Original subtitles

That's right, folks.

Don't try this at home.

We're what you call experts.

Narrator: On this episode of "mythbusters"...

[ bell dings ]

Apparently a ping-pong ball can kill you.

Yep. Duck, cover, and, uh, dance?

Hey!

Narrator: To tackle a duo

Of deadly ballistic mysteries...

Adam: What the [bleep]

Nothing's making any sense.

Narrator: The team engages in an arms race...

It's just a flesh wound.

...Of incredible ingenuity.

First, in a world-record- breaking attempt...

This has never been done before.

[ air cannon firing ] wow!

It's scary.

...Jamie and adam ask,

"will ping-pong make a mortal mark?"

Go!

That was an ever-loving smack of a bang.

Then, kari, grant, and tory feel the force...

Tory: I am your father.

Narrator: ...In a tsar war.

Will an ice cannon...

One.

...Really blow the daft invaders away?

[ grunting ]

A lot of drama here on the set of "mythbusters."

Who are the mythbusters?

Adam savage...

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Narrator: ...And jamie hyneman.

Bye-bye!

Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience.

Together with grant imahara...

That is crazy!

...Kari byron...

Hyper-mile that!

...And tory belleci.

It's about to get real.

Narrator: They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

First up, adam and jamie tackle the tall tale

That ping-pong can go lethally wrong.

Whew! Really?

A ping-pong ball can kill you?

That's the myth.

There's no way it has enough mass

To actually penetrate anything.

18 to nothing.

But what if the ball was going really, really fast?

Enough already!

It's an interesting physical conundrum.

Can such a delicate object with so little mass

Achieve ballistic lethality?

Is it possible to fire plastic ping-pong balls fast enough

To result in mortal damage?

So, if you're thinking an itty-bitty ping-pong ball

Can kill you, what's your plan?

Well, force...

Oh!

Equals mass...

Times acceleration.

Ah, I see.

So, what this lacks in mass,

You're hoping to make up for in speed.

How fast are you thinking of going?

A lot. I'm thinking supersonic.

[ sonic boom crashing ]

I love it. Where should we start?

Human power?

Go down, bat a few of these around,

And see how fast we can make them go?

Yep. Sounds great.

Wa-psh!

As the mythbusters know...

That's pretty serious.

...Speed kills.

Ho-ho!

The greater an object's acceleration...

Whoosh! ...The more force on impact.

I'm going to cook this now.

And before the guys attempt to mechanically ramp it up

To supersonic,

The minimum that jamie thinks is required for a lethal hit,

Our less-than-professional players

Have given the manual speed test everything they've got.

So, jamie was able to rocket the ball off of his paddle

At 68 miles an hour.

I was able to do it at 75 miles per hour.

Neither of those speeds, anywhere close to lethal.

But I have an idea for getting it to go a bit faster.

Ah! Perfect.

I'm gonna build it.

Narrator: Their hands-on technique obviously failed

To fuel a fatal force.

So, adam puts together

An air-pressure-powered ping-pong popgun.

Psh, psh!

Here's how this works.

This is what I call a breech-loading popgun.

Here's the breech. There's the ammo.

Seal it up. Pressurize from here.

Open it up.

Point it in the direction

You want to hit with a ping-pong ball.

Psh!

Release with this high-pressure valve.

And bob's your uncle.

What does bob's your uncle mean?

Well, it means hopefully that we've gotten the ping-pong ball

To an impossibly large speed.

Narrator: And with the pressure pump to the max

The popgun can handle, a modest...

95 p.S.I. In 3.

We're about to find out.

[ air cannon firing ]

140 miles per hour.

Nice for a little device like that.

Here we go.

[ air cannon firing ]

[ laughing ]

It's not lethal, though.

We've got a long ways to go before we get to that point.

Bam!

Yep. As brody would say,

They're gonna need a bigger barrel.

Our paddles got the ping-pong balls to about 70 miles an hour.

My little shooter here, up to 140 --

Wait a second.

Editors, can you give me a nice shotgun sound effect for this?

[ shotgun cocking ] much better.

Got the ping-pong ball up to 140 miles an hour at 100 p.S.I.

One! [ air cannon firing ]

You know, for years, jamie's gonna be like,

"ah, crap, there's another damn ping-pong ball in the rafters."

Jamie's and my experience,

P.S.I. Is not the deciding factor

For acceleration in an air cannon.

It's barrel length.

So, I think what we need to do is build another one of these

With a really, really long barrel.

