Original subtitles

On this episode of Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie are all smiles as they tackle a

myth that's massive.

That's just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. They're getting ready to

unleash the biggest boom in Mythbusters history.

Now he's off the ground.

Did a World War II airman's survival fall from 20 ,000 feet because an

on the ground cushioned his landing?

Jamie wants a big boom. Then Carrie Grant and Tori turn the spotlight.

On the lights on or off, men, as they find out how to leave you with a lighter

electricity bill.

A little sugar in the coffee this morning?

You are the Mythbusters.

Adam Savage.

It's all over my head, man.

And Jamie Heineman. Gets me all worked up just looking at it.

Between them, more than 30 years special effects experience.

That was heavy.

Joining them.

Grant Imahara. Go get him, boy.

Tori Villeci.

Somebody order some exploding pants.

And Carrie Byron. Oh, God.

They don't just tell the myths.

They put them to the test.

When it comes to explosions, the Mythbusters are king.

They've turned toilets torpedo.

tried a spot of painting and detonating.

And, of course, they blew a cement truck to kingdom come.

But that's all in the past, because now Adam and Jamie are about to plan the

biggest explosion in MythBusters history.

There's nothing like starting with a bang.

Well.

Calaveras County says it's okay.

The quarry says it's okay. The police department and the bomb squad says it's

okay. Can we blow this thing up?

No. We have to tell a whole story first, like always.

And this one begins with a fan who wrote us about a story they read on a

calendar hanging in their house. A World War II gunner fell from a plane without

a parachute, fell 22 ,000 feet into the glass roof of a French train station. At

the very moment a bomb went off in that train station, cushioning his fall and

allowed him to survive.

It's a tall tale from World War II.

Cruising at 22 ,000 feet, an unfortunate airman fell out of the gun turret of

his plane.

Without a parachute, the prospect of a soft landing looked awfully hard.

But as he neared the ground, a 1 ,000 -pound bomb blew up in a train station

beneath him and sent out a shockwave that actually cushioned his fall.

It's an explosive story that for Adam and Jamie begins with a trip to an

aviation museum.

Well, the guy is supposed to have fallen out of a B -17 bomber. And here at the

Castle Air Museum, they've got one for us to look at. It seems like a fine

to start. Now, we've got a myth that involves one of these planes. It

turret gunner who got shot out of the plane at 22 ,000 feet.

without a chute and survived because he hit the roof of a train station at the

very moment a bomb was going off in that train station and the shockwave of the

bomb cushioned his fall and allowed him to live.

Have you heard that? I have heard instances or one instance where a gunner

into a snowbank, which was about, I think, 19 ,000 or 20 ,000 feet, and came

of it with a broken limb. But I have not heard this story.

Although Joe hasn't heard of our myth, there's one part of it that's definitely

true.

B -17 ball gunners did not wear parachutes, and the reason is obvious.

You can see how confining that is.

So that's why they don't wear parachutes.

Exactly. Dude, that is messed up. Right. And hanging under this aircraft at

several thousand feet. Your target practice.

Basically. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God, indeed.

Without a parachute, the airman in the midst sure would have plummeted. But

could a thousand -pound explosion in a French train station really have saved

him? It's time to get a myth busted. But back at the shop, Adam's already having

doubts.

I am starting to get worried about this one.

22 ,000 foot fall is shaping up to be the biggest myth we have ever done.

Yeah, we really, really need to be prepared for this. So, we need your

help.

We want to focus on the large -scale experiment, and we want you guys to do

bench tests for us, the small -scale experiments.

Aye, aye, Captain. What do you need?

Well, I want you to start with car airbags. It seems to me the best...

potential analog test bed. They're easy to get, easy to set off, and they might

really be able to demonstrate that an explosion can cause deceleration in

something heading towards it. It's going to be fun.

So to blast off with this myth, Carrie and Tori are going to find out if a

falling lead weight can be slowed down by an explosive charge from a car

I've set up a drop rig. Basically, it's just a quick release and a pull string.

And here I have a lead weight with my G -Shock stickers on it that go up to 100

Gs. And I'm going to do a quick test just to see how violent a fall this is

going to be. This is how it works. We have a little glass tube inside here.

inside that is another little glass tube filled with a red dye.

This is basically calibrated so that once...

the shock watch sticker reaches a certain deceleration, the tube inside

break and turn the outside tube red. So if you get a red mark, then you know

that it's reached 100 Gs, 50 Gs, 75 Gs.

That's the theory. But before using any explosives, Carrie must first calibrate

the shock watches. And a simple drop test should do just that.

