Original subtitles

On this episode of MythBusters... Hey, look at that!

Adam and Jamie investigate the science behind the candy and soda sensation

that's sweeping the Internet.

Like chemistry super sleuths, they bust the culprits behind the cola cascade.

No CO2, no foam.

And they can't resist using the gassy geyser for some MythBuster madness.

Cue dramatic music.

Then, envious of the candy and soda success, they go all out to find their

own magic combo of homemade mayhem.

And on top of all that, Cary Grant and Tori take on the tall tale that a

stamp can cause a helicopter to spiral out of control.

Are we not? If we're wrong about this, we're going to have a really bad day.

Who are the Mythbusters? Adam Savage.

I'm making a rocket out of meat.

And Jamie Heinemann. I'm so excited.

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

That's what I'm talking about.

Joining them, Carrie Byron. I'm a piñata.

Grant Imahara.

Don't say anything.

And Tori Bellacci.

Oh, yeah, totally.

They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

First up, the Mythbusters are going to have a blast.

All right, guys, I've got a fun little experiment for you to try out. I was

doing this photo shoot with FHM, and it seems to coincide with an Internet

phenomena of people taking two -liter bottles of soda and dropping chewy

into it for, boom, big explosives.

Yeah, I've seen that. It's all over the net. It creates some kind of geyser that

comes out the end of the soda bottle, right?

Yeah, and every time I've seen it on the web or on television, they've trot out

an expert to tell us why it happens, and all of their explanations are amazingly

different. None of them agree with each other.

So we're not going to test whether or not this occurs. No, we know that it

occurs. We're going to have to check out whether these various explanations are

correct, though. And which one is correct, if any.

Okay. It's a craze that was kicked off by our very own bubbly myth buster. Add

some Mentos to some Diet Coke and you get a cascade of well proportions.

But it's these guys, the E .P. Birds from Buckfield, Maine, that upped the

Using 101 bottles of Diet Coke, 523 Mentos, and the sort of choreography

normally only seen in Vegas.

They made the ultimate fizzy fountain.

But controversy rages as to why this reaction occurs.

And where there's controversy, the Mythbusters can't help but wade in.

So I guess it's up to us to inject a little science into the proceedings.

You mean like, is it something in the soda or is it something in the candy?

Exactly. But first, you know, I have to try this out for myself.

Yes, I do.

And try it out you shall.

With a scale marked out on the wall to gauge the height of his maiden flight,

Adam is ready for launch.

So apparently all I have to do is that, whoop, and drop him in.

Are you ready?

I've never tried this before.

Wow!

That was like ten...

The four Mentos are dropped in, and then, as reliably as old faithful, the

geyser erupts. That is cool.

I think we're going to have to try that a whole bunch more times.

It's a ton of fun, but the MythBusters mission is to find out exactly what's

going on inside that bottle. Hey, look at that!

Well, amid the chaos, it's clear that this foamy fountain has something to do

with the cola's fizziness.

And to find out more, it's over to our resident fountain of knowledge.

The gas component of this soda is CO2.

And we want to know what role it plays in this cascading effect that we see

we drop these candies in.

So the one way that I know of to figure this out is to actually remove

the gas.

And we should be able to do that by just agitating the soda until it fills up

this balloon.

And then once we've removed all of the gas, if we drop the candy in and we

get any reaction, we'll know that it was because of the gas.

Let's see what the candy does now.

Nada.

Not a thing. No CO2, no foam.

So carbonation is the first crucial ingredient on the cascade checklist.

But surely there's more to this Mentos mayhem.

What's up?

Well... We need to determine what else other than CO2 is at play here. If

anything. If anything. So this is plain soda water, and all it's got in it other

than water is CO2.

Well, and this is the Diet Cola, and it's got the whole bunch of other stuff.

if CO2 is the only factor, these two things should spur at the same height.

Yeah. All right, let's try them out.

Ready? Two, one.

Well, that's pretty clear. That's pretty clear. The diet cola, there's

definitely something more going on than just the content of CO2 in the candy.

Because the diet cola went like five or six times as high as the soda water.

So, CO2 is not the only culprit in the cola cascade.

The plot thickens.

You know what? I think it's time we concentrate on the soda now.

I agree. And, you know, we actually have a couple of questions to answer here.

One... is whether or not diet soda is actually the best performer. We just

been taking that on faith, but we should test as many sodas as we can get in our

hands on to really see if that's true.