[ banging ]

[ laughing ]

Narrator: Up next...

An age-old, ice-cold ballistics mystery from history.

Well, I hope you guys packed your thermals,

Because this myth comes from the depths of winter

In medieval russia.

Now, there was a town. It was under siege.

And they didn't have anything to defend themselves with.

So, they improvised a cannon and cannonballs

Out of the one thing they had plenty of.

Ice.

Really? Just ice?

Yes! Ice, possibly some materials to strengthen it.

But the history books say

It was a viable defensive weapon.

Well, the good news is if there's another ice age

And the zombie apocalypse happens,

We'll have something to fight them off with.

Well, it's really good to be prepared for...

Everything.

I'm always prepared.

Narrator: Supposedly, in the ultimate test

Of backs-to-the-wall, improvised ingenuity,

The cossacks crafted a cannon

Out of the most unlikely material imaginable --

Frozen water.

All right, now, you remember a million years ago,

When we first started on this show,

We tested ice bullets.

And as soon as we shot the rifle,

The bullet turned to gases.

Which is exactly why I think

That before we go and build a full-size ice cannon,

We should start by testing the cannonballs.

Right, because if the cannonballs can't hold together,

Then the myth is already busted.

Exactly. So, why don't we do this?

Let's make some ice cannonballs.

We'll fire them out of a real cannon

And take it from there.

Good. I like it.

Narrator: The team's previous failure

Firing frozen h2o ammo...

Adam: It just can't be done.

You're gonna end up with vaporized water.

[ gunshot ]

...Means the opening salvo in this siberian siege story

Will be the weakest link -- the projectiles themselves.

We've done a lot of research

To see if we could find any sort of historical information...

Hey!

...On the specs of the ice cannonballs.

Now, we've found that they may have been reinforced with fibers

Such as hemp, wood, and paper pulp.

So while tory and I work on the supplemented cannonballs,

Grant's gonna work on the clear ice ones.

What is going on back there?

Hey!

Narrator: So, using natural materials

For structurally stronger alternatives...

Sawdust.

Narrator: ...The team makes four types of frozen cannonballs.

Yeah! This is gonna be one strong cannonball.

Narrator: Pure ice... Grant: Perfect.

Narrator: ...And ice plus hemp...

Ice ball with hemp in it.

Narrator: ...Sawdust and paper.

Kari: Ooh.

Whoa, that is awesome. That's beautiful.

Look at how perfect that is.

With their projectiles prepped,

It's off to a suitably explosive location.

All right. Let's bring out the cannon.

All right.

We've come out to angels camp,

Where we have a long history of blowing up cement trucks...

[ exploding ]

...Unleashing fireworks men into the world,

And firing off a cannon.

Whoa! Wow.

That's what we're gonna do again.

There she is.

Harry webb has brought out old moses

So that we can test each recipe for our ice cannonballs

And see which one can withstand the blast of a real cannon.

We're gonna be firing our cannonballs

With increasingly larger amounts of black powder

To see if they can withstand the pressure.

Kari: We're starting with pure ice cannonballs

And 8 ounces of black powder,

The minimum amount we can use in the cannon.

[ russian accent ] don't worry, comrade.

They are only shooting ice. How bad could that hurt?

We'll use it to chill our vodka.

Kari: We've set up our grid to collect some data on speed

And also added a target.

[ normal voice ] hey, come on, let's go dance at the battle.

Narrator: So, it's all go for test one.

We are loaded.

Kari: Loaded! Yay!

Narrator: A pure ice cannonball and half a pound of black powder

With a potential muzzle energy of 20,000 joules.

Eyes and ears!

Surely, it doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell

Of surviving. Firing! Three...

Let alone doing any damage to our dancing dummy.

...One.

Wow! That was awesome.

Kari: That looked like a very successful hit.

Grant: It looks like we hit the bad guy.

[ laughs ] and knocked him down.

Kari: I am totally shocked.

Not only did the pure ice cannonball

Come out completely intact,

But it was traveling 1,000 feet per second,

Or 680 miles an hour.

That means if we aim our cannon just a little bit up,

We could have traveled an incredible distance.

Narrator: It is an incredible result.

The might power of old moses couldn't part the frozen water.

It stayed intact and hit the target

At a lethal 680 miles per hour.

Sorry, my friend.

I guess we underestimated the ice.

And such an impressive result means the myth can proceed

In its purest form, without supplementary materials.