Three, two, one.

Let's see what we got.

So it looks like it broke two of them. Only two?

Yeah. Wow.

So it's between 75 and 100 Gs.

So without the bang, both the 50 and 75 G watches triggered.

That means that now the question is, will an airbag explosive decelerate the

ball so much that these shock stickers stay intact?

So now that I've got my ball all redressed with new shock watch stickers,

next step is to drop the lead weight directly onto just the pyrotechnic, no

enclosure. We want to see what kind of deceleration you can get from just the

blast. To find out, Torrey first removes the airbag bag from the pyrotechnic

charge.

There's a penny in here.

I guess they put that in there for good luck.

And once that's done, our dynamic duo put it inside a miniature house to

represent the train station of the myth.

We've taken the pyrotechnic out of the airbag rig. We've placed it inside of

this little Benjamin Franklin house, and hopefully Torrey's timing will be

impeccable. He will set off the pyrotechnic at the exact same time that

the string, and everything will work out beautifully, and the whole myth will be

proof of concept right here.

You know there'll be trouble when it all sounds so easy.

How are we going to time this?

I'm just going to watch it, the ball fall, and at the point where I think...

I should ignite the airbag. That's when I'm going to do it. I mean, for this to

even remotely work, it's all about the timing. So that's why I'm doing it by

eye.

It's very crucial that I do it by eye. With a plan as concrete as that, what

could possibly go wrong?

Ready? In three, two, one.

Oh, what the heck is that? And now it's too sensitive.

You went three in the phone. No, it's...

Saboteur. It seems like Carrie has dropped the ball.

Let's try that again. In three, two, one.

That was a delayed reaction.

But this time, it was Tori who balls things up. In three, two, one.

Take three doesn't go much better.

In three, two, one.

Oh, it might be a dud, huh?

And after the fourth dropout, it's looking like the team need a plan B.

In 22 ,000 -foot fall, the Mythbusters are testing whether a turret gunner who

plummeted from his plane without a parachute was really saved by a massive

explosion on the ground that cushioned his fall.

To put this to the test, Carrie and Tori have been trying to see if a small

explosive can decelerate a falling lead ball.

But it's not exactly gone to plan.

And in the meantime, Adam and Jamie need to get on with the big -scale plans.

Well, the small -scale experiment is underway.

Next, we have to tackle the big scale.

Yeah, we've got a lot ahead of us. We've got to do the train station, the bomb.

We've got to replicate our airman and his 22 ,000 -foot fall.

Where do you want to start?

There's such a shopping list for this myth that the boys don't know where to

begin. They need a plane to bail out of, an airman to plummet without a

parachute, a train station for him to fall into, and a huge bomb to blow up.

Let's start with the station.

Our airman fell into a French train station with a glass roof.

And those aren't that common in California, so we have to build our own.

The goal is to use a bunch of steel and two -foot -by -two -foot panes of glass.

And I've designed something that's got some arches. It feels kind of like the

right thing.

And it should give us a good idea of whether the explosion or the glass or

even the steel structure actually broke its ball.

Adam may have designed it, but it's Jamie and Jess that get to build it. And

with welding skills like this, it's not long before the station frame begins to

look très magnifique.

Those things seem about right, so I think we're good to lock it down. Which

gives Adam an excuse to move on to myth shopping list number two, the bomb.

The original bomb that the myth involves is a 1 ,000 -pound bomb whose casing

weighs on the order of several hundred pounds.

That's just the casing alone without the explosives.

So we wanted a metal casing that was as heavy as possible, and this actually

fits the bill perfectly for us. This started out as the charamer for the

special.

Then morphed into the XMB for exploding hair cream.

Dude, that was a hell of a result. That was. Wow.

Became the steam cannon.

Yeah! And now its final task will be...

It's a bomb casing for us for 22 ,000 foot fall.

This steel tube has had a series of cameo appearances on Mythbusters, but

for much longer. As Adam converts it into a casing for a 1 ,000 -pound bomb,

days are numbered.

So we'll need six pieces of that.

With the casing and the train station running on time, now the boys just need

B -17 bomber and an airman.

But that's not going to be so easy.

Two. In terms of dropping our airmen, we can't drop them from 22 ,000 feet

because, well, number one, we can't get any aircraft to fly over an explosion no

matter how high they are. And we can't aim from that height and make them hit

such a tiny target.

Well, why don't we use balloons? I mean, we've lifted you with a balloon before.

Perfect. I'll tell you what.

All we need is to get him up to 120 miles an hour. That's a human's terminal

velocity. We know that from umpteen myths we've done about people falling.