And if it is true, what is it that's in the diet soda that makes it the best?

It's time for a SodaStream showdown. This bevy of beverages is about to

in the inaugural Soda Fountain Olympics.

First one up is sugared cola.

Three, two, one.

With a control of five mentos, regular Coke reaches one and a half feet.

Paltry compared to its diet counterpart.

Oh, that's a nice one. Ten feet. That was ten feet. That was nice.

Here's soda water. You watching?

I call that about three inches. There's a lot of interesting dynamics here that

I don't really understand, actually.

No, I don't either. Let's try the diet lemon -flavored soda.

So regular soda and diet soda lead to different cascade heights. But with the

same amount of gas in each bottle, it's clear that the speed of the reaction is

down to the specific ingredients in the diet coke. The question now is what are

these ingredients?

And now Tori, Carrie, and Grant are going to stamp their authority on

another myth.

We're hanging out in a hangar with a helicopter, a bunch of stamps, and the

Oakland Police Department. What are we doing here?

Well, we actually just got this myth off our fan site. And what they say is that

a simple postage stamp stuck on a rotary blade of a helicopter will unbalance

the helicopter and cause it to crash.

So according to our wonderful fans, if you stick a regular postage stamp on the

rotors of a helicopter, it can set off the finely balanced blade so much.

that the result is some airmail carnage.

Sounds like a bunch of fun. We've got our stamps.

We've got our helicopter. Let's go for it.

I don't think they're going to let us use their chopper both for insurance and

for safety reasons until we can show them that it's not going to hurt their

chopper. So I think we should probably start with some small -scale testing.

These things aren't cheap.

No.

So before risking cash and cash in this, The team is first going to wreak postal

pandemonium on something a little cheaper. I'll take that one and that

Yeah, and that one. Give us one of everything. And that one. Hovering

$2 ,000 mark, these remote control helis will be perfect to get this mitt off

the ground, provided that the team can learn how to fly them.

How hard is it to fly these? We tell customers that you're guaranteed that

you're going to crash.

That's a good guarantee.

Okay, great.

Because crashing is guaranteed, they're going to hone their heli skills on this

unbreakable trainer, which Paul makes look pretty easy.

You are nimble with that thing. But unfortunately, the same can't be said

Grant.

This heli's going belly up.

Okay, give me another day and a half. I think I got it.

Despite the hover bother, the team buys the trainer and a remote control version

of the Oakland's police helicopter, which, back at M5, Grant has to put

together.

This police chopper is an exact one -seventh scale model of its full -size

counterpart. So to test the stamp myth in miniature, the team also needs some

one -seventh scale stamps.

Okay. What we're going to do right now, we have a scale, and we're going to

measure to see how much a postage stamp weighs.

Because the whole myth is to see if, you know, the little bit of weight could

unbalance the helicopter and cause it to crash. Our first saboteur.

Yeah, this is the 45 -cent stamp.

We've got 0 .15 grams.

As well as the weigh -in, Carrie is also shrinking everything right down.

This is about the size of one -seventh of this. So that'll be about the scaled

version of the stamp that's going to go on our little helicopter.

So now all they have to do is get the scaled -down chopper airborne.

But that ain't going to be easy.

The analogy that I've heard is it's like trying to juggle a plate on top of the

end of a stick while, you know, rubbing your tummy.

It's that kind of fine balance control that you need.

to keep one of these things in the air.

But before testing their fine balance control on this, they're going to first

practice on the trainer toy. But liftoff, it ain't.

Jeez.

A little harder than it looks.

This is going to make small -scale experiments extremely hard if we can't

get the helicopter off the ground.

Yeah. With Tori failing to fly, remote control expert Grant takes the reins.

Look at the stance.

I like the stance.

But he's not accruing any flight time either.

Mayday, mayday.

With the model helicopter falling flat, this myth is struggling to even get off

the ground.

This is the candy and soda sensation that's sweeping the nation.

Inboxes across the world are gushing with these amazing choreographed

of froth.

But Adam and Jamie are on a mission to determine the science behind the sizzle.

Oh, that's a nice one. Ten feet.

They've confirmed Diet Coke is the king of Cascades. And now Adam must find

exactly which ingredients are at work.

I've got aspartame.

Armed with the constituents of Diet Coke, how's he going to use them?