[ buzzer sounding ]

The question is, how fast can pure h2o go?

Grant: We're gonna go up

To a pound and a half of black powder...

[ chuckling ]

The powder burrito grande.

...Which is the most that this cannon can handle.

Let's see what happens.

Three, two, one!

Yeah!

Oh, yeah! That was...

Whoo!

Narrator: Old moses supplies the biggest boom he can handle.

And with a top speed topping out

At an astonishing 1,550 miles per hour,

The ice has exceeded all expectations.

Look, this is a totally unexpected result.

I mean, none of us ever thought that a pure ice cannonball

Could survive being shot out of a cannon.

Especially since we had tested the ice bullet way back when

And every time we shot that bullet,

The ice just turned into water vapor.

So, I figured that's what was gonna happen

With the ice cannonball, but it didn't!

So, we've got our cannonball. Now all we need is a cannon.

Narrator: Coming up...

Is bigger... Wow!

Really better?

That's big.

Welcome back.

Jamie the paddle says...

Bam!

We've effectively been attempting to weaponize

The one-tenth of an ounce ping-pong ball

And make it lethal.

So we started out smacking them with rackets as hard as we can

And came up with about 75 miles per hour off the racket.

So, I built this little baby right here, and at 90 p.S.I.,

We were able to shoot ping-pong balls from this

At 140 miles per hour.

Still not really lethal.

But continuing along this theme,

We figure if we make something that's a little bigger...

My little popgun.

Say, 20 times as big, we might get some real results.

Narrator: So, in attempt to do some deadly damage,

Adam and jamie are going to extreme lengths.

It's coming along nicely.

Narrator: 80 feet, to be exact.

And exactly why?

Well, a hyneman walks into a bar and says...

So, why the long barrel?

Well, as long as the pressure behind the ball

Is greater than the pressure in front of the ball,

The ball's gonna continue to accelerate.

It's perfect.

Jamie: And so, the longer the barrel we have,

The more time the ball will have to do that,

And the faster it'll be going when it comes out the far end.

There's a target.

Narrator: And with the popgun pressurized

To the max the shop air can supply...

Okay, that's 140 p.S.I.

...It's time to load...

Adam: These are some professional-grade

Ping-pong balls.

...And lock...

Close the breech!

...And let rip. Range is hot!

Jamie: Firing.

Three, two, one.

[ air cannon firing ]

[ laughing ]

I just see a hole at the other end.

[ air cannon firing ]

[ laughing ]

Jamie: Wow.

That is far out.

That's a fast little ping-pong ball.

Wow!

[ laughing ]

Well, our 80-foot-long barrel sent this ping-pong ball

Through an inch-thick piece of honeycomb cardboard,

Which in and of itself is not that incredible a feat.

But it left a visible mark on 3/4-inch plywood.

That is something more than I expected.

It certainly banged up the backboard.

But what about the crunched numbers?

453 miles per hour.

That's a good place to start.

Absolutely.

Jamie: So, we got this ball going 453 miles per hour.

That's really fast,

But I have to say, I don't think it's lethal.

Based on what I'm seeing with this ball,

It might break a rib.

It might give you a really nasty bruise.

But it's not gonna kill you.

Narrator: So, to make a mortal mark,

They're going to need more speed, more momentum,

And a step into the unknown.

Jamie: This has never been done before.

It's scary.

Kari, grant, and tory are testing the ultimate

In backs-to-the-wall ballistics ingenuity.

Hey!

Narrator: And so far...

[ russian accent ] don't worry, comrade.

Narrator: ...It's all go on the fro-blow.

Sorry, my friend.

I guess we underestimated the ice.

The team has the balls. Now to build the barrel.

Now, what I have here is a giant cardboard tube.

Everybody okay?

Now, this is how we're gonna make our ice cannons.

This is the mold that we're gonna fill up with water

And let it freeze so we can make our cannon.

So, I'm gonna build a couple of different sizes,

And we're gonna see which one is the strongest

To withstand the exploding black powder.

Narrator: Yep, when it comes to cannons,

Size really does matter.

The breech, that is,

The explosive chamber at the base of the barrel,

Has to contain and channel

The energy of the black-powder blast.

So to find the optimal dimension,

Tory is building 3 breeches with 4-, 6-, and 8-inch walls

And diameters of 12, 16, and 20 inches.

Too thin, and it'll explode.

Too thick, and the mass becomes structurally prohibitive

To move around.