So I'll figure out exactly how high he has to fall from in order to reach 120

miles per hour.

We'll just fly the balloons that high. The key to this myth is terminal

velocity, the maximum speed at which an object can fall.

It's reached when gravity is matched by the force of wind resistance, which for

humans works out at around 120 miles an hour.

So all Adam has to do is work out the minimum drop height required to reach

magic number.

Basically, he's got to fall for five and a half seconds to reach 120 miles per

hour. And that puts him at 487 feet in the air. That's totally doable.

All things considered, it's the cheapest, it's the most practical way to

I can't see anything better. Yeah. So let's do it. All right.

So that's the plan. Instead of a B -17 bomber at 22 ,000 feet, they'll drop

Buster from some weather balloons at 500 feet, just enough for him to reach

terminal velocity as he lands in the exploding train station.

And when it comes to working with weather balloons, Adam is the expert bar

After all, in only the third episode of MythBusters, it was our very own Mr.

Savage who sailed to new heights in a lawn chair complete with beer in hand.

Cheers.

Now, these are meant to normally be filled to between 6 and 8 feet, but they

have a bursting diameter of 23 feet. I'm actually going to go somewhere in

between, filling them to probably about 10 or 12 feet, which means hopefully

it'll take maybe 10 to raise our hero and all of his commensurate equipment

above our glass roof.

So with the balloons checked off, Adam and Jamie have almost all they need to

put this myth to the test.

The only thing missing is the results from Tori and Carrie's small -scale

experiment.

And back at M7, it seems that everything is finally ready to see if a small

explosion can decelerate a falling lead ball.

And Tori's about to add the finishing touch.

What I have here is a piece of 16th -inch glass.

And since the myth talks about the man falling through a glass roof, we

why don't we use a piece of glass? So what we're going to do is we're going to

lay this on top of...

the explosion, drop the ball into this and see if, you know, this breaks the

fall. With the glass roof in place, it's the perfect small -scale representation

of the myth.

But will the ball, playing the role of the airman, slow down at all?

If I can time it right, hopefully when the ball just touches the glass, I'll

off the airbag and break the fall of the ball.

Well, okay, considering we're going to be blowing up a sheet of glass, it's

probably a good idea if we...

Do ourselves a little bit of protection.

In three, two, one.

Direction. Did the bomb go off? Yeah. That was a good one.

At last, the airbag explosive detonate, and with perfect timing.

Mere moments before the ball touches the glass, the explosion is triggered,

spraying glass shards far and wide.

Adding the glass actually seemed to do more harm than it did good because it

seemed to rip all the shock watches off the ball. So explosion and glass, that

doesn't seem to be a good combination right now. With the shock watches torn

off, it's impossible to tell whether the ball slowed down.

So to find out, they're going to drop the ball again onto another pane of

But this time, there will be no explosion.

Then, by comparing both high speeds, they should be able to see whether the

falls at the same rate on each test.

Next, what we're going to do, we're going to drop the ball again into the

no explosion this time, and just see how that decelerates the ball.

In three, two, one.

That looks like the sticker stayed.

There's more glass shards than an accident at a chandelier factory.

But what happened to the ball's speed?

Well, side by side, it's clear that the explosion did very little.

The balls fall virtually the same in each head, and that's got Carrie ready

make some early conclusions.

At this point, based on what we've seen and done, the myth of the gunner

falling 22 ,000 feet, landing on top of a glass -roofed train station at the

exact same moment that a bomb goes off during World War II.

I can pretty much, for myself, definitively say it's busted.

If I was going to fall on a glass roof, I would not want a bomb going off

underneath it. We are still going to have to take this to the full scale.

Why?

Because it's going to be frickin' cool.

Well, Kerry, we're at a point with the large -scale build that we could use the

information that you've gotten from your small -scale testing. What do you got?

You know, it's still a little dubious, because you've got to think about the

fact that the shock wave, it's going at you at 25 ,000 feet per second. You're

falling at 176 feet per second. And when you hit, you know, it's not exactly an

equal and opposite reaction. So what do you think?

Also, you've got to consider that there's glass shrapnel flying

You know, look, I think these guys did a great job. We know that the devil is

always in the details in the scaling.

I'm starting to believe from the research we got that this guy did

a true story.

We just don't know how. And there may be something that we're missing in the

small -scale experiments that will pick up when we do this full -size. We have

to continue doing this full -size.

I wish you all the luck in the world with this one.