The soda water is our test bed. It's our basic unit of measurement here. I will

be adding...

Each of these ingredients, one at a time, to individual bottles of this and

trying it out with the candy and seeing if I get a more vigorous response than

just the soda water alone.

If and when I do, I may find out that it's chemical D that provides the most

vigorous response and we can say, oh, there's your culprit.

That's the plan. And first up is A for aspartame, Diet Coke's artificial

sweetener.

Adam makes up a solution of the sugar substitute, adds it to the soda water.

and gets ready to drop in a Mentos.

There we go. Remember, in their earlier test, soda water plus Mentos equaled

three inches.

So what will happen with the sweetener added?

Sweet. The sweeteners made the cascade 20 times higher.

Now that's interesting.

That's a much more vigorous reaction than the soda water alone.

Aspartame is doing something to the water.

But what about the other main ingredients?

First, the acids.

But neither the citric acid nor the phosphoric acid excite any alchemy, or

that matter, atom.

Total bupkis in terms of reaction.

Then it's the preservative, potassium benzoate.

That in and of itself is a little bit of a reaction.

Let's see what happens when I add the candy.

The preservative also enhances the cascade.

It's almost an identical reaction to the aspirin.

Last up is the caffeine.

This is a couple of tablespoons of caffeine in solution, pure powdered

This is probably enough to kill you.

Very tough when you start to increase the concentration.

Again, the same kind of reaction.

Caffeine, potassium benzoate, and aspartame all had pretty much identical

reactions.

So, Adam and Jamie have isolated the key active ingredients in the Diet Coke.

Next, they're going to find out what the Mentos bring to the Cascade Carnival.

Carrie, Grant, and Tori are investigating a copter calamity. Can

postage stamp on the precisely engineered rotor blades do this?

The team is starting its myth -busting in miniature, but it's not going well.

Just pretend like the floor's not there.

And with test time approaching on Grant's deluxe model, they need a plan

This is a very expensive model, and people generally crash these the first

they fly them. And we actually want to get some good data from it. So we're

going to start having this helicopter completely tethered down.

We've securely fastened the helicopter to the table. And the reason is that we

want to actually see the blade deflection. We don't want the helicopter

getting lift and moving all over the place.

that postage stamp will deflect the blade and what effect that has. And to

this, they put a marked scale behind the chopper, which, when coupled with the

high -speed camera, will show them precisely how much wobble there is in

rotors. Throttle is good.

Ready? Go.

Okay, so this will be our baseline test, just stock blade, no additional weight.

Okay.

Grant cranks the speed up to level 5 and then cues the high -speed camera.

We're at speed, ready to capture.

And sure enough, without any added weight, the heli blades are in perfect

balance. They're rotating exactly on the level of the blue line in the

background. We just finished our baseline test.

We saw that our...

Blades are totally balanced.

Now what we're going to do is we're going to put on a 1 -7 scale post -it

and see what happens. The stamp, like the model heli, is 1 -7 normal size.

That's just 0 .02 grams.

Will it really be enough to cause the chopper to become a dropper?

It looks pretty good.

Yeah. The stamp doesn't look like it's having any effect.

No. And the high speed agrees.

With the stamp, the blades are just as balanced as they were without it. So

does this mean for the myth?

Based on our scale test with a scale -posted stamp and the closest thing that

can get in scale to a real helicopter, this myth is looking busted.

It may be looking busted, but the teens still want to find out exactly what it

takes to turn this heli into jelly.

So they're going to up the ante with the weight of 200 pounds.

I don't know if it's just my imagination, but it looks a little

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit wobbly.

It's hard to tell, though.

I mean, I don't see it going out of control.

No, definitely not.

Not destruction.

There sure ain't any destruction. And in fact, with this view, it's clear there

still isn't any rock or roll.

Adam and Jamie are trying to figure out the theory behind the chaos when Diet

Coke and Mentos meet.

Our super sleuths have found the ingredients in the soda that caused the

fountain to froth.

But what do the Mentos bring to the party?

Adam has checked out the Mint Mentos ingredients, and he's narrowed down a

suspect or two that may be of interest.

Gum Arabic and gelatin.

Let's pour in this gum arabic and see if it makes the water want to release more

CO2 faster.

And so it does.

Look at that.

I'd call that a reaction.

Sure enough, both of the ingredients cause bubbles to burst forth.

But there must be more to the Mentos magic than that.