All right, so now that the tubes are filled up with water,

We just need to let them freeze,

And then we'll have our breeches.

Narrator: And one week later, the ice-cold cannons

Are ready for a refrigerated trip to the bomb range.

This is gonna be fun.

So, we now know that half a pound of black powder is enough

To propel our ice cannonball at 680 miles per hour,

Which should give us enough range and enough damage

To be a viable weapon.

Now what we need to do is work on the breech.

God, it would suck if this thing fell.

We have a 4-inch wall, a 6-inch wall, and an 8-inch wall.

We'll put our half-pound of black powder in there

And see which one of these, if any, is able to survive

The kinds of forces that are generated in a cannon.

Narrator: First up is the 20-inch breech

With 8-inch walls...

Don't let go.

Whoa! Aah! [bleep]

Oh, my god!

...Where surviving the half-pound black-powder blast

May not be the only issue.

I got to tell you,

I can see some problems with working with ice.

Yeah, I don't know how these guys

Would've been able to actually maneuver an ice cannon.

Mass is a big concern.

The larger it is,

The harder it'll be to build, move, and manipulate.

Plus, even in the deepest mid-winter...

Loading the charge now.

...Due to the insulating properties of ice,

Freezing large amounts of water takes a long time...

All right, we're set. Let's go to the bunker.

Narrator: ...Meaning the smallest breech

That can contain the blast will be the best option.

So, with the black powder loaded and no projectile,

Which barrel will survive?

All right! This is 20-inch diameter breech.

In three, two, one.

[ laughing ]

Well, we just figured out a way to make hail instantly.

Yeah. Giant snow cone.

Narrator: Now, that did not go according to plan.

Kari: That's not gonna work.

That is the thickest wall we have.

Tory: Right now, it is not looking good for the myth.

But you know what?

Maybe we're using too much black powder.

Maybe we need to find the perfect amount of black powder

To launch the cannonball and not destroy our cannon.

Narrator: So, with a few more freshly frozen 20-inch breeches,

The team decides a little less boom is required

And not more ice.

Now, the reason that we're going with less gunpowder

Rather than thicker ice is twofold.

See, what tends to happen with ice

Is that the outer layer insulates the inner layer,

So the core never really freezes solid.

The second reason is that when you get to ridiculous-size ice,

It becomes unwieldy...

Whoa! Aah! [bleep]

Therefore, ineffective as a weapon.

So, we'll get out our 20-inch breeches...

Voilà.

...Lower the gunpowder,

And see if we can get a speed that is potentially deadly.

Narrator: They're scaling down the black powder

From 8 to a mere 1.25 ounces.

If the 20-inch breech can't handle this...

All right, our cannon is hot.

...The myth is surely busted.

Tory: In three, two, one.

Grant: I think it did it. It worked!

We shot the plug out without blowing up the breech!

Narrator: It was a somewhat less-than-big boom,

But it's a start.

Kari: Our breech hasn't exploded.

It's still intact, which means it's reusable.

We're gonna keep going. 1.75 is next.

All right, ice breech locked and loaded.

Let's do this.

In three, two, one.

Whoa!

Narrator: Now, that was more aggressive.

But can a brand-new breech contain 2 ounces?

2 ounces, in three, two, one.

Tory: Oh. All right, it looks like that was too much.

I guess one and three-quarter ounces,

That's the perfect amount.

Yeah, two is just a bit too much.

Grant: So, we've got the ball.

We've got the amount of black powder.

We've got the size of the breech.

You know what that means.

That means it's time to build a full-size cannon and go for it.

Narrator: Later...

Okay, wait, ooh [bleep]

Aah!

Narrator: The game of moans... Adam: What the [bleep]

Nothing's making any sense.

Narrator: ...Continues. [ laughing ]

[ choking ] ugh.

Jamie: One. [ air cannon firing ]

Narrator: Adam and jamie have a super-sized ping-pong popgun,

And they're not afraid to use it.

[ laughing ]

But while shooting aesthetically pleasing objects

At 450 miles an hour is impressive,

They determined the resulting destruction is less than lethal.

So, what next?

It might break a rib, but it's not gonna kill you.

Narrator: Well, adam has chanced upon

A cutting-edge resource called the, er, internet...

That's amazing.

It turns out that physics teachers

Have been getting incredible acceleration

Out of ping-pong balls

Without using 80-foot-long barrels.

And I think it's a method

That we should investigate immediately.

Okay, cool, it's working all right.