Carrie, Tori, and Grant are about to test a household myth with the flick of

switch. Do you really save on energy and your electricity bill if you leave your

lights on permanently rather than turn them on and off throughout the day?

Now this is a myth that can divide a household.

Let's take our little family for instance.

Anybody notice that Jamie follows you around the shop flipping off lights

you leave just to save energy?

It's really, really annoying.

So the idea here, I guess, is will you save on energy and bills if you leave

lights continually on rather than flipping them off every time you leave

room? Yeah, actually, some people believe that the startup energy usage is

high, it's better to leave the lights on all the time.

Finally, everything was ready for the turning of the main switch on the

board.

Ever since the invention of the first electric light bulb in the 1800s, people

have continually proposed that to save money, you should actually leave your

lights on, even if you don't need them.

Decades down the line, and it's time for the MythBusters to find the truth.

All right, so how are we going to test this one? I think we should measure the

amount of energy consumed when you turn the light on, start up, and compare that

to the amount of energy consumed over a period of time.

So they call that steady state.

Yeah, that's cool. That way we can figure out if Jamie's actually saving

money flipping on and off the light.

Yeah. So the team will finally shed some light on a myth that's been around

since the end of the Dark Age.

But first, they need to do some shopping, which will highlight another

How many Mythbusters does it take to buy a light bulb?

My name's Mark. Carrie. Hi, Carrie.

Grant. Hi, Grant. How you doing, Tori? Hi, Tori.

Okay, Mark, so the myth is...

Is it better to leave your lights on or turn them off in order to save energy,

increase the lifespan of your light bulbs, that sort of thing? The optimum

energy efficiency is simply turning your lights on.

Well, you heard it from the professional, myth busted.

I think we're done. This is the shortest myth ever, right? Hey, thanks, Mark.

Mark may think this myth is all hot air, but the team hasn't come this far to

give up without a fight.

Heavily laden with a selection of the most common household light bulbs, it's

back to base to turn the spotlight on this man.

Well, first up, we're going to wire up a set of lights of several different

varieties and measure their power consumption.

And we're interested in three periods.

First, power consumption during startup.

Second, during maintenance, while it's sort of on.

And then finally, during shutdown.

That's the plan.

The only problem is that electronics whiz kid Grant may be losing his spark

electronics.

Well, apparently there is a rumor going around that I'm getting a little tired

of doing all these electronic stories.

So perhaps it's time for me to pass on my knowledge to an apprentice.

Someone who could, you know, just step into that role whenever we need that.

And, oh, I think...

I think Carrie is showing some interest in that.

Carrie's as keen as a bean to become Grant's apprentice.

And first up is wiring 101.

The hot wire is 120 volts above ground.

The hot wire is the one that will kill you, so don't touch the hot wire. These

will float.

These will melt. This will kill you. This is great.

You have no idea how dangerous my world was.

With Carrie wired about the danger, she helps carefully rig up all the lights

the team bought earlier, including Grant's favorite.

That is wacky. If anything was going to rekindle his interest in electronics,

it's this.

A little sugar in the coffee this morning?

I just love electronics.

In 22 ,000 -foot fall, Adam and Jamie are having a blast.

Can the shockwave from a massive bomb cushion the fall of a plummeting person?

To detonate an answer, they've come to a quarry in Southern California.

But it's only just dawned on them that there's an awful lot to do.

Well, we've got to build our train station out here, pretty much right

standing.

Then we've got to lay out all the rigging hardware and launch hardware for

helium balloon and the drop rig.

Then we've got to meet with our bomb techs and pretty much hopefully, if

everything gets done correctly, fill the balloons with helium, get the dummy up

in the air, get in place, and blow this thing to smithereens.

Blow this thing to smithereens and how?

In the original myth, an airman fell 22 ,000 feet into an exploding train

station and survived.

But to test this, the Mythbusters have made some alterations.

They're replacing the plane with some helium balloons.

The airman with Buster and the 22 ,000 feet with 500.

Buster will fall down a guide wire into the train station just as a 1 ,000

-pound bomb goes ballistic.

That's a bomb. The bomb casing's good to go, but they won't put the explosives

in until everything else is ready.

Starting with the replica French train station.

There we go.

There's another one.

But with 54 panes of glass, there's a real risk that when the bomb goes boom,

this will turn into the house of flying daggers, something which Jamie is rather

upset about.

The only bad thing about this is it actually is quite nice.

It's, you know, we got the little... kind of radiating spines, and it's

but it's going to go away pretty soon.

While Jamie's feeling sad about the train station's imminent demise, Buster

feeling overjoyed because he's had a last -minute reprieve.