The most common theory about what's going on in this reaction between the

and the soda is what's called nucleation.

Basically, the idea is that the...

The surface of the candy is covered with microscopic pits and lots of more

surface area than you can actually see. And each little pit, each little corner

provides what's called a nucleation site or a place where a carbon dioxide

bubble can form and escape.

Look at a Mentos close up and it's like the surface of the moon. And that might

be the candy key.

Drop one in cola and every tiny crater provides a site where a CO2 molecule can

change to gas.

Because Mentos are so pitted, the theory is that millions of CO2 bubbles are

formed in a very short space of time.

And because the candy sinks and this rapid release of gas happens at the

of the cola, you get that famous fountain.

To test this nucleation theory, they're going to start with a control.

One regular mint Mentos dropped in soda water.

And sure enough, it gets the bubbly party started.

Now, to do a comparison.

These two candies are made by the same manufacturer, and as far as I'm aware,

even using the same process.

But the colored version of this actually has a glazing over it. It's a wax

coating or a sealer that inhibits the nucleation process that the other one

achieves quite readily.

the shiniest surface should lower the nucleation sites, meaning less of an

immediate eruption.

That's not doing anything more than the wall of the plastic bottle itself.

Sure enough, with the smooth Mentos, there ain't no whiz with the fizz,

that nucleation is the prime mover on the active ingredient checklist.

And with all the culprits exposed, the Mythbusters can say they finally cracked

the case of the candy and cola cascade.

Did you guys come up with anything? What caused the reaction?

Yep, we sure did. And we also buffed everything that we've seen in the media

because not a single one of them came up with a complete explanation of what is

going on with the soda.

They all had a piece of the puzzle. In fact, it turns out that it's a

combination of most of the explanations we've read. The primary initiator of the

reaction is nucleation, the candy helping bubbles to form in the soda. But

turns out that the ingredients that make up the candy match perfectly with the

ingredients that make up the soda to create what's called a cascade effect,

whereby the soda wants to let go of all of its CO2 instantaneously. And that's

what makes the explosion happen.

But the fun ain't done yet.

In an attempt to put the power of the cascade to work, Jamie and Adam build a

COLA concept rocket.

Here's to a successful launch. You got it.

The rotor blades of a helicopter, even a scaled -down version, are so precisely

balanced that apparently the weight of a single postage stamp is enough to

render them catastrophically unstable.

Tori, Carrie, and Grant have been small -scale testing, and at least on this

helicopter, the myth is busted.

So now, they want to know what it does take to get that lethal instability.

I'd say we destroy it. This is why we can't have anything nice.

And surely the weight of 8 ,000 stamps will be enough to wreak the helicopter

havoc thereafter.

Guys who saw this are going to be watching the show just...

With the rotors rotating, it looks like the additional weight will lead to the

copter calamity they're looking for.

There we go.

It's on full throttle.

Yay! Right there!

Right there!

That was it!

That's what we're looking for.

Ain't that the truth.

It was 8 ,000 more stamps than the myth, but at last the guys get the chopper

disaster they wanted.

But this myth is far from over.

With the small -scale copter in pieces, it's time to return to the hangar to

test the myth on the real deal.

So, Rick, have you ever heard the myth that a postage stamp is enough to

unbalance a helicopter, potentially crash it? I have not heard that myth.

I do know that the blade system is very sensitive to items on the rotors, which

can include balloons, dust, paint. So it can affect the flight

characteristics of the aircraft.

If mere dust can unbalance this chopper, then a postage stamp might have an

effect after all.

To put this to the test, flight engineer Chad has rigged a series of sensors

that can detect the tiniest changes in the balance of the blades.

And what are the sensors telling you? Okay, well, this up here is called a

velocimeter.

It's in a lateral position, so it's going to measure vibrations laterally.

the main rotor mass is doing this, it's going to feel this lateral vibration.

And that's because of some imbalance in the blades. Correct.

To start the full -scale test, the team needs to get a stamp -free baseline.

Rick lifts the chopper into a hover, then spins her round. All the while,

computer is analyzing exactly how balanced the blades are without the

So, the copter has been calibrated. It's time for the moment of truth.

This is really the final test.

I mean, you can't beat having a real helicopter.

And what we're going to do is take a poster stamp and put it on the rotor

and see if that is enough to send it out of balance and possibly cause a

catastrophic crash.

A 45 -cent stamp versus a $1 .3 million machine.

