp.
Electric cars are more sluggish than gasoline-powered cars.	Busted	They first had Jaime drive Brandon (a Young Scientist Challenge winner) in both a gas and electric consumer grade car, and blindfolded Brandon and covered Jaime's ears to see if they could tell the difference. Brandon couldn't tell, but being an experienced driver, Jaime was able to immediately tell based on the electric car's acceleration. Then Adam, Jaime, and Brandon built an electric go-kart using lithium iron phosphate batteries and tested it against a gas go-kart. Despite weighing twice as much as the gas go-kart, the electric go-kart performed about the same. Then they went to a professional track and watched the KillaCycle, an electric drag motorcycle race against a stock gas motorcycle. The gas motorcycle won by a slight margin. Then they had the X1 electric sports car race against an F430 Ferrari, and while the Ferrari's top speed was faster, the electric car accelerated faster and beat it in a drag race. Finally, they had the electric car race against a FJR50 Forumla 3 race car. While the Formula 3 car easily beat the electric car, the electric car is considered a "street car," not a race car, and it did well enough that they proclaimed electric cars to be anything but slow.
Cows hurt the environment.	Confirmed	Cows emit methane—though not mostly from flatulence, but from belching — and their faeces emit even more methane once they begin rotting. Since there are so many cows, the methane contributes significantly to global warming.
Cow manure can be used to help the environment.	Confirmed	Cow manure can be used to power things. The Young Scientists helped collect cow manure and extracted methane gas from it. Grant hooked up the methane gas and used it to power a hand lawnmower. They then saw that the farm where they had collected cow manure from received 90% of its electricity from its own manure-powered generator.

[edit] Mini Myths

The mini-myths are shown in video clips that are available from the Discovery Channel website.

[edit] "Egg-uinox"

The Egg-uinox myth was perhaps too short to air in any episode, as it was easily and conclusively busted.^[1]

Myth statement	Status	Notes
An egg can be balanced on its ends only during the spring and fall equinox.	Busted	This is a Chinese folk belief, sometimes called Li Chun egg balancing after the first day of spring in the Chinese calendar. There is nothing special about the spring and fall equinoxes that allows an egg to balance on end. A person with enough dexterity can do it on any day of the year. Hard boiled eggs balance better than raw eggs, however.

[edit] "Breakstep Bridge"

In a revisit of the Breakstep Bridge myth, Adam and Jamie decide that the suspension bridge that Adam had built was too stable to accurately test, so they build a simple beam bridge and test it under Adam's weight.^[2] This test was also aired in MythBusters Outtakes.

Myth statement	Status	Notes
A bridge can be collapsed by the vibration caused by pedestrian traffic. The theory was soldiers break step on bridge, because if their march gets a resonant frequency of the bridge, it will snap the bridge.	Plausible	The bridge was able to hold Adam's weight until he started bouncing on it.

[edit] "Mini Shark Myths"

The mini shark myths, while related to Discovery Channel's Shark Week, are not related to the movie Jaws in particular.^[3]

Myth statement	Status	Notes
Sharks tend to be attracted to brighter colors like yellow.	Plausible	When all the results were calculated, the sharks tested preferred to go for the "yum-yum yellow" bait bag before the other ones (red, blue, black, white, silver). Though they did also go for the silver and black ones.
Sharks can detect a single drop of blood dropped into a pool of water.	Busted	The sharks detected fish blood, however they either did not detect human blood or did not care about it. Also, like any scent, the sharks weren't able to detect the blood until their noses came into contact with the blood particles, and the smell grew weaker as the blood got diluted by the water, meaning that a single drop of blood in a particular area of the pool would not be detectable by any shark that was not in that area, and was not swimming right into the blood. However, the Mythbusters only used lemon sharks, and great whites or bull sharks might have gotten different results.
A shark's skin is rough enough to be used as sandpaper.	Confirmed	When compared to various grains of sandpaper, the sharkskin that Adam and Jamie acquired was comparable to a very high-grain (400 to 600) of sandpaper, and can be used as such, even on a rotary sander.
There is a rule of thumb a casual observer can use to adequately estimate the size of a shark.	Busted	Out of all the measurements taken of sharks of various species, only one (from nosetip to dorsal fin tip) could consistently be used to estimate the shark's size, and that requires knowledge of the specific shark species and an up-close measurement that might be too difficult and dangerous to be done by a casual observer.

[edit] Outtakes

During live appearances by the MythBusters, they have screened additional segments that were not aired.

[edit] "Facts About Flatulence"

There were two additional myths addressed in addition to those in the Franklin's Kite episode.

Myth statement	Status	Notes
Attractive women do not pass gas.	Busted	Kari wore underwear equipped with a microphone connected to an amplifier and a hydrogen sulfide meter. The meter malfunctioned, giving false positive readings. However, the microphone did record the sound of a released flatus.[4]
A flatus can be ignited.	Confirmed	Adam had some initial performance anxiety, but finally did release a flatus that could be ignited by a butane lighter.[5] The flammable methane within a regular flatus, despite only making up about 7% of the flatus' gasses, is still enough to set it alight upon release (when it first contacts and mixes with the air, but before it can diffuse altogether).

[edit] "MythBusters Teeth Challenge"

Less a challenge than an inside joke. The MythBusters received many e-mails from fans complaining about Adam's brown teeth. This was originally planned for the "Steam Cannon" episode. However, on the Discovery Europe version, it is included in the episode.

Myth statement	Status	Notes
Of all the MythBusters, Adam is the one with the brownest teeth.	Busted, then Confirmed	Jamie, Adam, Tory, and Grant all had their teeth checked by Kari. At first Jamie was the one with the brownest teeth, not Adam. However, after hearing the news, he had his teeth bleached to make them white again. After this, Adam did have the brownest teeth. The overall result, from best to worst: Grant, Tory, Adam, and finally Jamie (before his bleaching).

[edit] BBC Two re-edited half hour shows

BBC Two's editions of MythBusters are narrated by Rufus Hound in an energetic and irreverent style.

Date broadcast	Myths
July 27, 2006	Penny Drop, Who Gets Wetter?, Exploding Toilet
August 3, 2006	CD-Rom Shattering, Silicone Breasts, Cell Phone Destruction
September 7, 2006	Lightning Strikes Tongue Piercing, Cola Myths (partial; cleaning blood, pennies and chrome, dissolving teeth and steaks), Hammer Bridge Drop
September 14, 2006	JATO Car, Pop Rocks and Soda (called "Space Dust" in the British narration, as it is the more common name for Pop Rocks in the UK)
September 21, 2006	Buried Alive, Beat the Breath Test
September 28, 2006	Explosive Decompression, Rear Axle, Frog Giggin'
October 5, 2006	Mad Trombonist, Goldfish Memory, Down with the Titanic
October 12, 2006	Escape from Alcatraz, Mind Control Chips, Does a Duck's Quack Echo?
October 19, 2006	Row Skiing, Surprise Toothbrush, Breakstep Bridge
October 31, 2006	The Hunt for Hoffa, Daddy Long-Legs, Jet Taxi
November 7, 2006	Lawn Chair Balloon, Poppy Seed Drug Test, Goldfinger
November 14, 2006	Chicken Gun (frozen or thawed?), Killer Laundry!
February 19, 2007	Vacuum Toilet, Exploding Shopping

[edit] See also

• List of MythBusters episodes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• MythBusters Official site
• View the Facts About Flatulence outtakes
• MythBusters at the Internet Movie Database

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