So Buster is not our testimony on this one.

The Carrie, Tori, and Grant actually have made one out of ballistic material,

and his name is Ked, as in Bus Ked.

Or as in Exploit Ted, Detonate Ted, and Annihilate Ted.

And to help Ted assume the role of turret gunner, he's been squeezed into a

bot. What happened to his head?

Well, it got broken up because they put him in... Because he's too tall for the

bot. He's too tall for the bot.

We'll see whether he starts to sag in the noonday heat.

With the temperature already a mind -melting 115 degrees, sagging in the

heat is about all that Adam and Jamie can do, too.

Well, look, everything's pretty much done. The train station's done. The bomb

laid. The guy wire positions are staked out.

You're sounding pretty tired. Are you all right? I'm exhausted, man. It's like

115 degrees out here. I'd like to go and come back like an hour before dawn

tomorrow to set this thing off.

Sure. Yeah? Fresh pot of coffee.

This thing won't be so hot that it's going to go off when we load the

in it. Exactly.

All right, let's get out of here. All right.

Carrie, Grant, and Tori are turning the spotlight on a myth that's divided

households for decades.

To save money, is it really better to leave your lights on and never turn them

off?

The theory is that the energy required on startup is so great that it's better

to turn your lights on once and then leave them on forever.

To find out if this is true, the team has made a circuit that contains the

common household light bulbs.

And now it's time to get some data.

So now we're getting down to the very serious part of the story. This is the

part of the story where we're actually going to measure how much power each of

these light bulbs is going to draw.

first during the startup and then during the running time and, of course, during

the shutdown.

And to determine the power consumption, electronics guru Grant has the perfect

gadget.

So in order to measure how much power each of these lamps is consuming, we

this. which is called a kilowatt. And basically it's available at any hardware

store. And what you do is plug in your appliance or, in our case, the lamp,

this, and it will measure over a time period how much electricity you're

So using Grant's kilowatt, the first step in this myth is to work out how

energy each of the bulbs uses when left on for an hour.

Oh, yeah.

And to help the team remember that time's up, Grant's even rigged an alarm.

60 minutes on the clock.

That's going to count up to that.

As soon as that happens, the bell's going to ring. And we'll know to come

running, take down the measurement, and reset it for the next one.

And first up is one of the most common lights of all, the compact fluorescent

ball. And an hour later...

Well, the alarm worked, but how did the bulb do?

0 .1 kilowatt hour.

Yeah, you can... This one's 0 .1 kilowatt hour.

Sorry, 0 .01 kilowatt hour. Okay. So in terms of data, it's one bulb down,

five to go.

Okay, so next one, halogen light. Here we go.

60 minutes. Go!

See you guys in an hour. All right.

The next five tests pass by at light speed as the team puts incandescent

fluorescent tubes, LEDs, halogens, and metal halides to the test.

And after an enlightening afternoon, they have all the data they could ever

need. Great.

Over the course of an hour, all six bulbs were surprisingly efficient.

So if the startup energy surge is as high as the myth says, then it may well

better to leave your lights on permanently.

But before testing that, Grant has a burning childhood ambition that he wants

fulfill. And he's very excited.

Here at the Livermore Fire Department, they have a light bulb that's been

burning for 105 years.

I really want to see this.

Only you could be really excited about seeing a light bulb. It is. I can't even

get a light bulb to burn for 105 days.

Hey, good morning. How are you? Good. I'm Grant. Hi, Grant. I'm Chief Jeff

Zolfarelli. Welcome to the LPFD. Hi, nice to meet you. Carrie, how do you do?

hear you have a light bulb that's been burning for 105 years.

Actually, it's now up to 106 years. That's correct. Your information is

that the light right there?

That is our light.

There she hangs as she is.

Ah, cool.

The light has a webcam and it has a gadget. The light has a webcam.

Yes, it does. That's how you know that it never goes off. It's got its own

dedicated camera.

And that's how she's been for about the last 105, 106 years.

Cool.

It's amazing.

106 years, and it's still bright as a button. And Grant has spotted why.

Look how big the filament is.

I mean, even from down here, I can see how massive it is. This is what they

a carbon filament.

And the newer ones we have are the more exotic metals, some of them are

titanium.

So it's much thinner, and it puts out a lot more light, burns a lot hotter. This

doesn't burn as hot.

With memories to savor for a lifetime, Grant and Carrie head back to the shop

take this myth to its nail -biting conclusion that could leave you with a

lighter electricity bill.

Adam and Janie have built a replica train station and bomb casing as they

prepare to take the plunge on the myth of the 22 ,000 -foot fall.