It's a David and Goliath story that could leave the Mythbusters with a very

hefty repair bill.

I'm going to try one of these. Adam and Jamie have been conjuring up some Diet

Coke and Mentos magic.

Three, two, one.

Wow. They've carefully worked out exactly why these two products go

But now they want to launch onto a whole new level.

You know, based on everything I'm seeing with what we've done so far, I think we

could take this a step further and try and make a rocket out of this reaction.

Rockets are always fun. Let's do it.

Here it goes, big boom, Civil War rocket. Rockets and Mythbusters go

like pizza and pepperoni. The Confederate rocket was a blast.

And the salami missile was a fizzler.

But now their challenge is to convert an upward fountain into downward thrust.

With a rocket to build and nothing but Diet Coke, Mentos, and a bunch of

plumbing parts, the boys are in their element.

So we've designed this rocket to take full advantage of this cascading effect,

all of this energy being transmitted out of these bottles and straight down is

what we're looking for with a very simple, lightweight device.

Dead simple. And as Jamie will demonstrate for us, the PVC tubing

cola cascade from four bottles down through a central pipe.

It all comes out there.

But the clever part is a set of magnets holding the Mentos in the pipes until

Adam and Jamie are ready for launch.

And before you can say National Aeronautics and Space Administration,

-minus five seconds.

Here's to a successful launch. You got it. And three, two, one.

Ah, Houston, we have a problem.

That's not enough for a rocket.

Unfortunately, there are leaks, and the cola cascade doesn't produce enough

thrust to lift the weight of the piping and four bottles of cola. So it's back

to the drawing board.

And while Jamie goes to work lightening the load, Adam, for reasons known only

to himself, puts a bottle of Coke on the lathe. No prizes for guessing what

happens next.

Then that could happen, for instance.

I'm thinking he won't want to tell Jamie about this one. Cola probably isn't one

of the recommended lubricants for a lathe.

Don't tell Jamie, okay? This is a secret between us.

Luckily for Adam, Jamie's been busy working on a nozzle for a fleeker one

-bottle rocket. And now he's ready for a test.

Okay, let's go for it. Here we go. Three.

Two, one.

What are you smiling about?

It's another launch failure.

But the Mythbusters aren't going to give up without a fight.

Okay, ready?

Everybody set?

Three, two, one.

With liftoff falling flat again, it looks as if the Cola concept rocket has

and Jamie beaten, and desperation is setting in.

They've been unable to overcome the fact that there's not enough thrust from the

Cola cascade to get the weight of the bottle and soda airborne.

And Adam, for one, isn't taking defeat too well. It's time to change course

before he completely loses the plot.

Let's go for height.

So the next chapter in this crazy cascade escapade is a height challenge.

Since Carrie kicked it all off and these guys, the EP birds, raised the stakes,

the Internet has been abuzz with Diet Coke and Mentos Mania.

There's even an unofficial spout record of 18 feet. In an attempt to top the

record, Adam and Jamie are going head to head.

I hate competitions.

Yeah, when you lose.

Adams first with his attempted spurt into the record books. And to increase

pressure of the fountain's flow, he's making a nozzle.

Well, with a couple of extra minutes and a nice lathe and some aluminum, I did

what any boy would make.

What am I allowed to call it, a plasma sword?

Except instead of a limited beam of pure plasma, it's soda.

Yeah.

Not so much Yoda, but Soda.

Outside, and Adam is all set to use the force of the cola cascade to beat the

world record of 18 feet.

Three, two, one.

23 feet. It's a home run to start. Next, Jamie steps up to the plate.

They keep trying to get me to compete, and you know what? I don't like it. Like

Adam, Jamie simply uses a nozzle to give his spout more clout. The only problem

I see with this thing is that I've got to get it on there really quickly, or

going to get sprayed, along with everybody else around here.

So that's the trick. I've got to kind of like have three hands to operate this

thing.

That was sort of the misfire. The tube didn't load it straight down.

Not a great start from the beret one, but a reload later, our mustachioed

is back.

Well, there you go.

How high did that go?

23 feet.

It's an honorable draw, but the adrenaline of the competition has

to Jamie's head.

With a mouthful of Mentos and cola, it's not so much a gassy geyser as a gassy

geezer.

It's probably best that you don't try this at home.

You don't want to see me do it again?