What they've been doing is,

They've been taking a 36-inch-long tube of pvc,

And they've been putting a ping-pong ball in one end.

Then, they put packing tape over each end of the tube

And they use a vacuum to draw a full vacuum in that tube.

Okay.

Here we go. Pulling the vacuum.

Then, when they pierce that side, of course,

Air wants to rush in to fill the vacuum,

But the ping-pong ball's in the way.

So, it starts to move forward.

Just, everyone back off a little bit.

There's nothing in its way in terms of air

Because there's a vacuum.

And so, it bursts out of this side

At something over 300 miles per hour.

Narrator: That's the theory.

Here we go!

[ air cannon firing ]

Whoa!

Holy [bleep]

[ laughs ]

Oh, man, that was really good.

I didn't expect it to work that well.

Narrator: The 3-foot prototype worked scarily well.

[ air cannon firing ]

Popping the sealed vacuum caused a sudden influx of air,

And the pressure differential sends the ball rocketing.

And after a few technique tweaks...

One. [ air cannon firing ]

One. [ air cannon firing ]

...And a double-barrel length...

One! [ air cannon firing ]

...Adam measures rocketing at...

375 miles an hour.

That is mighty respectable.

Respectable enough to be the new

Ping-pong projectile power of choice.

Well, the vacuum trick for launching a ping-pong ball

Out of a short length of tubing is working gangbusters.

I actually got 375 miles an hour on a ping-pong ball

Out of this measly 6-foot tube.

That is awesome,

And this is where I'm gonna concentrate my energy

To get the fastest ping-pong ball possible.

All right, we're ready.

Narrator: Based on the theory

That bigger barrels are better...

Heh, it's taking a little longer to pump this out.

Jamie: Yeah.

...The guys have rigged the vacuum pump

To their enormous 80-footer.

There's plenty of nerves...

This has never been done before.

It's scary.

High expectations...

Here's a world first.

...And energy waiting to fulfill its potential.

Ping-pong bazooka in three, two, one!

[ air cannon firing ]

But it's an unexpected and disappointing dud.

Ah. That's no good.

Here's our ping-pong ball.

That wall is where we want the ping-pong ball

To be embedded in.

One! [ air cannon firing ]

Something's not working.

[ air cannon firing ]

But it's reaching close to the end of our tube,

And then somehow bouncing back a little.

Well, not somehow.

See, air rushes in this tube behind the ping-pong ball.

There's a vacuum in front of it.

But that air sneaks past the ping-pong ball,

And it looks like it's providing a cushion

That's actually causing it to spring back

Once it reaches the end.

So, it's not attaining enough speed or momentum to bust out.

One. Adam: Nope.

Didn't make it.

That tells me that we've made this tube too long.

Narrator: Yep, that cushion of air decelerates the ball

To the point that it doesn't have the force

To pop the packing tape.

So, as brody wouldn't say, they need a shorter barrel.

The question is how short?

We're gonna use the high-speed camera to find out

Where the ping-pong ball is no longer accelerating.

Then I'm gonna cut the barrel there

And hope that that works.

All right, speed test, here we go.

Three, two, one!

[ air cannon firing ]

Narrator: Several tests...

[ air cannon firing ]

And sums later...

[ laughing ]

One.

They find the ball maxes out 30 feet along the barrel

At an astonishing velocity.

[ laughs ] 829.

We're well past mach 1 here.

Narrator: So, a quick reset at the requisite length...

Hoo. Boy, was that tough.

Narrator: And the guys are expecting...

Let's do it.

...The ball to bust out of the packing tape

At over 800 miles per hour. Three, two, one!

[ air cannon firing ]

That would be a supersonic ping-pong ball.

Sounded fast.

But who knows what that meant?

What it means is...

275 miles per hour.

We're getting less out of a 30-foot barrel

Than I was out of a 6-foot barrel.

Jamie: Yeah.

...A frustrating miscalculation.

Adam: What the [bleep]

It's only coming out of the barrel at 192 miles an hour.

Narrator: The shorter barrel means

The ball is now accelerating enough

That it can burst free.

But the air cushion is still an issue.

Even though we're seeing speeds upward of 800 miles per hour

Inside the tube, by the time the ball leaves the end of the tube,

It's been decelerated to well under 200 miles an hour.

And that's not lethal.

Narrator: Yep. So far, this myth is misfiring.

Failure is apparently the only option.

Narrator: Back at big boom hq...