Supposedly, a World War II airman fell from his plane, but was miraculously

saved when an explosion on the ground cushioned his fall.

To put this to the test, the Mythbusters have replaced the plane with some

helium balloons and the airman with ballistics gel tech.

And the bomb countdown is not far away.

It's pre -dawn.

It's now time to fill all of our balloons with enough buoyancy to lift

airman to 500 feet.

And we're out here as early as we could possibly be to try and beat both the

heat and the wind.

It picks up pretty early. And actually, also for the bomb techs, we're trying to

beat the humidity.

We want to do this when it's still pretty humid so we reduce the chance of

And if the pressure in the balloons isn't enough to keep Adam and Jamie on

toes, retired FBI agent Frank Doyle has arrived with some news to make the

atmosphere even more tense.

Hey, good morning, guys. Morning. Hey, Frank. Hey, Frank. How's it going, Phil?

If you have any influence with the weatherman, now's a good time to make

telephone call because see all of our clouds and overcast up there?

That's not good for explosions.

because that cloud cover will keep our pressures and our noise down so that

everything will bounce up, come back down, and go out. And I hope there's no

neighborhood windows nearby.

This much explosives won't just blow a hole right through the cloud cover.

It doesn't work that way. You've been watching too much television.

While TV addict Jamie waits on the weather, Frank and colleague Phil get on

loading up alarmingly large amounts of explosives.

A 1 ,000 -pound GP bomb has a little bit over 500 pounds of HE in it, high

explosive, and the rest is the metal of the steel case.

So that's what we have gone to great lengths to duplicate here in creating an

authentic situation for our meth.

500 pounds of high explosives should ensure authenticity. But how will this

train station detonation compare to previous Mythbusters mayhem?

Of course, we've done a very large 3 ,500 -pound safe.

Wow, that worked beautifully.

Now with the cement truck.

We used a different kind of explosive. It had a slower detonating velocity as

compared to this explosive. This explosive is about three times faster.

If the train station torpedo is faster than this, then

what can we expect?

I think this is going to be the biggest one.

So, stand by for the biggest explosion in MythBusters history.

And with the balloons all inflated, it's time for Airman Ted to rise to the

occasion. Ted, you ready?

500 -foot drop, and history is yours.

To get things airborne, the boys have rigged a clever pulley system that

allow them to precisely control the ascent of the balloons and Airman Ted.

At least, that's the theory.

Everybody on the winches! You're about to start to get a little tension!

Three, two, one!

Help!

Heads up!

Uh, Houston, we have a problem.

I lost it. I lost it.

The cord tethering Ted suddenly snapped, which means the balloons are up, but

our airman is still grounded.

Watch out for the cable. Watch out for the cable.

That one's gone.

And then things take a turn for the worse when some of the balloons start to

burst. And as Adam's about to learn, that is very bad news indeed.

Are you guys totally slagged?

Yeah.

That's it. We're officially screwed. We lost our buoyancy.

With three balloons down, there's just not enough helium to get Ted up. And

what's more, the fire team says it's now too hot to safely detonate the bomb.

So for today, the show's over.

Understandably, the boys are feeling a little deflated.

Murphy is in full force here today.

And now it's too late because not only did we have some setbacks, but those

setbacks pushed us past the window that we had to set this thing off.

Ted's not holding up very well either. That's another whole can of worms. So I

think we're going to have to come up with a dynamic solution in the next 15

minutes so that he doesn't just turn into a puddle with grass embedded in it

tomorrow morning. It's savable. The structure is still here.

The balloons, the bulk of the balloons are still here. The dummy's still here.

The rigging's still here.

I think we're good, but we've just got to wait until the fire danger is a

lower.

So with the provision of a makeshift bed for Airman Ted, it's time to sleep on

this myth until the early hours of tomorrow.

Let's go rest up.

Carrie, Grant, and Tori are testing a myth that came to light with the genesis

of the common light bulb.

Do you save on energy and money by leaving your lights on to avoid the

surge that flicking the switch generates?

Well, Carrie at least is not convinced.

Well, I always switch off the lights because it just seems pretty intuitive

me that you turn off the lights, you're going to save energy and save your light

bulb. Other members of my household...

They have much more important things to think about.

To answer this important question once and for all, the team are halfway

their experiment.

They found out how much energy six types of light bulbs use when they're on. And

now they need to see how this compares to the energy surge that happens on

Stardust.

And for this test, Grant unveils gadget number two.

This is an inductive current loop. And what you do is pass your wire through

here. And as the current flows through here, it actually induces a voltage.