Next, and the Mythbusters are going to join forces and get some real height on

this puppy. And they must be confident because they extend the scale to 30

This time they're using Adam's nozzle. And Jamie's gone savory in an attempt to

ramp things up. I have a couple of issues with using candy for this. And

first one is real simple.

The candies might well clog the nozzle that we use because we may find that we

have to choke down this.

this outlet on the bottle to such a degree that it's smaller than the

The second thing is that I figure I can use the salt because my understanding

of the chemistry involved is that it will cause a better cascade. This

of CO2 is going to happen a lot more rapidly and vigorously with the salt.

not to mention that these nucleation sites that we keep talking about, you

salt's just loaded with them.

So I'm going to try salt, and we'll see whether it performs better than the

candy.

So it's salt and Diet Coke.

Will it beat the new 23 -foot mark?

In 3, 2, 1.

Oh!

What?

Oh,

my God.

I actually could have held it. It blew it out of my hands for a second, so I

think I can probably get another foot or two.

You hit 29 feet.

Well, I could probably make it to 30 if you want to have another go. Another go?

You betcha. Three, two, one.

Oh!

Dude! They try various combinations of candies, salt, and the other enhancers

they've unearthed over the course of their investigation.

Before they get everything just right with Nucleation Sight Rich Rock Salt.

All right, we're ready up here.

Dude! That went a full four feet above the meter.

31.

34 feet, dude.

That is not shabby.

34 feet. It's the new benchmark to beat.

Let's call it a day. All right. I think we've set a fine high watermark.

It's all with salt.

Back with the Helly's Angels, and the team has posted a stamp on the blades of

this chopper. And they're about to find out if it's enough to catastrophically

unbalance the rotors.

I mean, if you think about it, this helicopter costs $1 .3 million, and

willing for us to go and mess around with it. If they're not worried about

don't think anything's going to go wrong.

The game's not over. They're not up in the air yet.

True.

The pressure's on pilot Rick.

With a million -dollar chopper in his hands, one false move could break the

MythBusters budget.

But with the heli hovering happily, this myth is sinking fast.

I think we might be busted here!

The chopper has survived intact.

So, did the stamp make any difference at all?

So, Chad, what did the computer come up with?

Well, with our first flight, without the poster stamp applied,

With my measurements, our hover lateral, which is the side -to -side motion,

measured a .173 inches per second, or IPS. So that's no stamp.

That is no stamp. Okay. Okay. With the application of the stamp, hover lateral

was a .174.

So it only changed one one -thousandth of an IPS, which is actually

minuscule. Because right now I would let this helicopter go with no problem at

.174. All right, thanks.

The stamp did next to nothing.

It's looking like this myth should be returned to sender.

But the team do want to try one last thing.

Now, for those of you out there who are helicopter enthusiasts, I know you've

been thinking all through the show, they're only concentrating on the main

rotor. What about the tail boom? Well, today, we're going to try the tail boom,

too. It's the twist in the tail. One stamp on the main rotor, and now one on

back one, too.

And there's no hover test for this one. Instead, the team is going for broke.

Are we nuts? We got stamps on the top rotor and the tail rotor.

Here's the thing. If we're wrong about this, we're going to have a really bad

day.

Except for Grant, the team has put all its eggs in one basket to bust this myth

once and for all.

Let's hope none get cracked.

They're up and away, and it's so far so good.

Even with stamps on the main rotor and the tail boom, the chopper's flying

straight as an arrow.

So cool.

Gee, it feels like those postage stamps are really helping the flight.

Carrie stays nervous, but this bird ain't going to drop out of the sky.

Wait, are we going back?

Yeah. I'm not ready to go back.

Oh,

he's going to go for the slide right in.

That is how you park it.

Touchdown. The team is back in one piece, which means it's time to wrap up

postal parable.

Hey, Rick, well, we've been out in your helicopter today. We've run a bunch of

tests, posted a stamp on a helicopter blade.

What do you think?

It had no effect.

I felt no appreciable difference.

Definitely busted.

Definitely busted.

But viewers, keep sending in those stories, because that was a fun one.

So what do you want to do now?

Well, I don't think we're done with candy and soda by a long shot. I mean,

thing is positively viral. It's everywhere.

I think that what we could add to this is by...

looking for the next big thing.

Well, I've got a ton of stuff that I get every day on e -mail from people about

all sorts of things that they can do with crap they've got laying around

house. So do I.