[ echoing ] look out, people! We have an ice cannon!

Narrator: ...It's time to get down to business.

Cannon goes here.

Kari: We've come back to angels camp

To do the final experiment in our ice cannon myth.

100 feet.

Now, so far, it's been very surprising.

We learned that ice cannonballs actually stay intact

And can go the distance.

Right here, 150 yards. Let's set up our target.

Now we're gonna find out if an ice cannon...

Time to deploy the army.

...Can shoot an ice cannonball.

It's time to go to war.

Grant: So, this sets up the criteria for our myth.

Number one, the ice cannon has to have sufficient range,

Meaning that it has to fire about 150 yards.

Number two, it has to cause significant damage.

This is a family show.

This isn't quite from a family store.

We might have to do a little bit of censoring.

And number three, it has to be reusable.

One-time-only doesn't work.

That's better.

If the ice cannon meets all three of these criteria,

Then we can call this myth plausible.

What is that they're wheeling out?

[ laughing ]

[ choking ] ugh.

Narrator: What they're wheeling out is a full-size cannon.

With a 5-foot-long, 20-inch diameter barrel,

It's a fantastic feat of frozen engineering.

Whoa! Yes, it is!

It's coming out.

Good.

But during the cannon's tricky transition

From vertical in the truck...

Whatever you do, don't break it.

Shut up.

...To horizontal on the carriage...

Okay, wait, ooh [bleep]

...It's apparent how tough this test is going to be.

Kari: One of the major challenges of the ice cannon

Is the fact that the one we made is 600 pounds.

Ice is really, really heavy. We're lodged.

It won't go up. It won't?

I have to bring the whole thing up.

A lot of drama here on the set of "mythbusters."

Kari: So, actually having to move it

From the freezer onto a truck, off the truck, to here...

Oop, stop!

No, don't stop, keep going!

Okay. Aah!

Kari: Get that tube off of the ice

And put it on the carriage

Without cracking or crushing it,

It's insane!

[ both cheering ]

Now, let's get it on the carriage.

I just want to see this thing work once.

I hope we can.

Narrator: The extreme mass

Coupled with the lack of structural integrity...

Grant: What the hell are we doing?

This is nuts!

...Is an obvious downfall of the building material.

Whoo!

But once in position and prepped...

Beautiful.

Electric match here.

...It truly is a sight to behold.

♪ ah! ♪ it's beautiful

♪ it's an ice cannon

Narrator: And whether it works or not...

Look at that beauty.

All right, don't stand in front.

...The backs-to-the-wall ingenuity is to be celebrated.

All right, we're wired and hot!

Kari: What this really is about is innovation,

Improvised weaponry.

Taking what you have

To make something completely dangerous and totally cool.

Or maybe a little dangerous. We'll see.

Remember, do not try anything you are about to see at home.

Oof!

In our quest to make the innocent,

2.7-gram ping-pong ball lethal,

I came across a technique online using a vacuum chamber...

Here we go! [ air cannon firing ]

...That got us amazing speeds on this bench

Of 375 miles per hour.

Holy [bleep]

So we thought, "let's just add some more barrel."

One! [ air cannon firing ]

That's no good.

So far, that has yielded pretty much bupkus for us.

What the [bleep] nothing's making any sense.

But, I have, in researching this technique further online,

Come across a modification to it

That might just give us what we're looking for,

And I'm about to build it.

It involves a choke.

Narrator: With this new piece of tech,

Adam's bringing a little rocket science to the ping-pong party.

And to understand what it is and if it works,

Adam's first testing a short-barrel prototype.

Adam: Part of this rig is very familiar,

But the addition of the choke...

Ah! Kidding.

After I pull a vacuum, I'll put this on here,

Thus making this a sealed pressure chamber

Behind the barrel.

Vacuumizing.

When I feel like I've got a full vacuum,

I then hook shop air pressure up into this,

And the extra 40 to 60 to 80 p.S.I.

That comes out of here will burst this piece of tape,

Sending everything going, supposedly much, much faster.

I really hope this works. [ laughing ]

Three, two, one.

Ho, ho.

[ air cannon firing ]

Wow. Wow!

Narrator: The blast of pressurized air popped the vacuum

And added extra energy to the equation.

But just how much?

779 miles per hour.

Mama! [ laughs ]

That's what I'm talking about.

Narrator: What adam's talking about

Is that after all their hard work,

They have a ping-pong ball faster than the speed of sound.

That's quicker than this...