This line is going to go to a computer -based digital sampling oscilloscope. So

in that millisecond range, that really quick turn on, I'll be able to capture

that and measure exactly how much current is going through that wire.

With Grant's electrical mastermind firing on all cylinders, Carrie once

turns apprentice.

Soon you'll be able to do this blindfolded.

Open your mind to your feelings. Feel the wire.

I have no idea what that's from.

When the test finally gets underway, it doesn't take long for a pattern to start

to emerge.

So the interesting thing, after a couple different trials, we've caught there's

always a big spike on startup as the filament warms up, which is to be

It's not very long, and actually it gets to steady state very quickly.

But I think we're probably going to have to hold our judgment until we see some

of the other ones.

So it's coming to light that the energy surge used on startup is not very big at

all. And that means that only a few calculations stand between Grant and a

bright conclusion of the lights on or off myth.

So, crunch the numbers, and here's what I got for the incandescent.

Total power used during startup is 21 ,522

watt -seconds.

Total power for one second is 59 ,519 watt -seconds. And

that makes our break -even time 0 .36 seconds.

Okay, so from that, I guess that means I'm leaving the room to go make a cup of

coffee. It's only worth it.

For me, economically, to keep the light on, if I come back in a third of a

second. Yeah, that's pretty quick.

That'd be a really quick brew coffee. Okay, so in this instance, I'm turning

lights off when I leave the room.

Yes. A quick brew indeed.

For the incandescent bulb, the startup surge is so small that you will always

save money if you turn it off when it's not needed.

Stand by for the next.

Brad keeps plugging away and soon has the results for the other five bulbs.

And they all conform to this pattern.

Okay, I got the compact fluorescent figures. 0 .015 seconds. Faster than you

blink your eye.

Halogen, 0 .51 seconds.

Okay, fluorescent tube.

23 .3 seconds.

So the common fluorescent tube draws more energy on startup than any of the

other bulbs.

but it's still only equivalent to 23 seconds of continuous use.

As far as a residential situation goes, that is the most likely

one for you to have. Still, 23 seconds?

I don't think so.

We'd like to cast a little more light on the subject.

After much research, we've been unable to find another man like our hero, who

the chef's delight.

He won't blow a fuse no matter what you set before him.

Carrie, Grant, and Tori are trying to digest that the cost of switching on a

fluorescent tube is equivalent to just 23 seconds of continuous light.

At a meager .36 of a second for a common incandescent bulb.

Modern replica.

Which means it's looking like it's always best to turn your lights off when

don't need them.

So far, this myth is looking really easily busted to me. I mean, I don't

that there's any way you're going to save money by leaving the lights on all

time. I mean, unless you have a room filled with fluorescents and you only

on being out of the room for 30 seconds.

Yeah, but I think that's only half the story. I think our fans are probably

wondering, as I am, how this affects the longevity of the bulbs. So you want to

test to see if the number of times you turn the light bulb on and off has an

effect on the lifetime of the bulb.

In a final test, specimen bulbs are lighted and allowed to burn out. So the

final test, before reaching a bright conclusion, is to see whether the money

save turning your lights on and off more regularly means that you spend your

savings replacing your bulbs more often.

Well, it's not just energy consumption that figures into whether it's better to

leave the lights on or turn them off.

It's also longevity of the lamps.

So what I've set up is a little timer plus a relay.

What I'm going to do is take this group of lamps and turn them all on and off

at some predetermined time.

So why don't we just put this on a two -minute cycle?

So that's the plan.

Grant's rigged the lights up to a timer, and they're going to turn them on and

off every two minutes to see how long before the bulbs break.

And six weeks later, the results are in.

Okay, so we've been running our longevity test with a two -minute on

for over a month now, and the only bulb that is not burnt out is the LED.

So how does this test compare to, say, the average stress and usage that you

on a light bulb in a normal household. Right, because these lights have been

turned on and off over 10 ,000 times in a month.

Yeah, actually...

That corresponds to over five years worth of stress turning on and off in a

regular household.

And given that when you turn on an incandescent light bulb, it uses the

amount of power as .36 seconds of continuous use and doesn't really take

much wear and tear, Jamie might be right. You're supposed to flip off the

when you leave the room.

Yeah, I have a feeling this one's busted.

Yeah, I think it's definitely busted.

Jamie's always right.

While it's lights off on that myth, Adam and Jamie are doing their best to

switch on in the dark.

They're inflating helium balloons pre -dawn so that they have enough time to

the myth of the 22 ,000 -foot fall in the air.