So Adam and Jamie have got explosion envy. And to soothe their egos, they're

going to weave some homemade magic of their own, as only the Mythbusters can.

Armed with science, which they're not afraid to use, they have to follow three

simple rules.

It must be safe, use only household ingredients, and, of course, it has to

spectacular.

First out of the blocks is Adam, and he's intending to set the World Wide Web

alight with a towering inferno of soapy water?

We're trying something an old friend of mine.

gave me which is that if you bubble methane up through soapy water you'll

with a column of bubbles because the methane is lighter than air it helps

the column and keep it stable and then that column gets a certain height

high you want it you can light it the whole thing goes whoo in flame and i

wanted to try it from the very second he told me that this might be possible And

with a garden sprinkler on the end of a methane hose in a bucket of foamy water,

it's not long before he has his very own bus of bubbles. I have been a bubble

sculptor for about 20 years.

The bubbles are a very fine way to sculpt the real world in a modular form

because they are transient.

They are not going to last very long.

They help us remember how tenuous our grip on reality really is.

That is why I sculpted the bubbles.

Their first attempt is a little lopsided, but Adam is poised to feed the

his pyromania.

That is so cool. That's water and it's burning.

And now it's gone. Second time around, and for Jamie and Adam, it's onwards and

upwards. The bubbles are sticking together nicely, and the lighter -than

methane is pulling the flammable column skyward. At first, it's like, okay, it

looks like it's working, but then it starts to get out into the area that

physics. Not only is it getting more fascinating, but it's increasing in

funniness every minute.

Okay, you ready? I don't want to lose it.

Wow!

That was like a movie.

That was like the beast dying at the end of the movie.

Well,

I don't see anything on fire up there.

That was really cool.

I have to say, for my money, that rivals the Canyon Soda.

However, the canyon soda, that's safe enough for any four -year -old to do. I

mean, at least they're safe from everything except getting yelled at by

parents. This one, it's not safe pretty much for any of our viewers.

We've done it. Now you don't have to.

Next up, in the household histrionics, Jamie is getting his hands dirty.

What you doing?

Come down and check it out.

I'm making a smoke bomb.

Nice.

I've found a recipe on the net, which I'm anxious to try. I've had years of

using smoke bombs for effects, but I've always purchased them. So now I'm going

to figure out what really goes into them.

With this saltpeter and sugar, that's it?

You make it like a peanut, right? You know, you get it kind of, get the sugar

hot and the saltpeter hot until it's like molasses -y.

You can put match heads in it, apparently, so that when it cools,

kind of like skews.

This is a replica of the cupcake that Jamie got when he was nine.

It's the old Heinemann smoke cookie recipe.

And it has something to do with the Heinemann transition into manhood.

In an attempt to make a point about his manhood, Adam whips up a larger batch,

but finds out quickly that when cooking with flammable ingredients, it can get

hot in the kitchen.

So that's what can happen.

And that's why you don't try this at home.

So, now that Adam's been banned from the kitchen, all they have to do is wait

for Jamie's smoke bomb cupcake to set.

Let's come back when they're done.

Inspired by the Diet Coke and Mentos phenomenon, Adam and Jamie are trying to

find their very own recipe for homemade fun.

But so far, their experiments have been too hot for any normal household to

handle. Now, Adam's going to find out if the smoke bomb cupcake he and Jamie

baked earlier will rival Diet Coke and Mentos for spectacular fun and satisfy

his desire for revenge.

I think you all remember when Carrie and Tori decided that it would be a good

idea to shock me during Baghdad Battery.

Oh!

Do you feel God?

Well, all I got to say is payback is rough.

They say revenge is a dish best served cold.

That's a good cup of smoke.

All right, let's do regular black powder. What is that?

Wait.

Is it a hockey puck?

It's a flaming hockey puck.

In the search for the next big thing and in the search for some payback, the

smoke bomb failed miserably on both counts.

That's not the kind of thing that is actually spectacular to watch, nor is it

the type of thing that scared Grant Torrey and Carrie.

Get out of our shop!

So the smoke bomb cupcake was nothing but hot air.

Okay! But the next test could jumpstart things.

A hydrogen and potato chip bomb?

The trick is that you poke a hole in the bottom and you poke a hole in the top

and you pump in some hydrogen, some gaseous hydrogen.