And this. [ sonic boom crashing ]

So, where next from here?

Adam: So, this is now a working proof of concept.

We found about this technology of adding a choke,

Like, like rocket science.

Rocket science uses a choke to make jets and rockets work,

And we put it here with some pressure behind it.

And we got 779 miles per hour.

So now we're gonna go to a bigger location.

Narrator: And what a location.

Don't you wish this could be our shop?

Jamie: Boy, do I.

Here at fabulous fort mason,

Adam and jamie will definitively answer the question,

How fast can a table-tennis ball fly?

One down.

Narrator: And then test its lethality

By super-sizing their prototype ping-pong popgun barrel...

That's the last one.

Narrator: ...And the pressurized choke chamber.

Back in the shop, they've used less than 100 p.S.I.

To pop the packing tape vacuum.

Now they're ramping it up to 500.

Ready?

Ish.

And they want to deliver that massive blast...

I hope you don't break my arm.

...Fast.

[ air cannon firing ]

I think that was pretty good.

[ laughs ] I think that was pretty good.

And with the big beast hooked up and ready for action,

Here's how it's gonna go down.

Adam: The setup out here should be pretty familiar

To anyone who's been watching thus far,

Except for the fact that the barrel's 150 feet long.

Behind our vacuum tube, of course, is our pressure chamber,

And pressured to 500 pounds per square inch of pressure.

The whole business is activated by this lever,

Which we will set off with...

This.

Narrator: And so, with the air evacuated from the barrel

And the choke ready to charge, jamie steps up to the plate.

Here we go, 500 p.S.I., 150-foot-long barrel

In three, two, one, do it!

[ air cannon firing ]

[ laughing ]

It is like a magic trick here.

I was looking at the ping-pong ball,

And then it just wasn't there.

Do it!

It wasn't even, like, I had a sensation of it moving.

It just blip! Whisked out of existence.

[ air cannon firing ]

Which bodes well ballistically, until the evidence is found...

[ chuckling ]

There's very little of the ping-pong ball left.

...And then examined on the high-speed.

It's not even left the barrel, and it's totally shattered.

That's a bit of a problem.

The problem being they need the full weight

Of an aerodynamic, intact ball for maximum mortal damage.

Adam: The good news is

It was going at a speed of 1,086 miles per hour.

[ laughs ]

Jamie: That's pretty fast.

That is pretty fast.

Even though our ping-pong ball was going at mach 1.4,

Which is amazing, I can't say that that was successful

Because it wasn't a ping-pong ball when it left the barrel.

So, we're gonna cut this barrel at 20 feet.

We're gonna lower the overall pressure.

Here we go.

20-foot barrel, 300 p.S.I., semi-slow release.

We're not sure what's gonna happen.

Three...

But whatever does ought to really help inform us

About what's going on.

Two... So, here we go.

One, go.

[ air cannon firing ]

[ squawking ]

[ laughing ]

That was an ever-loving smack of a bang.

That was a hell of a bang, and that ball is rolling.

The ball is intact.

Wow.

Narrator: Intact and insane.

Confirmed on the high-speed

At a world-record 1,100 miles an hour,

The delicate 2.7-gram ping-pong ball

Is traveling twice as fast as a jumbo jet,

As fast as a speeding bullet.

Adam: Now we are talking.

We went from a 150-foot barrel

To a 20-foot barrel with 300 p.S.I. Behind it.

And now it's time to find out if the 1,100 miles per hour

We got out of the end of that barrel...

I think we're ready.

...Is in fact lethal.

Lethal balls. That's what we're looking for.

[ air cannon firing ]

Narrator: Adam and jamie are about to test

The lethality of their supersonic balls.

But before that, they want to shoot jamie's lucky bat.

It has no idea what's in store for it.

It totally knows what's in store for it.

Three, two, one, go.

[ air cannon firing ]

[ laughing ]

Narrator: Holy batman.

There's your problem.

That is a beautiful, beautiful object.

That is an 1,100-mile-per-hour ping-pong ball,

Ladies and gentlemen.

But is it lethal?

Narrator: In the depths of an 18th-century siberian winter,

A desperate, siege-bound army used their imagination

And their most abundant resource

And came up with a working ice cannon.

♪ ah!

Narrator: It's been 300 years since this majestic,

Macgyver-like solution has supposedly worked.

Will it take out the fearsome foam army?

It's the moment of truth.

All right, this is ice cannon final experiment.

In three, two, one.