And starting at 4 a .m., it's times like these when Adam reflects on the harder

aspects of his job.

We get a lot of fan mail saying that we have the best job in the world, and I

won't disagree with that, but there are also days like this morning.

when it is the hardest job I have ever done, by far. And that's because so far

with this myth, they've had setback after setback. Severed lines, burst

balloons, and grounded dummies. What could have gone wrong has.

That's it. We're officially screwed.

Today may be a new day, but things haven't improved.

Yeah.

That's just about the funniest thing I've ever seen.

That's his ear.

He's like a cookie after baking, you know?

It's all kind of flattened out.

It's already so hot that Ted's feeling a little flat.

And that's not the only problem with this heat.

It's well over 100 degrees in the shade out here.

We've got...

500 pounds of explosives in here, high explosives. It's military spec, and, you

know, if we're anywhere in our work area and this should happen to go off, there

won't be anything left of us, period.

Luckily, he has an elaborate plan to avoid a premature projectile.

So I put a blanket on it.

Once Jamie's attached his security blanket, it's time to get cooking.

Well, it's crunch time. The wind's kind of gentle, and we have to go. So it's

now or never.

We're inflating the balloons, and we're going to do it.

Everything that could go wrong, this is like the myth of Job is what's happening

here. But I've got seven balloons. I think each of them are at least 20 to 25

pounds. That gives me 150 -some -odd pounds. I think it's enough to lift our

airman. The bomb squad is coming back up here, and then we just cross our

fingers. There goes nothing.

Okay, that's switching up on our airman.

Now he's off the ground.

Now he's off the ground!

At last, turret gunner Ted has got his wings.

Slowly but surely, he climbs 500 feet. He may be slightly off target, but the

guide wire will ensure that he falls right into the station, which means it's

time to retreat to safety.

Well, our guy is airborne.

The balloons are up.

Cable's good.

Once they push that detonator, our airmen will drop for approximately six

seconds with a blasting cap, and then a second blasting cap will detonate the

bomb onto the train station, hopefully at the very femtosecond that our airmen

are touching the roof.

With the boys a safe distance away, it's finally time to put the myth of the 22

,000 -foot fall to the test.

And here's what's going to happen.

Airman Ted is suspended so that he's 500 feet off the ground.

He's connected to the train station via a guide wire.

On Adam's cue, the balloons will be cut and Ted will fall.

Six seconds later, the 1 ,000 -pound bomb will boom.

Will Ted survive?

Everybody, say it with me.

Jamie wants Big Boom.

He's falling.

He's falling. He's going towards it.

He's going towards it. Oh!

Wow, here comes the shockwave.

The booms created a mushroom cloud of frightening proportions, and it's also

the surrounding hills on fire.

Oh, look at that!

Fortunately, the county fire department are quick to respond.

The dance is getting better and better.

Come to ground zero. It's awesome.

Frank will be right there. You're my new best friend.

And after an explosion like that, Frank's

my new best friend, too.

On the high speed, you can clearly see the cushioning shockwave before the area

gets blown to smithereens.

But what happened to Ted?

Well, unfortunately, there was a malfunction in the guide wire, which

he fell way off target.

But the charge caused so much carnage that Jamie and Adam should still be able

to draw some equally powerful conclusions.

If there's one thing in this whole blast site that tells you what the real deal

is with this kind of explosion and being close to it, it's right over here.

Check it out.

It totally wrapped around it. That is crazy.

Oh, my God.

Can you imagine what this piece of steel would have done to you if it hit you

instead of this tree? I mean, it's like a necktie.

We're not going to get that off of there. No, we're going to cut it here

here and display it proudly on your shelf.

There's so much shrapnel that if Ted had fallen into the station, our gunner

would have been a goner. Here's the body.

There's the steel.

There's more steel way over there and a lot further, so... There's no way.

There's just no way.

The idea is that the pressure of this one human body somehow equalized the

pressure of the bomb going off.

That's just not going to happen.

So, in the middle of a crater, in the middle of a quarry, in the middle of

nowhere, it's time to wrap this one up.

So what are we going to call this one? I mean, look, factually, we know that in

World War II, there was an airman who fell 22 ,000 feet from his bomber and

survived without a parachute.

That is historically accurate.

Yeah, but the idea that a bomb going off would provide such an upwelling of air

that it would decelerate him and gently lower him to the ground is bunk.

It's just not. I don't think it's possible.

What do you think, Hank?

Uh -uh. Give me a break. It didn't happen.

So bust it. Bust it. Bust it.

Let's get out of here.