And if you do it just right and you light the top, at a certain point when

reaches that golden, you know, air to fuel mixture, then the whole thing blows

up and it will remove the tin without even disturbing the chips.

While they get set up, let's go over to Adam, who can tell us a bit more about

how it works.

You've got a can you've filled with hydrogen, which is lighter than air,

helium, so it wants to rot.

You provide a little hole for it to rise through, and when you put a match over

that hole, the hydrogen, mixing with oxygen at the exit, create a little

Now, it's burning hydrogen out of the can, which means it's pulling oxygen in

from underneath.

When the correct air -fuel mixture in the can is reached, the flame up top

down inside, and boom! Blows that can right off the chip.

So, let's see it in action.

All set?

Yep.

Okay.

That was fast!

Are you okay?

Yeah, I'm fine.

I didn't wear air protection, though.

You said I didn't need it. That's what I was told. It was fast and loud enough

to give Jamie the shock of his life.

But despite losing an eardrum or two, they can't wait to do it again.

This time with ear protection and a remote control ignition system,

known as a taper on a stick.

That would be a life, wouldn't it?

You heard it, right? Yeah, I think so.

Adam and Jamie are uncertain because the hydrogen burns with a clear white

flame. But burning it is. It's pulling oxygen through the bottom of the can.

And when the mixture is just so... Wow!

That is very cool.

Very cool. But Adam isn't satisfied yet.

I'm going to try another to see if I can get the chips to stand straight up.

No! Oh, no!

Close, but no cigar.

The question now is, does it measure up to the candy and soda sensation? In

comparison with the candy and soda criteria for spectacular explosion, I'd

it comes off fantastically in one sense and terrible in the other.

Hydrogen, pure gaseous hydrogen, isn't something that everybody has, nor is it

something that's safe to play with.

However, the result...

The blasting the can off of a stack of chips and leaving them almost intact, I

mean, it just makes me smile just thinking about it.

After a time out to think about ear protection protocol, Adam is ready for

next test.

This is what I've known about for a long time. It's called dry ice bomb. Years

ago, I went to an ice company to pick up some stuff for Jamie.

It was like 20 years ago, 15 years ago. And it said, you cannot buy dry ice

unless you're 18. And I thought...

Why would that be? And so I said, hey, how come you can't buy dry ice unless

you're over 18? And the guy goes, oh, because you can stick it in a two liter

bottle and make a huge bomb out of it.

Blows up and it like set car alarms off across the street. It's really cool.

And I was thinking, you're new here, aren't you?

Since then, I have always wanted to try it.

So apparently with nothing more than a 2 -liter soda bottle and some dry ice,

there's some big boom fun to be had.

But Adam is slightly concerned with safety on this one.

Look at it this way. I'm crazy, and even I'm putting on a massive amount of

padding to do this one.

Oh, yeah, the codpiece.

Meanwhile, Jamie is working on the dry ice.

Cutting the dry ice up because we need to fit it into the neck of the bottle.

Once it's in there, we're going to add water to it, which has the amazing

of melting the ice really quickly. It turns it all into gas, and all that gas

has to go somewhere.

So, add a little water to the dry ice in the bottle, and the dry ice turns into

CO2 gas. And with the lid secured, Adam and Jamie have a pressure vessel on

their hands.

Now, it's just a matter of...

Time. Cue dramatic music.

It's going to go any second, I swear.

They're frosty people.

Still going to blow.

It's kind of like watching the grass grow, except there's an explosion at the

end of it.

Wow!

Dude! That is intensely loud.

I've got to say that's louder than a gunshot.

Now you see it?

Now you don't.

And what was a plastic soda bottle is now a million pieces of twisted

That is amazing. That's one of those things that is, you know, it doesn't

like much, but it's such a shockwave that, you know, I can't

imagine this killing you, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it when it

goes off.

It would be a hell of a lot of trauma.

You would definitely lose your hearing if you were anywhere near it.

Well, you know, this is a lot of fun, but I don't think anything we came up

came close to the candy and soda. I mean, it is one of the most perfect

tricks I've ever seen. Not only is it spectacular, not only is it totally

but everything you need to do it, you can get at literally any store there is.

Yeah, we kind of cheated a little bit.

Not everything we used was.

household, per se.

Yeah, I have no doubt that the very morning after this episode airs, you and

will have thousands of suggestions of other new things to try, and maybe

another episode, but I think we can put this one to bed and go home.

Okay.