[ all cheering ]

Tory: And the cannon is still intact!

Narrator: So far, so good.

With a muzzle velocity of 200 miles an hour,

The cannonball easily covered the 150 yards

To the target zone.

Look at this.

This is the ice cannonball. This is awesome.

We took our first shot, and we reached two of the parameters.

One, we made the distance,

And our cannon is still in good condition.

We can take another shot.

Grant: We just didn't get the damage that we were looking for.

But for something that hasn't been done in 300 years,

That's pretty good.

Narrator: Not just pretty good.

The team successfully fired a cannon made of water.

But according to their strict criteria,

It's not yet successful.

Well, I know the cannonball made it all the way to the guys,

But I'm hoping this time, it actually does some damage.

So when you're talking about the damage

That a cannonball can cause,

You're talking about kinetic energy.

Kinetic energy depends on two things, mass and velocity.

Now, the mass is determined by the ball itself.

So if we want more kinetic energy,

What we need to do is increase the velocity.

Now, under normal circumstances,

All you'd need to do is add more black powder,

And it comes out faster.

But the more black powder we put in,

The greater risk of destroying the cannon itself

Before we get a lethal shot.

Narrator: So with the same amount of black powder

And a tweaked trajectory...

We are hot.

...Will the ice-cold cannon this time

Be an ice-cold killer?

This is the ice cannon, in three, two, one!

Grant and tory: Aw.

Narrator: The answer is...No.

Although the ball more than covered the distance,

Sailing over the heads of the targets,

This myth is on the rocks.

[ laughing ] I like this.

I'm gonna start crushing my ice this way.

Mixing fire and ice

Was never likely to be a dangerous cocktail.

But given the severe limitations of the material,

It was an incredible effort of ingenuity.

This is the myth that was almost plausible so many times.

It was looking so good in the beginning.

We started out with our ice cannonballs.

Fired out of a real cannon at high speed.

Then we went to the breeches,

And we found a breech size that would hold

A reasonable amount of black powder.

We put the whole thing together, built a full-size cannon,

Brought it out here to face our army.

And it was, again, looking very promising.

But unfortunately,

On the one that would've caused the most damage,

Which is the one that sailed over the army's heads

And hit the wall,

That's the one where the cannon itself exploded.

And for this myth to be plausible,

We have to have damage and range and reusability all in one.

And that just never happened.

So, unfortunately,

I think we have to bust this one.

And I'm not happy about it.

[ hums "hava nagila" ]

Narrator: Table tennis,

One of the fastest ball sports on the planet.

But surely it can never be fast enough...To be fatal.

So it all comes down to this,

A ping-pong ball going 1,100 miles per hour...

Go.

...Versus flesh.

Which one's gonna win?

We're about to find out.

For our lethality test,

Today's human analogue will be played by a pork shoulder,

Otherwise known as a pork butt,

Because pork has four shoulders and two of them are butts.

It's true. Look it up.

Narrator: The question is, will the world-record-breaking ball

Bounce harmlessly off the butt or penetrate with lethal force?

Time to turn some potential energy into some actual energy.

You ready?

I'm ready. Okay.

Short barrel, 300 p.S.I., lethality test

With a pork butt in three, two, one, go.

[ air cannon firing ]

Whoa. [ laughing ]

That was a blast... Literally.

[ laughing ]

But how did our porcine pal fare?

All right, let's look at the damage.

Ew.

Dude.

There's, like, flesh trauma

Going down an inch and a half into here.

That's impressive.

Adam: I must admit, if you had asked me beforehand,

I would've told you that I thought the ping-pong ball

Was going to bounce right off of the pig.

I thought the mass of the two objects was such

That the ball really wouldn't do that much damage.

I am shocked by how much damage it did.

Now, that thing actually penetrated.

That's ping-pong-ball-shaped.

That is a shocker.

That would hurt.

But I think we still need to call that this a non-lethal hit.

It did not penetrate all the way through the flesh

Or leave some gaping wound,

And barring some lucky hit, that is not a deadly hit.

This is a substantial flesh wound, but it ain't lethal.

[ air cannon firing ]

Narrator: Yep, despite the extreme air pressure

And a supersonic ball making the pig fly,

The impact did not mortally harm the ham.

So, final verdict?

A mach 1.4 ping-pong ball

Might just be the fastest ping-pong ball in history...

Extremely dangerous, but not lethal.

Not lethal at all. The myth is busted.

Busted, it is. Let's get out of here.